Registration/Information Desk – Open Hours

Pre-conference workshop: How Historians Use the Press

The Fourth Annual Selma Odom Event

This year’s Selma Odom Event will take the form of a working group whose focus will be to investigate questions and problems that arise in crafting histories from newspapers, periodicals, and other press documents. Scholarly writing on the reception of works provides telling examples of powerful theoretical and disciplinary alliances. How do our constructions of the past relate to our selection and interpretation of press documents?

Participants in this session are invited to submit an item—one document or small collection of clippings—in advance. These documents will be shared with the group during the session. Each contributor will briefly present his or her submission (max. 5 minutes), after which all participants will be invited to explore how the documents have been interpreted in the past and contemplate alternate interpretations. This session will also serve as a forum for a broader discussion of the problems that arise when using the press for dance research.

Session Moderators:
Sarah Gutsche-Miller and Hanna Järvinen

This session is currently open to all those attending the Sacre Celebration conference, but participation in the Selma Odom event also is open to people who are not conference registrants. Submissions are due by March 1, 2013 as an electronic attachment to sarah.j.gutschemiller@gmail.com.

Conference Opening and Welcome

Keynote Address, Lynn Garafola
“The Rite of Spring at 100”

Since the premiere of The Rite of Spring in 1913, scores of choreographic works to the celebrated Stravinsky music have seen the light of day. Like Vaslav Nijinsky’s original, the vast majority have disappeared. Yet the work continues to occupy cultural space. In the introduction to her book The Archive and the Repertoire, performance scholar Diana Taylor muses: “Is performance that which disappears, or that which persists, transmitted through a nonarchival system of transfer that I…call the repertoire?” In other words is the cultural relevance of The Rite of Spring linked to what Taylor calls “the paradoxical omnipresence of the disappeared”? Or does the cycle of loss and renewal built into the very identity of the ballet—to say nothing of its original scenario—inspire its continuous reinvention? In this presentation I argue that The Rite of Spring, precisely because it is a lost ballet, comprises a body of ideas rather than a detailed choreographic script, and that this conceptual freedom allows both for the ballet’s reinvention and for the persistence of ideas associated with the original. With no standard choreographic text the work ventures into realms the score alone cannot take it; it undergoes a process of reinvention that updates and transforms the work, even when the music remains untouched. A reason—perhaps, the reason—The Rite of Spring remains so popular a musical text is because it keeps remaking itself as a dance.

Opening Reception

Registration/Information Desk – Open Hours

Panels, Papers, Round Tables, etc.

Dalcroze Workshop with Gregory Ristow
“A Eurhythmics Pathway to The Rite of Spring”

This session will use movement exercises drawn from Dalcroze Eurhythmics to access some of the rhythmic complexities of Stravinsky’s score, such as subdivision, changing meter, and unequal beats. These exercises will serve as a departure point to consider the possible approaches Marie Rambert, Dalcroze’s pupil who worked with the Ballets Ruses, might have taken when assisting Nijinsky and the company during the composition and rehearsals of the original choreography, as she helped them understand this rhythmically revolutionary score. While we cannot know the exact process, exercises from the Dalcroze tradition that have been handed down orally and in writings from Dalcroze, give us an idea of the methods Rambert may have used with Nijinsky and the company.

Performance, Rite Redux (tickets included for all conference registrants).
To include music selections from the early 20th century (York U Department of Music) and a reworking of Sacre choreographed and performed by faculty members and students of the York U Departments of Dance and Music.

Registration/Information Desk – Open Hours

Panels, Papers, Round Tables, etc.

Workshop and Session with Kevin “DJ Renegade” Gopie.
“Break Dance and The Rite of Spring: A 21st-Century Reinvention of the Work”

Gopie will be a presenter in two sessions during the conference. In the first, he will discuss the Ballet Boyz version of The Rite of Spring, including the motivation behind its creation, and show excerpts of the work to illustrate the movement choices made. His second session will be a movement workshop, in which some of the movements employed in the Ballet Boyz version will be taught. Local youth who have been sponsored to attend the conference will participate in the movement session; other conference registrants will have the option to participate or to observe.

 

Conference ends, but the final performance of Rite Redux will take place at 7:30 p.m.. Conference attendees are welcome to purchase tickets and to attend the post-performance reception, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the York Dance Ensemble.