Resourcing the Rite

The German Department Spring 2014 Lecture Series will begin on Thursday, February 20th with a talk by visiting Prof. Gabriele Brandstetter (FU-Berlin). Entitled “Resourcing the Rite” Brandstetter’s presentation will explore contemporary responses to the “Rite of Spring,“ whose 1913 premiere in a tense European context provoked one of the greatest scandals in dance history just a year before the outbreak of WWI. In light of the history of the “riot at the Rite”, as Harry Graf Kessler described it in his diary, the lecture will ask: What does it mean for a choreographer today to accept the challenge of producing a new version of “Le Sacre du printemps”? How do choreographers today address the offensive elements in the “Rite of Spring,” the questions of “ritual” and “sacrifice,” as well as the aesthetic and political challenges? The lecture will consider such questions in the light of Yvonne Rainer’s production of “ROS Indexical” (2007) and Xavier Le Roy’s “Le Sacre du printemps” (2007). How are Rainer, the post-modernist artist, and Le Roy, a contemporary “conceptual” performer, rethinking and re-sourcing “The Rite”?