It’s 109 years since the Ballets Russes premiered the Rite of Spring, and the countless versions that have followed over the decades seem to prove that people can’t get enough of ritual sacrifice. At least not when accompanied by Stravinsky’s mighty score. Swedish choreographer Mats Ek made his first Rite back in 1984, but dissatisfied with how it turned out, he’s returned to it nearly 40 years on, creating this world premiere for English National Ballet.
In Ek’s novel take, the sacrifice in question is a woman being given to an arranged marriage. Rather than the wild extremes that Stravinsky provokes in some (think of the flailing hair and bodies of Pina Bausch’s version, previously danced by this company), Ek’s mood is pared back, contained, repressed in emotion, in great contrast to the pounding of the score. Rather than a mob of dancers, we have four characters – mother, father, bride, groom – although when their emotions are heightened it’s done by multiplying the (identically dressed) bodies on stage, rather than increasing the expressiveness of an individual person.
