So, I fell down a rabbit hole this week, and it’s all because of a headline about a ballet. Not just any ballet. *The* ballet. The one that literally started a riot.
You’ve probably heard the legend: Paris, 1913. The premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s *The Rite of Spring*. The music kicks in—all those dissonant chords and pounding, irregular rhythms. Then the dancers for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes appear, moving in jagged, primal contortions, depicting a pagan ritual where a chosen virgin dances herself to death. The audience loses its collective mind. Whistles, boos, shouts—it descends into chaos. A masterpiece is born in a maelstrom.
Reading about its return to stages today, I can’t help but think… would anything in our modern world have the power to cause a *literal riot* at a ballet?
Let’s be real. We are desensitized. We scroll through horrors and wonders with the same blank expression. A challenging piece of art might get a think-piece, a hot take on Twitter, or a divisive Rotten Tomatoes score. But a riot? We save that for soccer games and political rallies, not the orchestra pit.
And that’s what makes *The Rite of Spring* so eternally punk rock. It wasn’t just "controversial." It was a physical, auditory, and spiritual assault on the very idea of what art—specifically the refined world of ballet—was supposed to be. It tore up the rulebook on melody, harmony, and graceful movement and set it on fire as a sacrifice.
**Here’s my take:** The genius of *The Rite* isn't just that it was ahead of its time. It’s that it *created* a new time. It was a seismic shock that permanently cracked open the possibilities for music and dance. You can draw a direct line from its brutal rhythms to the birth of modernism, and even to the aggressive energy of rock and roll and industrial music decades later.
The fact that it’s still being performed, still being wrestled with, is a testament to its raw, untamable power. The riot has quieted, but the shockwaves never truly stopped. We don't hear it with 1913 ears anymore; we’ve been living in the world it helped build.
But when the lights go down and those famous bassoon notes open the piece, try to listen for it. Try to hear the ghost of that chaos. Beneath the polished, celebrated masterpiece, the revolutionary scream is still there.
It makes you wonder, doesn't it? What’s *our* *Rite of Spring*? What art form is out there right now, waiting to be born, that is so violently new it could make an entire audience forget their manners and rediscover their pulse?
Just a thought. Now, go listen to it. It's still a wild ride.
