“The Creation of New Forms”

Igor Stravinsky’s Choreodrama The Rite of Spring in the Context of the “Theater Reform around 1900”¹

Leila Zickgraf

The Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev’s company Ballets Russes broke with conventions and presentation principles of classical ballet. This was apparent at the latest on 29 May 1913 with the premiere of The Rite of Spring²—a ballet (as it is generally termed) created jointly by Igor Stravinsky, Vaslav Nijinsky, and Nicholas Roerich. Even years later, journalists and contemporary witnesses spoke about said evening—about the radical aesthetic that had been heard and seen in the Paris Théâtre des Champs-Élysées on the one hand, and about the tumult that was said to have broken out when Stravinsky, Nijinsky, and Roerich confronted the audience with their “images from heathen Russia”³ on the other.⁴

Today Diaghilev is considered a ballet reformer, and his Ballets Russes is regarded as the most successful and influential ballet company of the twentieth century.⁵ The Rite itself advanced to the status of an “avatar of modernity”⁶ and a “Jahrhundertwerk”⁷ and the much-described chaos of its premiere to “perhaps the greatest theater scandal of the twentieth century.”⁸

In view of these effusive epithets, as well as the fact that Stravinsky characterized The Rite in 1912 as a “choreodrama”⁹ that would replace the ballet in its then present form,¹⁰ it is astonishing that such a key work of modern theater¹¹ has yet to be discussed in connection with the “theater of the future”—a label used in a series of treatises, manifestos, and programs that began appearing sporadically in Germany from 1870 on and then, around the turn of the century, increasingly throughout Europe and Russia.¹²

All these texts were written with the intention of reforming (European) theater and are today subsumed under the general heading “theater reform around 1900.” The protagonists of this reform included the German author and theater-maker Georg Fuchs, and the British actor and director Edward Gordon Craig.¹³ Like all of their fellow reformers, these two theorists sought a new form of drama and therefore discussed, among other things, what the new actor should look like in it.¹⁴ Georg Fuchs, who was interested in the authenticity and naturalness of the moving human body and therefore demanded that the actors act out of their unconscious inner being,¹⁵ was convinced that the actors in the new drama needed to follow the model of the dancer. Fuchs was namely of the opinion that drama was “the most highly spiritual and most differentiated application of the art of dance,”¹⁶ and he therefore stated in his 1905 treatise Schaubühne der Zukunft: “Drama is possible without word and without sound, without scene and without dress, purely as rhythmic movement of the human body.”¹⁷

Gordon Craig was considerably more radical than his colleague in his demands for the new actor. He espoused the belief that the director—in his opinion the only true artist of the theater—should impress his ideas on the actors from outside. The only task of the performers on the stage would therefore be to carry out the will of the director on the stage.¹⁸ In favor of this overriding design concept of the director (or control over the actors), Craig ultimately called for the actor to simply be done away with altogether and replaced by an (über-)marionette.¹⁹ In his essay “The Actor and the Über-Marionette,” published in 1908 and discussed throughout Europe and Russia, he thus wrote: “The actor must go, and in his place comes the inanimate figure—the über-marionette we may cal[l] him.”²⁰

If one considers The Rite as that which it was originally intended to be, namely as a Gesamtkunstwerk, composed of music, dance, and possibly scenery as elements of equal standing,²¹ and if one furthermore takes into account the closely knit web of connections between the Ballets Russes and theater reform,²² it quickly becomes clear that Stravinsky was interested particularly in realizing three points together with Nijinsky and Roerich on the night of The Rite’s premiere: (1) controlling movements (through the rhythms of the music); (2) creating new forms (of dance) without models, which were to develop in a state of hypnosis and reflect the rhythms emanating from the music; and (3) integrating the audience (in the theater) into the action on stage by means of collective intoxication.²³

As I aim to demonstrate in this paper, it may be concluded from these three points that Stravinsky presented his own personal “theater of the future” to the audience on the night of the premiere. It is possible, for example, to identify connections in particular between the two protagonists of the theater reform introduced above—Georg Fuchs and Gordon Craig—and the composer Stravinsky as well as the choreographer Nijinsky. In the following, I will present two examples—one about Stravinsky and Georg Fuchs and one about Nijinsky and Gordon Craig—to demonstrate how these connections are expressed in the sources and to what extent they influenced the creation of The Rite.

Stravinsky and Fuchs

As far as Stravinsky is concerned, we know that by the summer of 1911 he must have already read Georg Fuchs’s reform text “Der Tanz,”²⁴ which had been published in 1906 in the Flugblätter für künstlerische Kultur in Stuttgart and in 1910 in Saint Petersburg in a Russian translation (“Tanec”²⁵).²⁶ Stravinsky seems more than enthusiastic about Fuchs’s text when he writes in a letter to Andrey Rimsky-Korsakov: “I shall not rest until you have read this article and given me your opinion in writing, with your signature attached, confirmed by the local police.”²⁷

In the second paragraph, he then adds by way of justification: “What could be better and more wonderful than the development of established artistic forms? Only one thing—the creation of new forms.”²⁸

Here Stravinsky invokes the “new (art) form” as the better and more appealing alternative to continuing to develop existing (art) forms, and then attempts, as it were, to convince Rimsky-Korsakov to commit himself—as he himself has—to such a creation of new forms.²⁹

Yet it is Georg Fuchs who, in the aforementioned essay “Der Tanz,” calls for the creation of new (dance) forms.³⁰ And this call must be viewed in a larger (cultural-)political context:³¹ with his commitment to the theater reform, Fuchs had set himself the goal of achieving increased physicality in society (in the medium term) and renewing German culture (in the long term).³² He saw the new (dance) form as an initial step in pursuit of this goal. The means he had chosen for this purpose was a “stage in the modern style,”³³ on which the “independently creative”³⁴ woman was to dance in a new form, thus serving as a model for the future culture.³⁵ In the text, he therefore calls on individuals endowed with “formal potency”³⁶ to develop the “new dance forms”³⁷ he desired.

In the last dance of The Rite, the Danse Sacrale, it is a woman who—as numerous contemporaries attest—dances in an entirely new form. The influential patron of the arts Harry Graf Kessler, for example, recounts the following in his diary entry from May 29, 1913:

Evening, premiere of Sacre du printemps. An entirely new choreography and music; Nijinsky’s dance style as different from Fokine’s as Gauguin’s painting from Delacroix’s. A completely new vision, never before seen, riveting, convincing, is suddenly there. […] all form devastated, a new one suddenly rising up out of the chaos.³⁸

In view of the statements of the theater reformer Fuchs related above, the question inevitably arises: Did the artist Stravinsky intend for The Rite to bring to the stage the dance forms demanded by Fuchs?

If one additionally considers the extant source material, this is even quite likely to have been the case. After all, it is no secret that the first draft of The Rite of Spring (1910)—at the time still called Великая Жертва (The Great Sacrifice)—differs considerably from the work premiered in 1913 at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. The fact that the plans for Великая Жертва differ in important details from those of 1911 for Праздник весны (Spring Fest) has already been the subject of ample critical discussion.³⁹ The question of why, however, has yet to receive a satisfactory answer,⁴⁰ although Stravinsky again made significant changes to the ballet in July 1911—immediately after reading the text by Georg Fuchs. And these changes can easily be traced back to Fuchs’s text.⁴¹

It has already been extensively described, for instance, that Stravinsky’s plan for The Rite in 1910 was still to create a ballet based on archaeological research. Stravinsky had developed the ambition to realize the aesthetic ideal of the Ballets Russes for the first time: The Great Sacrifice was to become a veritable neonationalist Gesamtkunstwerk⁴²—an anti-literary music theater in which all three art forms involved were to coexist on an equal footing; the chosen subject—and this is crucial for the present example—should be based on Russian culture and on “authentic”⁴³ findings. Stravinsky therefore developed a first draft for his new ballet together with the archeologist and stage designer Nicholas Roerich, who was familiar like no one else in Saint Petersburg with what were thought to be the archaic rites and customs of prehistoric Russia.⁴⁴

On July 15, 1910 (Julian calendar), the Moscow daily newspaper Russkoe Slovo announced for the first time that Stravinsky was working with Fokine and Roerich on a ballet dealing with ancient Slavic rites and customs:

We have been informed by telephone from Saint Petersburg that an interesting new ballet is to be performed in the very near future. The academic N.K. Roerich, the young composer of The Firebird, I.F. Stravinsky, and the ballet master M.M. Fokine are working on a ballet called The Great Sacrifice that is devoted to ancient Slavic religiosity and its customs. Roerich is responsible for the content and the stage production of the ballet.⁴⁵

Around a month later, the Saint Petersburg daily newspaper Peterburgskaja Gazeta printed a very similar announcement. It included the additional information that the choreographic action of the ballet was set on a summer night, consisted of ritual dances, and was also the first work to offer a portrayal of the past without a dramatic plot:

The new ballet shows us a series of images of the holy night and the early Slavs […] The action begins on a summer night and ends before dawn, when the first rays of [sun] appear. As expected, the choreographic part consists of ritual dances. This will be the first attempt to produce a rendition of ancient Slavic times without a fixed dramatic subject.⁴⁶

In an interview printed a month later, on September 30, 1910, in the Saint Petersburg theater program magazine Obozrenie Teatrov, Roerich then reiterates the plan, emphasizing the following: “I aim [in the ballet] to portray how, on a bright summer night on the peaks of the sacred hill […], a succession of ancient ritual Slavic dances take place, concluding with a sacrificial offering.”⁴⁷

To portray these ancient ritual Slavic dances, Stravinsky and Roerich had then looked for and used folkloristic models for the scenario and the composition, and Nijinsky too was inspired by this material for the choreography.⁴⁸

However, in The Rite of 1913—and herein lies the most telling difference from the original plan for the present example—these models were no longer recognizable at all: Stravinsky had transformed the selected folk melodies in such a way that they were no longer identifiable by ear alone.⁴⁹ And according to the Ballets Russes expert Claudia Jeschke, it is not possible to ascertain any references to previously existing material with regard to the choreography either.⁵⁰ Hence, a comparison of the original plan of 1910 with The Rite as it was ultimately realized in 1913—and this has also been frequently described—reveals a significant qualitative leap.

And so the question arises: Was the archeologically “authentic” aspect intended at the outset (1910) for The Great Sacrifice manipulated deliberately in the realization of The Rite (1913)? And if so, for what reason?

Interestingly, Georg Fuchs provides a very clear answer to this question. In his reform text “Der Tanz,” which, as we have seen, Stravinsky read shortly before changing his plans for The Rite in summer 1911, Fuchs discusses at length whether folk dance forms handed down from a primitive agrarian culture were suitable for the new dance forms he demanded. He reaches the following conclusion:

Only a madman could come up with the idea of creating a new dance culture through an “aesthetic influence” of the “social dances.” They are, like the “ballet,” merely a subject for the satirist. Nor is our own daily increasing knowledge of the art of dancing practiced by our ancestors and the great civilizations up to antiquity of use to us, for living dance form can spring up only from the living rhythm of life itself, of the social life of our time, and the archaistic, didactic setting in motion of old reliefs, plates, and clay figurines is far more liable to stifle and mislead the creative power of dance of the modern races than to inspire it.⁵¹

Hence, Fuchs held a revival of old dance forms of the kind Stravinsky and Roerich had still intended at least in 1910 for The Rite to be completely unsuitable for the cultural renewal he aspired to initiate. He envisaged something entirely different for the new dance forms. What Fuchs regarded as a perfect example was namely the sleep dance of the hypnotized Madeleine (Guipet):⁵² This co-called “dream dancer Madeleine” was always placed under hypnosis before her performances by her magnetopath Emile Magnin. And then, as soon as the latter played music, Madeleine started dancing in her hypnotic state.

Albert von Schrenck-Notzing, a German physician and early admirer of Madeleine, therefore once described the dancer as a “somnambulant reflex automaton.”⁵³ In his psychological study on the dream dancer, published in 1904 in Stuttgart, he relates the following:

[Madeleine] picks up the subtlest nuances of the music and reproduces them by means of gestures and facial expressions. […] One of the most interesting points is the dream dancer’s behavior in relation to improvisation on the piano or on the organ. […] She exhibits […] a lightning-fast grasp of every tone color, every harmonic and melodic modulation; […] She can be […] controlled so completely by the piano that one needs only to indicate the expression to the pianist trained in working with her in order for him to compel her to act it out through the note.⁵⁴

Fuchs had seen the dream dancer for the first time in 1904 in Munich.⁵⁵ He notes the following in “Der Tanz”:

Every artistic act is done sleepwalking. Every form is born in the soul of the creator, far away from all consciousness. Yet everywhere else, conscious action is necessary to bring it out, to cause it to emerge as a work. […] A magical command releases Madeleine’s body from earthly laws and from the force of gravity.⁵⁶

Unlike Schrenck-Notzing, who was fascinated above all by the aspect of control in the dance of the hypnotized dancer, Fuchs believed to find in it an art that arose from the unconscious inner being:⁵⁷ hypnosis helped Madeleine to “rid herself of her inhibitions,”⁵⁸ he opined, enabling her to “reveal her innermost being and relinquish her own body.”⁵⁹ The hypnosis revealed secrets “that otherwise hide all instincts, feelings, and habits.”⁶⁰ He was therefore certain that new (dance) forms were to be found “far away from all consciousness in the soul of the creator.”⁶¹ They were to be completely free of models, and their movements were to develop from their unconscious inner being, while at the same time reflecting the rhythms of the music. The (state of) intoxication he saw manifested in the (woman’s) new dance on the newly designed stage was then to be transferred to the audience, culminating in a communal intoxication encompassing everyone present.⁶²

So if Stravinsky really did intend with The Rite to realize the new dance forms demanded by Fuchs and to put both the dancers and the audience into a physically experienceable state of communal intoxication, the dancers’ movements would need to have originated in an unconscious state on the one hand, and to reflect the rhythms of the music on the other.

In contrast to the extensive documentation of Stravinsky’s compositional work, only few sources report on Nijinsky’s choreography, making it impossible today to reconstruct precisely what movements the dancers performed in 1913.⁶³ Neither is it possible in most cases to unambiguously assign movements executed by the dancers to a place in the score.⁶⁴ However, Nijinsky’s sister Bronislava Nijinska was present during the entire rehearsal process from the start. And she claims, for example, that in his choreography for The Rite Nijinsky attempted to translate every note value of Stravinsky’s music into movement and then took great care to ensure that the dancers carried out the movements he had given them with great precision. She recounts the following in her memoirs:

Nijinsky’s creation of a novel structure in the choreography and his innovative movements and poses demanded an exactness of execution to the minutest detail. All this was strange and unfamiliar to the artists brought up in the tradition of the old classical ballet […]. Sometimes when they were so tired and exhausted by the long rehearsals they refused altogether work with Nijinsky. […] Often Diaghilev had to intervene, mostly to calm Nijinsky, who did not understand that certain of his created “pas-movements,” which he demonstrated with such ease in a huge jump, were not possible for the average dancer. Nijinsky was indignantly angry, believing that this inability of an artist to repeat the “pas-movement” after him was a deliberate act of obstruction, and he accused the artists of wanting to sabotage his ballet. I remember one particular incident during the early rehearsals in Monte Carlo. Nijinsky demonstrated a “pas-movement” in the choreography to the musical count of 5/4. During his huge leap he counted 5 (3 + 2). On count 1, high in the air, he bent one leg at the knee and stretched his right arm above his head, on count 2 he bent his body towards the left, on count 3 he bent his body towards the right, then on count 1, still high in the air, he stretched his body upwards again and then finally came down lowering his arm on count 2, graphically rendering each note of the uneven measure. Nijinsky worked in this manner on each measure, accenting the beats for the artists, and would not proceed in his composition until he obtained from each artist the exact execution.⁶⁵

There are no records attesting to Nijinsky having also read Georg Fuchs’s “Der Tanz.” However, his approach to the choreography, as described here by his sister, indicates that he was informed about the content of the text as well as about Fuchs’s demands for the new dance forms. By translating every note value into a movement, he satisfied at least the second of Fuchs’s demands regarding the new dance forms, namely to develop the movements from the rhythms of the music.

Nijinsky’s examination of the ideas and theories of the other reformer discussed above, Gordon Craig, provides a clear indication that the choreographer also attempted to satisfy the first demand in developing the choreography for The Rite—in other words, to have the movements arise from the unconscious inner being.

Nijinsky and Craig

The aforementioned influential patron of the arts Harry Graf Kessler reports in his diary on several meetings between Nijinsky and Craig in Paris and London—here too with increased frequency in the time between 1911 and 1913. Both Diaghilev and Nijinsky repeatedly discussed the idea of using marionettes in theater with Craig.⁶⁶ Kessler recounts the following in his diary about the meeting on 23 February 1913—only a good three months before the premiere of The Rite:

Craig thought two extreme points of view were tenable: One could use living actors and respect them, build up the entire direction on their given individuality, or on the contrary […] use dead material, marionettes, and then dictate everything. […] Nijinsky replied that he wanted living actors, but that he wanted to work on them until they obeyed like dead material. It was not possible to reach an agreement; apparently the English and the Slavic temperament are at odds here.⁶⁷

It was mentioned already at the outset that all of the reformers sought a new form of drama and therefore also discussed the role of the actor: Whereas Fuchs only argued that the new actor should follow the model of the dancer, Gordon Craig wanted to do away with actors entirely and replace them with marionettes, because only then could he—as the director—receive absolute power and control over what happened on stage.

In the debate between Craig and Nijinsky documented by Kessler, it becomes clear that Nijinsky did not merely adapt or criticize Craig’s (complex) theories and ideas. Rather, the conflict between the two was a result of the fact that Nijinsky countered Craig’s concept by advancing his own (extended) concept: according to Kessler, the former wanted to work on living actors until they obeyed him completely. Hence, Nijinsky rather intended to put the actors into a state of unconsciousness or will-less obedience through his choreographic instructions. Through this state, he could then do what he wanted with the living actors or dancers—much like Craig with the (lifeless) marionettes. The only question at this point is what was behind this intention.

Against the background of Fuchs’s demands for new forms and the assumption that Stravinsky planned with The Rite to realize them for the first time, however, the answer is clear: With will-less, living dancers, Nijinsky could not only control how the rhythms emanating from the music were reflected in the movements he designed; he could also ensure that the dancers’ movements arose from their unconscious inner being. These were his dual intentions for the new dance forms he had devised. And they were both necessary with regard to achieving the communal intoxication of the dancers and the audience.

Conclusion

If one regards the extant sources on The Rite in relation to both music and dance and additionally considers the closely knit network of people, ideas, places, and the connections between them within which The Rite originated, it quickly becomes evident that Stravinsky aimed to realize new dance forms with The Rite. The intention of these new dance forms was for the dancers’ movements to arise out of their unconscious inner being and to reflect the rhythms emanating from the music. The state of intoxication manifested in this way in the dancers was then also to be transferred to the audience, culminating in a communal intoxication encompassing everyone present. It may be concluded from this intention that with The Rite, Stravinsky aimed to create his very own “theater of the future,” in line with an idea under discussion all across Europe as well as Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century. It is therefore possible that “perhaps the greatest theater scandal of the twentieth century”⁶⁸ can be explained by the fact that Stravinsky came into contact around 1911 with important proponents of the “theater reform around 1900.” On the night of The Rite’s premiere, at any rate, key demands of this movement found their way from Germany via Russia to Paris—to the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées.