Il sacro della primavera

Michela Lucenti proposes a reinterpretation of The Rite of Spring with a modern-day political reflection.

We have been a generation on the run and then, while running, we said to ourselves: “Now it’s enough”.

The Rite of Spring: the quintessential ballet and a historic fiasco par excellence.
Everyone knows that at its very first showing The Rite of Spring was a huge flop.
It was too avant-garde, too exuberant; born out of a need to destroy the traditions of its time.
Some believe that The Rite of Spring marked the birth of modern music.
Its premiere showing in Paris, 1913 ended up in a free-for-all brawl. The audience didn’t limit its reaction to mere verbal attacks, but “acted” through an out -and-out physical attack. Stravinsky declared that this piece had been influenced by a vision he’d had shortly prior to writing it. His vision was that of a group of wise old men looking on as a virgin was forced to dance until her death.  A marvellous metaphor for a generation that is waiting, confined in its stagnation, observed if not outwardly spied upon, sized up; virgin because of the impossibility of being able to do something for itself.  

Now there’s more sense of urgency than ever before, like when one of many thoughts becomes transfixed in your mind and sinks its jaws into your brain, like a bite.

Our generation can no longer wait, f*** off!  

Natural cycles are reversed. The elderly observe us while we’re growing up without being able to blossom out of this exinstential stagnation that never stops demanding us to be patient and understanding, trying to convince us that this is natural. Nothing is  “natural”. Let’s leave our forefathers as we leave winter and stop being sons and daughters.  Thus it’s only fitting that the sacrificial rite shall only commence thanks to our sweat that nurtured our patience, now we need to reclaim the land on which we walk and build.  

It’s our time and we want to take it back and our ancestors agree with us without too many speeches.  

There is no more time to explain. This generation is anything but fleeting, no generation really is
The scene is empty, bare.
The bodies slide and look for air in oversized clothes, second-hand trousers and shirts that had belonged to older siblings. Bits and pieces of nudity briefly exposing them whenever someone goes head over heels.
The important thing is to play the game, never stop, never let go.
The body breaks itself down, it doesn’t let off steam but it attempts to cry out even if it can no longer produce coherent sounds. This is the only time we have and the bodies start to shake until they turn into insane energy vectors.
The Rite is a collective experience but in the grand race that is life we’re all unmistakably on our own.
The body loses its balance, falls to the temptation of trying to embrace everything that is “digestible”, we embrace each other, we move violently, slightly abused and shaken up, awake.
Our bodies interlocking themselves, they help to keep their feet on the ground, men and women both clinging to one another.
Precise, powerful, furious and lightning fast actions.
Each and every one’s strength abandons them, albeit only for brief moments and the others instantaneously help them back onto their feet.
Unexpectedly, heads sprout up from beneath each other’s legs, grabbing onto each other for dear life, entangled one with another, walking on top of each other, not to subdue but to sustain, inner urgency, compassion.  

The Rite is the interior time that discombobulates itself, that comes to a complete halt, mingled with the rest of this world’s sounds. With the grand cacophony .

A DJ set for a desecrating discourse first and foremost on ourselves.
Breaking up the habit, disturbing the dusty stiff seats of tranquility.
Desecrating the old Rite as reinventing a new Rite.