Le Sacre du printemps

The relationship between man and nature fascinates and  worries Martin Harriague. Which he already evoked in his recent  choreographic creations (Sirènes, Fossile, Serre) – the rebirth  of the living, its power, the struggle for its survival – Stravinsky’s  iconoclastic and brilliant work for the Ballets Russes contains  everything, and more. In many ways, The Rite of Spring was revolutionary  progress, both in its choreography by Nijinksy and the score. Harriague  decided to use the myth while respecting the composer’s original  intention illustrated by a pagan rite, “it is an obscure and immense  sensation when nature renews its shapes, and it is the vague and  profound disorder of a universal impulse,” Stravinsky explained in an  article that Martin Harriague uses as a reference (CND, Montjoie  magazine, May 29, 1913). Jacques Rivière, the NRF’s insightful director,  spoke at the time of a “biological ballet”, “spring in its effort, in  its spasm… one would believe we were attending a drama under a  microscope”. The complex rhythmic hammering that gives the work its wild  and threatening force suits Martin Harriague’s explosive and earthy  body language. This time he renounces all physical lyricism because the  music makes him do so; he concentrates on the expressive power of  primitive movement and fractal figures through which the group coils,  unfolds, contracts as the living reappears, and makes its way everywhere  before exploding. To Nijinsky, who had dared to make this transgressive  break with classical language, Harriague borrows the trampling of the  spring Augurs who “mark the pulse of Spring with their footsteps”. The  quotes from the original ballet stop there, but the entire piece shows a  willingness to draw on the music’s expressiveness, which was  particularly brilliant under the baton of Teodor Currentzis, to bring  Stravinsky’s vision to life. One physically feels the wild energy and  timeless fear that inhabits this group confronted with the violence of  the living, purified by the rite. We perceive the savagery and the  necessity of the final offering of the chosen one, a feminine principle  embodying the energy of spring, the sap, pure and healthy, which rises,  an allegory of the living that rises towards the light.

Special thanks to Nuria López Cortés, Choreographic Artist. 

Source: Malandain Ballet Biarritz

More information: malandainballet.com