Two Dance Revolutions at La Scala

The same music can create two entirely different worlds. At La Scala, Stravinsky becomes first the crystalline elegance of George Balanchine, then the almost primal force of Pina Bausch: an evening bringing together two landmarks of twentieth-century dance. Opening the programme is Apollo, the 1928 ballet that established the 24-year-old Balanchine internationally. The future founder of New York City Ballet created a pure, intensely musical style of dance stripped of unnecessary decoration. Roberto Bolle takes the role of the young god at La Scala on 7, 11, 12, 18 and 19 November. Then everything changes. For the first time, La Scala presents The Rite of Spring, created by Pina Bausch in 1975 for Tanztheater Wuppertal. A work that helped redefine contemporary dance, it transforms Stravinsky’s pagan ritual into a visceral, collective experience of bodies, fear, desire and sacrifice. Two masterpieces created almost fifty years apart, one composer and two radically different visions of what a body in motion can express.