The Rite of Spring

A work inspired by Igor Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring. The artist uses the music and choreography of the final ritual sacrificial dance. This is part of a pra-Slavic ritual in which the chosen girl must dance until she drops dead, thus ensuring the coming of spring. In the installation, old men have taken on the part of the dancers, their only costume the clip-on replicas of the genitals of the opposite sex. In creating her choreography, the artist posed prostrate naked bodies and photographed them in different stages of motion. As a result, the edited sequences do not appear to run on smoothly, with the effect exacerbating the spasmatic quality of the dance and the exhaustion of the dancers. Kozyra’s installation recreates the division of the space into two spheres: life and death. On the internal screens, the dance of the victim is shown; the external circle shows those who will survive thanks to the ritual. Employing older people and their infirm bodies for the sacrificial dance enhances the expressiveness of the work and intensifies the painful impact of death evoked through the ritual.