# FUNAMBULISTS /// The Body and its Terrain in The Rite of Spring by Angelin Preljocaj

Having question the relationship the body creates with its physical environment in the two last articles, I find appropriate to bring a very expressive and beautiful illustration of this relationship found in the choreographical interpretation of The Rite of Spring by Angelin Preljocaj (2000). In the following excerpt of this contemporary ballet, the young woman, soon to be sacrificed is pushed and fall on a little piece of terrain on which she is contained by the Pagan crowd around her. Oppressed and violented by the terrain, she is nude which, of course, creates an eroticism for the scene but more importantly engages the body in all its fragility and all its expression with its direct environment. Each contact with the ground can be read as exercising a strong influence on the body.
After the young woman get accustomed to this terrain by experiencing its violence, she develops a dance of resistance half combative half voluptuous and affirms her territorial presence. A while after this ultimate revolt, she dies and seems to make one with this same terrain on which she slowly falls.

For an even more expressive body interpretation of The Rite of Spring see the 1975 Ballet of the great Pina Bausch.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZPbYO0tnww]