72.0

2013 / Steel, crystallized salt

Roerich’s original set design for Nijinsky’s Rite of Spring featured a lush hilly landscape with a prominent tree, which was mysteriously painted over in the final days before the premier. We took this as a departure point, building an underworld alluding to the original but monochromatic dead. A grove of upside down trees were built, suggesting that the performance begins at the end of the last scene of the original, in which the protagonist is lost in ritual sacrifice. A process was developed to encourage rapid growth of a salt crystal structure to create the trees, interacting with light in a variety of ways.

With Emily Molnar, Jeremy Schmidt, James Proudfoot, Ballet BC.
Photography by Gwenael Lewis