Ritual Design in the New Dance: Nijinsky's Choreographic Method

Abstract

The first part of my article ('Ritual Design in the New Dance: Nijinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps', Dance Research, Vol. III, No. 2, Summer 1985, pp. 35-45), endeavoured to share the shock of recognition I have experienced during my reconstruction of the choreography for this ballet. This part of the article examines some of Nijinsky's sources and suggests that his way of working with them evinced a method that could, I think, serve choreographers in the present and the future. Clues to the movement for any given section of the musical score of Sacre have accumulated gradually during my several years of research. And, as in the solving of any problem, one new fact perhaps a casual comment in an interview or a remark in some review from 1913 may suddenly make sense of many disparate details. When this synthesis occurs, I often find myself visualising a moment of the original Sacre onstage at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees. These momentary images of Le Sacre du