The Cambridge Companion to The Rite of Spring

A Companion not only to Stravinsky's path-breaking score, but to the ballet's legacy across the centuries. It illuminates the controversial Ballets Russes premiere in 1913 and the complex artistic developments and scholarly debates it set in motion, intertwining music, theatrical ballet and modern dance with the wider world of ideas.

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.