5 Minutes & a Book that will make you LOVE Stravinsky!(and Nijinsky!)
Today, the NYT’s offered a brief 5 minute listen to The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky. You can listen to it here. Their byline is: “Dive into the composer who changed music history and gave Mikhail Baryshnikov “my first heady sniff of the West.” What they don’t tell you is that Stravinsky composed the music for a ballet, by the same name and worked in tandem with the choreographer, Vaslav Nijinsky, who changed dance history at the same time! In fact, the first time the ballet The Rite of Spring was performed at the Theatre de champs élysees in Paris on May 29, 1913, the audience was so outraged by the sounds of the orchestra and the dance movements of the performers that they began to riot! Can you imagine? If you want to know more, please read my picture book all about that fateful night: WHEN STRAVINSKY MET NIJINSKY, Two Artists, Their Ballet, and One Extraordinary Riot.
