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The Cambridge Companion to The Rite of Spring

The Cambridge Companion to <i>The Rite of Spring</i>

The Cambridge Companion to <i>The Rite of Spring</i>

Editor:
Davinia Caddy, Jane Pritchard, Tamsin Alexander, Mary E. Davis, Renate Bräuninger, Sarah Gutsche-Miller, Gurminder Kaur Bhogal, Olga Haldey, Maureen Carr, Phillip Mackenzie Torbert, Daniel Barolsky, Rachana Vajjhala, Luke Howard, Daniel K. L. Chua, Samuel N. Dorf, Tatiana Baranova Monighetti
Published:
July 2025
Availability:
Available
Format:
Paperback
ISBN:
9781108700993

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    A Companion not only to the historic, path-breaking ballet production by Diaghilev, Nijinsky, Roerich and Stravinsky that premiered in Paris in 1913, but also to its legacy across the centuries. The newly commissioned essays will guide students and ballet-goers as they encounter this fascinating work and enable them to navigate the complex artistic currents it set in motion, intertwining music, theatrical ballet and modern dance with the wider world of ideas. The book embraces The Rite of Spring as a spectrum of creative possibility that has impacted the arts, politics, gender, race and national identity, and even popular culture, from the 1910s to the present day. It distils an enormous body of literature, sharing insights from the very latest research while inviting readers to rethink standard scholarly narratives, and brings together contributions from specialists across multiple disciplines: music history, theory and analysis, dance and theatre studies, art history, Russian history, and European modernism.

    • Describes and distils the huge scholarly literature on the ballet, condensing the very latest academic research
    • Celebrates the ballet's recent centennial and give a sense of how and why the work has exerted such an enduring fascination over a range of listeners and ballet-goers, thus provoking a new spate of celebratory literature c. 2013
    • Offers new critical insights from cross-disciplinary perspectives

    Product details

    July 2025
    Paperback
    9781108700993
    344 pages
    244 × 170 × 18 mm
    0.594kg
    Available

    Table of Contents

    • List of figures
    • List of examples
    • Notes on contributors
    • Chronology of the Rite of Spring
    • Introduction: on criticism, excess and felt response Davinia Caddy
    • Part I. The Paris Premiere:
    • 1. Transforming the world of dance: the Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev Jane Pritchard
    • 2. Genesis and collaboration: Igor Stravinsky's music for the rite of spring Tamsin Alexander
    • 3. Nicholas Roerich's Rite of Spring: costumes, décors and visual design Mary E. Davis
    • 4. Movement and choreographic influence: the contribution of Vaslav Nijinsky to the Rite of Spring Renate Bräuninger
    • 5. The Rite of Spring in the Parisian press Sarah Gutsche-Miller
    • Part II. Contexts:
    • 6. Framing modernism: primitivism, grotesquerie and orientalism in French art and visual culture Gurminder Kaur Bhogal
    • 7. Vesna Svyashchennaya: the rites of spring in Russian art and tradition Olga Haldey
    • 8. Situating the Rite of Spring within Stravinsky's compositional oeuvre Maureen Carr and Phillip Mackenzie Torbert
    • 9. The Soviet context: the Rite of Spring at the Bolshoi Theatre
    • Part III. Performance and Interpretation:
    • 10. The Rite of Spring in concert, on record and online Daniel Barolsky
    • 11. Choreographic visions and revisions Rachana Vajjhala
    • 12. The Rite of Spring in popular culture and cinema Luke Howard
    • Part IV. Scholarship:
    • 13. Contesting analytical traditions Daniel K. L. Chua
    • 14. Transcribed Rites of Spring: revisionist narratives across music and dance history Samuel N. Dorf
    • Conclusion: reflections, ideas, supplements Tatiana Baranova Monighetti
    • Further reading
    • Index.
      Contributors
    • Davinia Caddy, Jane Pritchard, Tamsin Alexander, Mary E. Davis, Renate Bräuninger, Sarah Gutsche-Miller, Gurminder Kaur Bhogal, Olga Haldey, Maureen Carr, Phillip Mackenzie Torbert, Daniel Barolsky, Rachana Vajjhala, Luke Howard, Daniel K. L. Chua, Samuel N. Dorf, Tatiana Baranova Monighetti

    • Editor
    • Davinia Caddy

      Davinia Caddy is author of The Ballets Russes and Beyond: Music and Dance in Belle-Epoque Paris (Cambridge, 2012), co-editor of Musicology and Dance: Historical and Critical Perspectives (Cambridge, 2020), author of How to Hear Classical Music (2013) and frequent contributor to Radio New Zealand.