It's a question you might ask your mates down the pub: "What would make you want to riot?" A hundred years ago, the answer from Parisian ballet-goers was The Rite Of Spring (music by Stravinsky, choreography by Nijinsky).
Was it the shock of the new that caused such ructions among the bourgeoisie? Or was the outcry as premeditated as the ritualised death of the Chosen Maiden in the ballet?
Rob Drummond, himself a "chosen one" – he's part of the Arches/NTS Auteurs project – nods in the direction of that history in a new work subtitled Scenes From A Secular Britain. In part, he's adhering to the mantra "there's nothing new under the sun" as he, in wily association with cellist Peter Nicholson and dancer Robbie Synge, reflects on how Stravinsky borrowed from folk myth and music. Rights comprehensively debar them from using Stravinsky's score, so they borrow the episodic structure of the ballet, brilliantly matching it to similarly heirarchical rituals within our society. We still have our controlling Sages – Westminster Culture Secretary Maria Miller is satirised over the arts. And we still look for scapegoats and sacrifices – after the 2011 riots in London, teenage girls were among those given custodial sentences. Many of them had no real idea why they'd rioted. Drummond's outrage at these punitive coercions is a springboard for witty and wacky gambits, not least when audience members are lured into creating dance moves with free beer. Those moves are incorporated into the seemingly haphazard processes.
There's nothing new, you see. Including our collusion in watching what befalls the unwitting "chosen" on-stage or in the dock.
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