‘The Rite of Spring’
‘When Stravinsky Met Nijinsky,’ by Lauren Stringer
From "When Stravinsky Met Nijinsky"
By PAMELA PAUL
Published: March 20, 2013
It’s not surprising that Disney set a battle between a stegosaurus and a
Tyrannosaurus rex to a soundtrack of Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” in
the 1940 film “Fantasia.” For most children, that’s what the music is
about. But few are probably aware that when the ballet made its debut at
the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in 1913, a near riot broke out in the
audience.
WHEN STRAVINSKY MET NIJINSKY
Two Artists, Their Ballet, and One Extraordinary Riot
Written and illustrated by Lauren Stringer
32 pp. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $16.99. (Picture book; ages 4 to 8)
What child wouldn’t want to read about that? “When Stravinsky Met
Nijinsky,” written and illustrated by Lauren Stringer (“Winter Is the
Warmest Season,” “Fold Me a Poem”) reveals the origins of that
disconcerting music and the reasons it caused such a fuss. It’s a story
worth telling. With music education programs evaporating from classrooms
across the country, picture books have had to assume the baton. A great
number have been written about composers and musicians, and even about
individual pieces of music. But not many look closely at the art of
musical collaboration, and Stringer does that here with imaginative
spark and dynamism.
In Stringer’s telling, the story is about the meeting of two very
different minds. Two solitary artists, Igor Stravinsky and Vaslav
Nijinksy, happen separately upon plans to do something unexpected and
unique. When they meet, the composer and choreographer are able to make
the leap together, building on their shared Russian heritage. “When
Nijinsky composed dances all by himself, his torso floated — a swan. His
legs leaped — a deer! And his feet, like a sparrow, tippy-tip-toed,
while his arms curved and swerved like a snake. But he dreamed of making
something different and new.”
That’s just what he and Stravinsky did. Taking “Russian folk dances and
Russian folk songs, they squared them and flattened them, twisted and
cubed them,” Stringer writes as her accompanying acrylics take a Cubist
turn, reflecting what Braque and Picasso were showing around the same
time. On opening night, the orchestral ballet, with its loud dissonance
and stomping dancers, brought cries of outrage from the audience:
“They’re not dancing the way dancers should dance!” “They’re not making
music the way orchestras should!”
Stringer takes some liberties with the facts. But the effect is to
streamline a more complex tale into a coherent story that will make
sense to readers (who, even if they respond to arguments, probably
wouldn’t be as fascinated by the actual behind-the-scenes between
Stravinsky and Sergei Diaghilev). For young children, the meeting of two
artistic sensibilities is aptly captured by an image on the final
spread of Stravinsky and Nijinksy hooting over the “ruckus” they made,
with a cat and dog cavorting gleefully onstage behind them.
Stringer is primarily an illustrator, and a very good one. Animated
spreads of composer and choreographer, dancer and musician, form an
enchanting illustration of music composition. Pages of notation spring
to life with swirls of color and movement. Russian dancers gesture and
leap and clap their hands, feet poised on drums. Avant-garde-friendly
audience members throw back their heads exultantly upon hearing the
debut. “They threw hats and hairpins, gloves and boots; they pounded
their fists and stamped their feet.”
It’s enough to make readers want to put down the book and turn on the music. Who doesn’t like the sound of that?