Photo Flash: Virginia Arts Festival Celebrates 100th Anniversary of THE RITE OF SPRING

The Virginia Arts Festival made-and remade-history on May 29. That's when the Festival celebrated the 100th anniversary of the world premiere of The Rite of Spring, Igor Stravinsky's groundbreaking work that changed the worlds of music and dance forever. Scroll down for photos from the production!

The original premiere, on May 29, 1913, took place in Paris. Formonths before the fateful night, Stravinsky worked side by side with choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky to create a bold new work, with every pulsing beat of the music drawing the dancers deeper into a mysterious story of ritual and sacrifice, in steps and movements that classical audiences had never seen before. Traditionalists were aghast; but many among that first audience, thrilled by what they saw, knew that they were in the presence of astonishing genius. This was revolution, and Stravinsky, leading the forces for change, won the day.

Now, 100 years to the day after that headline-making premiere, the Virginia Arts Festival presents the Virginia Symphony Orchestra and the Richmond Ballet in The Rite of Spring: a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to celebrate the genius of an artist who has left an indelible mark on music, and through music, on the world.

The Richmond Ballet revives the choreography created by Salvatore Aiello. In his vision of the historic ballet, Aiello invented a primitive society to explore the myth of earth and life, imagining a chosen group of women pampered, protected and prepared for the ultimate offering to the gods. The fluid, undulating movement of the dancers builds with the music to the final shattering scene.

Virginia Symphony Music Director JoAnn Falletta conducts the orchestra in Stravinsky's masterwork, which in its day redefined the sound of an orchestra. Stravinsky, calling on ancient Russian pagan traditions, sought to recreate the sound of keening voices and stamping feet; pushing the instruments to the height and depth of their registers, he created a sense of edge-of-your-seat urgency that was, and is, utterly exhilarating.

The 100th Anniversary performance evening opened with Jessica Lang's beautiful Solo in Nine Parts and also included a second Stravinsky ballet masterwork, and one of the composer's many collaborations with the groundbreaking choreographer George Balanchine, the spare and striking Duo Concertant.

Since 1997, the Virginia Arts Festival has transformed the cultural scene in southeastern Virginia, presenting great performers from around the world to local audiences and making this historic, recreation-rich region a cultural destination for visitors from across the United States and around the world. The Festival has presented numerous U.S. and regional premieres, and regularly commissions new works of music, dance, and theater from some of today's most influential composers, choreographers and playwrights. The Festival's arts education programs reach tens of thousands of area schoolchildren each year through student matinees, in-school performances, artists' residencies, master classes and demonstrations.

Photo Credit: David Polston, Virginia Arts Festival

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