The Rite of Spring at Teatr Wielki - Opera Narodowa, Moniuszko Auditorium

Teatr Wielki - Opera Narodowa has prepared a ballet show that is unprecedented on an international level. No ballet company has ever decided to present three different choreographies of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring in a single ballet evening. This unusual challenge has ended with complete success for the Polish National Ballet, giving audiences a unique opportunity to experience three great ballet productions without having to seek them out at different theatres in Europe. The evening opens with Vaslav Nijinsky’s revolutionary version from 1913, described at the time as “scenes from pagan Russia”, which undermined the established aesthetics of classical ballet forever. This forgotten choreography was reconstructed years later by Millicent Hodson, the American specialist who first prepared it for the Joffrey Ballet and then staged it several times at leading ballet theatres around the world. Now it is finally our turn to judge the choreographic talent of the great Polish dancer from Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, whose version - coupled with Stravinsky’s avant-garde music - caused a historic scandal a hundred years ago during the world premiere in Paris. After the intermission comes one of the latest projects - the iconoclastic version of the Israeli choreographer Emanuel Gat. His shocking juxtaposition of Latin American salsa and Stravinsky’s music was aptly described by Le Figaro’s reviewer as “salsa on top of a volcano”. To conclude the evening, we present the legendary interpretation of Maurice Béjart. The great choreographer called his ballet “a hymn to the union of Man and Woman in the innermost depths of the flesh, a union of heaven and earth, a dance of life and death”. Its universal message, brilliant simplicity of composition, and extraordinary power of expression is still stunning today.