The October opening of American Contemporary Ballet’s performance season has always been on the eerie side, with ballets that visit the underworld and the city’s strangest burlesque club, toying with the psyche of Halloween chill-seekers. ACB’s 12th season in Los Angeles opens with a new and even more unnerving work.
The Rite, a new ballet by ACB Director Lincoln Jones premiering October 6, immerses the audience in a world inhabited by bewitching young women – one chosen, one sacrificed – and the score that caused a riot in 1913 Paris.
Igor Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” is now regarded as a creative masterwork that changed modern music forever. That wasn’t the view of everyone in the glittering crowd that turned out for the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées premiere of the Nijinsky ballet performed to it. Most weren’t ready for the score’s complex rhythms, thunderous pulse, and dissonant chords (“the music always goes to the note next to the one you expect,” wrote one exasperated critic). Boos came to blows in the audience, and the yelling grew so loud Stravinsky went backstage to help the dancers keep time.
While ACB’s Inferno laced the underworld with touches of humor, The Rite promises an experience both genuinely frightening and inescapably riveting.
The Rite is paired with ACB’s Burlesque, a Lynchian window on the world of burlesque with a finale that’s dominated post-show buzz since its premiere and spurred repeat ticket purchases by fans determined to figure it out. Conclusions may be elusive, but the fun is in the pondering. Let the witching season begin.
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