Since Nijinsky’s riot-inducing premiere of Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) in 1913, countless choreographers have tackled Stravinsky’s mighty score including Pina Bausch, Maurice Béjart, Kenneth MacMillan and Michael Clark. This is the UK premiere of Australian circus group Circa’s dive into the Rite, part of this year’s Brighton festival.
This reboot is a mood piece, a sombre, slow-burn crescendo, which starts not with Stravinsky, but a rumbling soundscore by Philippe Bachman, until the rumbling gives way to plaintive bassoon and Stravinsky’s music unfurls. In parallel, the performance moves from fleeting solo and duo interactions, with bodies deftly lifted, tossed and balanced, a partner’s weight deflected with invisible effort, into a community of 10 performers bound by some ominous force, woven in changing textures and complex structures of limbs, like a tangle of ancient tree roots.
