The Rite of Spring
“The rite of spring – The dynamism of violence” was the title of our production in 1999, wich marked a new direction for the THEATER DER KLAENGE.
Igor Stravinsky composed “The Rite of Spring” between 1911 and 1913 for the “Ballets russes”. The opening in Paris in 1913 gave rise to a scandal. The reason was the till then unheard artistic application of brutality and power to the musical, and of the primitive to the realm of dance. But that alone could not have been the cause for discontent. One year before the outbreak of the first world war, there was a general feeling that the long period of peace of the “Belle Epoque” could soon experience a brutal, eruptive and barbaric ending.
Still today – and for that piece nearing the end of this ultimately brutal twentieth century and likewise after a long period of peace in Europe, the signs are ever increasing that uncontrolled outbreaks of violence – also in Europe, are multiplying. “The butcher doesn’t content himself with economical killing. He wants to feel what he does. For this reason he tortures and mutilates his victims. He kills in mass. Violence holds as proof of his affiliations. – The sense of the excess is the act itself, the blood bath. The killers rile themselves up mutually to the kill.” (Wolfgang Sofsky in “Die Zeit” (“Time”) 15/98)
Stravinsky has described in “The Rite of Spring” this ritualistic process of the “blood victim”. “…one day I was overcome by the vision of a great heathen ceremony: all kinds of men were sitting in a circle and watched the death dance of a young girl who was about to be sacrificed…” The theme is unfortunately still, or again, current. It was essential to find its relevance to our times.
The music of Igor Strawinsky was played at first original in his version for piano for 4 hands for a solo dance skilfully choreographed by Joachim Schlömer. This solo artistically dancing presentation before pictures of Francis Bacon is interrupted abruptly by culprits who “attack” this event and select themselves the “virgin” in the form of the solo dancer as the victim.
The disgrace process of the cultural presentation, violates the protagonists on the stage (pianist and dancer), the audience, as well as Strawinsky’s music. The music is loudly continued in a Tecno-music treatment. Only when the victim is selected and tortured in a ritual form, the music from the loudspeakers is again Strawinsky in the orchestra version of 1960, conducted by himself.
This piece marks an exception in the way the THEATER DER KLANGE was going on. It is the only piece which was produced in form of an action theatre and which is completely based on a ready music of a famous composer.
It pretended in the 12th year of the existence of the THEATER DER KLAENGE a layout for another artistic direction, which gets on in a discourse with contemporary theatrical trends and dance trends and continued this in the most different manner in particular in the following interactive-intermedia pieces and Collage-forms.
Become our Patron!
Become a patron of an organisation which offers a workspace to artistically active people. Exactly this is what the THEATER DER KLAENGE is offering for 33 years now in Dusseldorf:
Our theatre offers this space because we want to unite every year creative people (Creatives) of almost all ages to work together for a new work of the performing arts.
This workspace is worth of the public authorities every year a support from tax means, so that we were and we are over and over again in the situation to be able to pay yearly approx. 10 people occasional fees.
This money was also enough to finance the necessary organisation and publications of these works. One person could be engaged in partial time-fixed employment and some other were engaged for several works with free fees from our beginings on.
We were nevertheless allways far away from the regular salaries or annual contracts of the state- or citytheatres. Also in the 21st century free organized theatres are still rather outlawed or free to hunt as birds…
In Rome patricians practiced a patronage for released slaves or protective-ordered minors. The name “Patron” stands also for sponsor or guarantor!
We depend on exactly this cartridge against unfair jury decisions or state retreats from the culture in future more than ever as one can see in the valuating of culture regarding the topical crisis.
If you are – as a citizen interested in culture – interested in the lasting preservation of a creative hotbed like the THEATER DER KLAENGE, then please become our patron or our patroness!
One month subscription to a commercial television broadcasting station costs around 10.-€, the membership in a fitness studio costs at least 15.-€ the month, a mobile phone contract monthly about 25.-€, a newspaper subscription around 30.-€ etc… The companies standing behind these offers can finance hundreds of people thereby partly even very well, because there are enough subscribers to whom the achievements and offers of these companies these monthly amounts are worth. If you understand culture as a food – because “Man does not live from bread alone, he also needs the roses” – then the works and the products of creative people should be also worth to you a monthly subscription, isn´t it?
Because the THEATER DER KLAENGE is not a house, therefore we cannot offer classical subscriptions like four tickets in the year.
The online platform “Patreon” offers a form of subscription with different considerations for different Patronage steps. Already for 5.-€ the month you get regularly somewhat of our running artistic work. If you are able to promote more, then multiplicate themselves also our considerations…
We hope with this model to come – without supporting memberships in an association or alternatively to one time fundings – to a supporter’s network for our work which protects our basic financing in addition to the public fundings. And who knows: maybe these Patrones add up even so far that we can offer to our organizers and our creatives in future more than part-time employments or limited contracts for the creative work?