Stravinsky's Rite of Spring sparks a riot at its Paris premiere
On this day · 29 May 1913
A new ballet's pounding dissonance and jagged dancing turned a glittering Paris opening night into open warfare in the stalls.
On 29 May 1913, the Ballets Russes unveiled Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring at the brand-new Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. Built around a pagan ritual in which a chosen maiden dances herself to death, the score abandoned tidy melody for hammering, irregular rhythms and grinding harmony.
The trouble started within minutes. Vaslav Nijinsky’s choreography turned dancers’ feet inward and jerked their limbs into sharp, ungainly angles, scandalising patrons who had come for elegance. Boos and jeers swelled into shouts, then into something close to a brawl, with police summoned during the interval.
The theatre seemed to have been struck by an earthquake.
The din grew so loud that the dancers could not hear the orchestra, and Nijinsky reportedly stood in the wings shouting counts to keep them in time. What felt like a fiasco became legend: the work is now reckoned among the most influential pieces of the twentieth century, its once-shocking rhythms absorbed into modern music.
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