ABSTRACT:

Righteous Spring is a performance whose title is derived from the ballet The Rite of Spring. The Right of Spring (Le Sacred u printemps) debuted in Paris in 1913. The performance drew boos and protests from the audience at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, eventually erupting into a full-blown riot; later subdued only by police intervention. The Parisian artistic establishment was not ready for the pairing of Russian composer Igor Stravinsky’s violent composition with choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky’s radical departure from classical ballet. This upset of Parisian high society with new and experimental artistic forms established what would come to be known as the Avant Garde.

The Rite of Spring debuted in America in 1924 only in a concert form. The idea of the Avant Garde was (and is still) unpopular in American arts and culture. The American establishment would not be changed by new forms and styles but through cultural, political and activist movements. In New York the Harlem Renaissance evolved along a similar timeline (1910’s – 1930’s) as the rise of the Avant Garde and Modernism in Paris. A collaboration of cultural workers emerged in New York’s newly established African American middle class neighborhood. Beyond the nightlife of Jazz clubs (introduced to Paris by the likes of Josephine Baker) and Blues music migrated from the Jim Crow South, Harlem’s collaborators included composers, writers, publishers and activists.

Collaboration and its contexts prove a powerful device for change. The original happening of Righteous Spring occurred under the auspices of an Appalachian arts and crafts festival based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The collaborators looked to the mid-century Black Mountain College (North Carolina) collaborations of John Cage, Merce Cunningham and Robert Rauschenberg for an accessible model of interdisciplinary collaboration (with Righteous Spring being a similar collaboration between a musician, choreographer, and visual artist). In each future happening the artists question the role of collaboration both as artists and as collaborators within the contexts of historic sites of collaboration and their impact on and result from surrounding cultural milieus. What would John Cage compose for Vladimir Nijinsky? What would Billie Holiday sing at Andy Warhol’s Factory?