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Title: Wild in the Seats
Author: James Wolcott
Narrator: Jeff Woodman
Format: Unabridged
Length: 46 mins
Language: English
Release date: 06-13-14
Publisher: Audible Studios
Genres: Arts & Entertainment, Visual Arts
Publisher's Summary:
On an extravagant evening in May 100 years ago, the scandalous premiere of The Rite of Spring rocked the epicenter of culture and fashion - Paris - and sent aftershocks across the world. Not bad for a ballet! But this was no traditional scamper in tulle and pink toe-shoes, but a bold provocation by a trinity of avant-garde genius: composer Igor Stravinsky, choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky (the first male god of dance), and impresario Serge Diaghilev, founder of the Ballet Russes. Anticipation was high, the audience came ready to rumble, and when the curtain went up, civil war broke out in the seats - an orgy of catcalls, hisses, hecklings, and slaps. Audiences have gotten unruly before and since in the theater, but this was a moment of reckoning that split the young century in two, announcing the birth of modernism and the death of la belle epoque. What happened that riotous night and why does it ring in our ears and bones a century later?
James Wolcott, a columnist for Vanity Fair and author of the Kindle Single The Gore Supremacy, takes it apart and puts it back together in Wild in the Seats.
Members Reviews:
"The Rite of Spring" stands as the supreme example of something invading lay new."
A hundred years ago, "spring went for the solar plexus, leaving much if the opening night audience not so much astonished as aghast." Diaghilev had been the darling of French audiences with his Ballet Russe. Opening night with Nijinsky was not presented to Woodstock equivalent of a rebellious audience in 1913. This performance was presented to the highest arbiters of art in the latest of formal, status disclosing fashion.
What they saw was a tribal group rejecting every virtuosity. Dancers landed clumping straight kneed. The beat was so complex as to require a dance mistress to interpret it to the dances.
And chaos erupted. People got into fist fights. The audience was aghast. Cat calls filled the evening as the orchestra and group completed the ballet unperturbed. This brilliant essay explores the symbolism of the end of an era and compares this rupture with the other breaks in philosophy and in science. In a world of Every conceivable taboo appearing at will on ,ultiple outlets, this story is a striking trip to the land of the shockable.
Wolcott without the perfume ads
As someone who's sought out James Wolcott's writing since his Village Voice days, I like his latest career development: long-form essays in e-book format, where they can be enjoyed without having to hack one's way through the jungles of perfume ads and celebrity hum-jobs choking Vanity Fair. Wolcott's longtime passion for dance dovetails perfectly with his acute cultural criticism in this essay, and if (like me) you've been aware of the topic without really knowing much about it, this essay is the perfect launch area for further exploration.
Didn't finish this one
Eh, boredom. Not a very interesting writer, not a very interesting story, not something I thought about and picked up again later. Feh.
Starts with a bang... does NOT end with a whimper
James Wolcott's Wild in the Seats is a pacy, stylish, juicily informative salute to the 100th anniversary of one of the 20th century's defining cultural moments -- the premiere of Russian composer Igor Stravinsky's ballet, The Rite of Spring, in 1913.