Circle of life
Yang Liping’s new production creates
a distinctively Chinese Rite of Spring.
She tells David Jays about willing
sacrifice and reincarnation.
Yang Liping describes the score of The Rite
of Spring as “a series of codes that Stravinsky
leaves for future generations of dancers.” The
Chinese choreographer is the latest in a long
line of dance artists to harness the elemental
surge of this incendiary masterpiece from 1913.
Nijinsky’s original version of The Rite has been
lost, despite attempts to reconstruct it. There
have since been well over 200 dance versions
of the piece, from Kenneth MacMillan’s luridly-
painted tribe to Michael Clark’s provocative
take, which ends with a bare-breasted woman
in a Hitler moustache; not to mention the
dinosaurs battling it out in Disney’s Fantasia.
Of all these countless versions, perhaps the
one which most viscerally captures Stravinsky’s
elemental terror is that by Pina Bausch (1975),
danced at Sadler’s Wells by her own company
and more recently by English National Ballet.
It was Bausch’s version that resonated with
Yang and inspired her to embark on her own
creation. But was she intimidated by following
in Bausch’s footsteps? “I like Bausch’s Rite
so much,” she admits. “But in creation, the
important thing is your own belief in what you
want to say to the audience. What is imperative
for an artist is to communicate her own
ideas and understanding of life through this
extraordinary music and creation.”
Stravinksy’s score came late to China. It was
not heard live there until 1982, at the Cultural
Palace of Nationalities in Beijing, where the
orchestral forces included two members from
the People’s Liberation Army playing the high
tuba parts. Young musicians flocked to hear
the iconic work. “We were all there to listen
to the live performance of The Rite,” said the
composer Guo Winjing. “It was very different
from what we heard on cassette tapes in those
days. The difference was very profound for
us as composers, and the live performance
opened us to a new aura of orchestration
and dynamics.”