When the famous ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev asked Stravinsky, who was playing The Rite of Spring for him for the first time on piano: „How much longer will it go on like that?” Stravinsky cordially replied: „Until the end, my dear fellow.”
When asked what he most recalled from his childhood in Russia, Stravinsky answered: „Spring which in Russia comes very sharply, suddenly, and powerfully. It erupts in perhaps an hour and it sounds as if the whole world is cracking.”
Spring begins the same way in Finland where the collaborator with Handa Gote, musician and performer Pasi Mäkelä is from. The music of Igor Stravinsky’s work and the choreography for it by Vaslav Nijinsky from 1913 are the group’s inspiration.
The Rite of Spring is a concert performed on toys, found objects and old gramophone records, but also a cacophonic opera and a lunatic slapstick show about a battle between two principles. A crazed ritual which searches for the remnants of paganism hidden under the sediment of Christian tradition and secular society.
For The Rite of Spring Finnish musican and performer Pasi Mäkelä joins the Handa Gote collective, with his version of butoh dance enriched by experience with the Zambian Muganda dance and the rituals of the Njau secret society in Africa.
created by: Švábová, Mäkelä, Procházka, Smolík, Dörner, Hybler
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