The Rite of Spring

The Rite of Spring ("Le Sacre du Printemps") is a ballet in two parts. It was written for the 1913 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes company. 
The music was written by Igor Stravinsky. The dances, which Stravinsky hated, were choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky. The style of the dance was not in traditional ballet form, but as what Nijinsky imagined to be a primitive ritual. Stravinsky complained that Nijinsky had no understanding of the rudiments of music. The set and costumes were designed by Nicholas Roerich. 
The ballet was first performed by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes at the Theatre du Champs-Élysées in Paris on 29 May 1913. The dress rehearsal met with approval from critics and invited guests, but the premiere was greeted with tumult and riot, only stilled by the performance of Marie Piltz as the sacrificial maiden. Subsequent performances were received with growing appreciation, but the ballet's great difficulties forced it to be presented only six times.
The ballet was revived in 1920 by the Ballets Russes, but the music had been performed in its entirety in concert before the revival. Nijinsky's dances had been forgotten so Leonide Massine (who had not seen the original performances) designed the dances anew. These met with Stravinsky's approval. In 1940, Walt Disney used the music to accompany a segment of the animated movie "Fantasia". This segment depicted lumbering dinosaurs and smoldering volcanoes.
Stravinsky's music.
The music lasts about 40 minutes, and is divided into two parts. It has the subtitle "Pictures from Pagan Russia". Stravinsky had the idea of composing music which was about country people from old times in Russia who danced a fertility rite. This means: a ceremony which is supposed to bring good luck to the next year’s harvest. In this ancient Russian dance, one young girl is chosen to dance and dance until she dies. She is the sacrifice. She is sacrificed to the god of spring.
How Stravinsky wrote the score.
The painter Nicholas Roerich talked with Stravinsky about the idea for this ballet in 1910. Stravinsky started writing down musical ideas while he was still working on his ballet "The Firebird". Then he worked on "Petrushka". In 1912 he was able to concentrate on "The Rite of Spring". All these ballets were composed for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. 
First performance.
"The Rite of Spring" was first performed by the Ballets Russes on 29 May 1913 at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. The conductor was Pierre Monteux. The audience were shocked at the primitive kind of dancing and the irregular rhythms and strange orchestral sounds and unusual chords. Nijinsky’s choreography was so different from classical ballet. Nijinsky found it difficult to work with Stravinsky and difficult to work with the music.
Carl Van Vechten described the scene as follows:
"A certain part of the audience was thrilled by what it considered to be a blasphemous attempt to destroy music as an art, and, swept away with wrath, began very soon after the rise of the curtain, to make cat-calls and to offer audible suggestions as to how the performance should proceed. The orchestra played unheard, except occasionally when a slight lull occurred. The young man seated behind me in the box stood up during the course of the ballet to enable himself to see more clearly. The intense excitement under which he was labouring betrayed itself presently when he began to beat rhythmically on top of my head with his fists. My emotion was so great that I did not feel the blows for some time".
Marie Rambert heard someone in the gallery call out: "Un docteur … un dentiste … deux docteurs…". The second performance (June 4) was fortunately less eventful and, according to Maurice Ravel, the entire work could actually be heard.
The complicated music and violent dance steps caused some to boo. They started to shout and whistle. They argued, and other people who liked it argued back. Then some people started to fight. In the end the police were called. Stravinksy was very upset and ran out of the theatre. The performance was a scandal, but this actually made people curious and soon the ballet became very famous. It was performed six times that season, and there were no more interruptions during the other performances.
Themes.
"The Rite of Spring" is divided into two parts, and each part has several sections:
Musical characteristics.
Stravinsky's music has many complex harmonies with dissonant sounds. There are passages with polyrhythms (several rhythms at once) as well as polytonality (music in several keys at once). The time signatures keep changing, and he often uses ostinati (repeated patterns).
Stravinsky wanted his music to describe the releasing of lots of energy. Most composers would have done this by using a lot of percussion instruments. However, although two players are needed for the timpani, there are not many other percussion instruments. Instead, the whole orchestra becomes a kind of percussion instrument. Also, the music often sounds like Russian folkmusic.
Instrumentation.
"The Rite of Spring" uses a very large orchestra with some unusual instruments. There are almost 100 people playing the piece. Here is a list of the instruments used:
The dance.
Nijinsky's choreography was thought almost as shocking as the music. The idea is: a tribe sacrifices a young virgin each year in the Spring to please their gods, and make sure crops grow well. The dancers adopt a pigeon-toed stance (position); their moves are heavy. They move together in groups; their movements are like a ritual. They look like a primitive tribe performing a ritual. The ritual moves towards the sacrifice of the girl. "The Rite of Spring" is a link between classical ballet and modern dance.p395
Reconstruction of the ballet.
Nijinsky's choreography has not been kept very well, but there have been efforts in recent years to reconstruct his performance, using costumes and set designs that look like the original ones from 1912. The Royal Ballet in London has a compact disc which discusses Bronislava Nijinska's directions for the dance in a modern (post WWII) production of the ballet.
Fantasia.
"The Rite of Spring" became even more popular when Walt Disney used some of the music in his animated movie "Fantasia" in 1940. It is used in the film to describe early life on planet earth with dinosaurs roaming about.