The Rite of Spring / Body Remix at Göteborg Opera

The rebel Marie Chouinard, prized and internationally in-demand Canadian choreographer, explores the poetry of the body in spontaneously clear and constantly surprising ways. Each new work is a non-linear odyssey through human history in which the dancer becomes a creature formed in front of our eyes.

“At the foundation of each new work there is something I call the ‘mystery’, an unknown wavelength that calls to me as though I were possessed. My work is all about capturing this wavelength, ‘balancing it’ and arranging it in time and space with a structure that fits in with it.”

Chouinard’s works can be seen as provocative, but they are more of a way towards sympathy, with humour and Eros always present. The first production of the evening is bODY_rEMIX/gOLDBERG_vARIATIONS act 1, which was created for the Venice Biennale. Here it is about changes of role – between costume and body, limbs and artificial members, transfer and paralysis. It is feminine and masterly, sophisticated, fragile, anarchic and painfully physical. The music has been composed by Louis Dufort: variations of Bach’s Goldberg variations.

In spring 2013 it will be a hundred years since Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring had its world premiere in Paris and created a scandal. Both the music and the scandal became part of history: the work is one of the great concert classics, and many choreographers have produced their own version. In her work The Rite of Spring, Chouinard has concentrated on the image of Vaslav Nijinsky at the very first performance in 1913, capturing the stylised animal look of the iconically angled palms of his hand.

Movements from 1913, are remixed for our time in a way that allows them to be reborn in a new, harmonious setting. The Göteborg Opera Orchestra approaches this work with all its energy and strength.