Riot on the Montaigne Strip
“When a great moment knocks on the door of your life, it is often no louder than the beating of your heart, and it is very easy to miss it. ”― Boris Pasternak
Even now, Igor Stravinsky’s score to his ballet The Rite of Spring, which debuted today 110 years ago, seems incredibly modern. From the second movement of the first section, Les Augures Printaniers - Danses Des Adolescentes (The Augurs of Spring - Dances of the Teenage Girls), which prophecizes the coming of Glenn Branca, foetus and the industrial music revolution over 60 years later, to the final movement of the second, and last, section, Danse Sacrale. L'élue (Sacral Dance. The Chosen One) with its all-out attack to the finish line, trenchantly ending, no landing, no peace: The Rite of Spring is a complete musical breakthrough, shattering the glass vase of a more floral era of ballet. Stravinsky’s craftsmanship predates film scores like Jerry Goldsmith’s Planet of the Apes or Maurice Jarre’s Lawrence of Arabia by over 50 years, Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Arc soundtracks by more, as well as compositions by Hermann Nitsch and Karlheinz Stockhausen and overall the modern free jazz and experimental movements.
And yes, the choreography around the music was an equally brilliant David Lynchian eruption of a modern dance aesthetic that has helped define all that came after. It is a dance to the death, a maiden sacrificed in a pagan ritual that Stravinsky and fellow Russian Sergei Diaghilev, whose dance company Ballets Russes commissioned and produced the work, saw as a commentary of their homeland, Mother Russia. Diaghilev had found a life mission years before: to bring exciting, progressive Russian culture to the world post-the-revolution…post the repressive Russian political shadow, choosing to operate out of France with his Ballets Russes company. It led him to invest in unknown Russian composers, like Stravinsky, and introduce them to the world. This was Stravinsky’s third ballet for Diaghilev after coming off of huge successes with his first two. But nothing could have prepared either one of them for happened on the opening nite of Rite (or maybe…just maybe…they knew what was coming all along).
110 years ago today, The Rites of Spring premiered at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. Within minutes of the opening orchestral section, an uproar came from the audience…gathering momentum as the dancers hit the stage that included the throwing of vegetables and laughter and yelling and pushing and fisticuffs. Over 40 audience members were kicked out, while choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky, also from the Russian empire, was seen on-stage yelling the cues to the dancers who could not hear the music over the din.
The ballet was, heroically, completed that evening and yet the reason behind the crazed opening night was never truly figured out. Was it the jarring music that drove the audience crazy? Was it the vehemently unorthodox choreography? Or was it politically driven, with Russian government plants in the crowd who looked to cause anarchy and silence the ballet, a production with its masked political commentary, and its composer, producer and choreographer? Regardless, it celebrates the ultimate power of artistic expression, and resulted in Stravinsky solidifying his worldly fame. And The Rite of Spring? To this day it is looked on as one of the greatest ballets…greatest pieces of art…ever.
A film was made of the evening in 2005, Riot at the Rite. And while it is not a stellar production in the least, it does provide an interpretation of what happened 110 years ago today as well as feature (in a small roll) Pearce Quigley who played Russell in the Detectorists…
Butthole Surfers’ first 5 albums and more getting digital, physical reissues by Matador Records
It is hard to overstate the influence and dramatic innovation of The Butthole Surfers…from their groundbreaking records, which sounded at the time (and now) like nothing else imaginable…to their crazed live shows featuring naked elves and castration films (and amazing music). I am not sure their influence has been fully digested by the many, maybe because of their name? Maybe because of being so damn ahead of the curve. Their records, especially the fantastically named Psychic… Powerless… Another Man’s Sac (1984), Rembrandt Pussyhorse (1986), Locust Abortion Technician (1987) are severely twisted genuine classics.
Keith Haring: Art is For Everybody: The Broad, Los Angeles
By the time of his early death at 31, Keith Haring had deeply affected culture and the world of design…how we think about graphics…how deep issues can be conveyed so convincingly, so democratically by simple line drawing. The looks like an incredible retrospective.
From the West Hartford Archives: A Photo Series
The town of West Hartford, Connecticut is lucky enough to have a super-local-based newspaper called We-Ha.com. Each week, Historian Jeff Murray digs into the town’s passed by lovingly curated and researched photos from the town’s archives. The resultant collection is quite moving and worth an exploration (would be worth putting into a physical art book).
Bestselling Japanese author Haruki Murakami wins Spanish Asturias prize for literature
Meryl Streep won the artistic award, Nuccio Ordine for Humanities. More on the award and the rest of the winners here.
‘Avant to Live’ Is a Monument to Beloved Mission Filmmaker Craig Baldwin
“For more than 40 years, Craig Baldwin has reappropriated images from discarded and forgotten educational and industrial movies (found footage, in the vernacular of experimental film) to craft brilliant, hyper-dense 16mm films critiquing U.S. exceptionalism, colonialism, capitalism and moviemaking.”
The Shape of Death
By: May Swenson
What does love look like? We know
the shape of death. Death is a cloud
immense and awesome. At first a lid
is lifted from the eye of light:
there is a clap of sound, a white blossom
belches from the jaw of fright,
a pillared cloud churns from white to gray
like a monstrous brain that bursts and burns,
then turns sickly black, spilling away,
filling the whole sky with ashes of dread;
thickly it wraps, between the clean sea
and the moon, the earth's green head.
Trapped in its cocoon, its choking breath
we know the shape of death:
Death is a cloud.
What does love look like?
Is it a particle, a star -
invisible entirely, beyond the microscope and Palomar?
A dimension unimagined, past the length of hope?
Is it a climate far and fair that we shall never dare
discover? What is its color, and its alchemy?
Is it a jewel in the earth-can it be dug?
Or dredged from the sea? Can it be bought?
Can it be sown and harvested?
Is it a shy beast to be caught?
Death is a cloud,
immense, a clap of sound.
Love is little and not loud.
It nests within each cell, and it
cannot be split.
It is a ray, a seed, a note, a word,
a secret motion of our air and blood.
It is not alien, it is near-
our very skin-
a sheath to keep us pure of fear.
A Recent Tweet from Terry Riley (Translated from Japanese):
Musician Terry Riley decided to move to Japan at the age of 84 and is now 87.
In Yamanashi, I sing, practice, teach, compose and try new things every day.
It's very amazing and wonderful, but there are many fans and people in the music industry who don't know about it, so please spread the word