When Igor Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring premiered for Parisian audiences in 1913, it incited a riot. Literally. High society types were transformed into soccer hooligans: they were so shocked by the  violent, persistent yet unpredictable music coupled with the motoric and primitive choreography.
The 1913 equivalent of hipsters (the technical term was the avant-garde) were so ready to defend Stravinsky’s new and destructive sound from the older, conservative, bourgeois crowd, that fistfights ensued. During all this, the orchestra kept on playing.

While no fistfights over art have happened at Colby, the Theater and Dance Department along with the Music department are going to bring some of the experimental excitement of Stravinsky, during his fruitful collaboration with the Ballet Russes, to the Hill with their production of L’Historie du Soldat (The Soldier’s Tale).

Directed and choreographed by Associate Professor of Theater and Dance Todd Coulter, L’Historie du Soldat is one of the last collaborations Stravinsky engaged in at the Ballet Russes before moving onto his neoclassical period, the United States and other artistic pastures.

Associate Professors of Music Jonathan Hallstrom and Steven Nuss approached Coulter, who was interested in the Ballet Russes for their attempt to “create a new aesthetic that wasn’t romantic ballet, opera, theater; they were trying to create a new discipline” through integrating elements of theater (choreography, music, design etc). Coulter described L’Historie du Soldat as “the exemplar of that experimentation…but still somewhat enigmatic in critic’s eyes, in terms of genre.”

L’Historie du Soldat was created for two actors, one dancer, one narrator and a septet of instrumentalists. Stravinsky returned to Russian folklore for source material, and the story tells a quasi-Faustian tale about a soldier returning home and making a bargain with the Devil. It combines narrative with music and dance.

Colby’s production, in its own way, also aims to capture the experimental yet unified aesthetic of the Ballet Russes’ initial staging.

The department is employing two professional actors and one professional dancer for the parts of the soldier, the Devil and the princess. The two actors  Joseph Kolbow and Johnnie Niel are trained as clowns, studying clowning in Paris and performing internationally.

Coulter credits clowning for producing a heightened sense of physicality and an actor’s awareness of his or her own body. This allows for an openness to play and improvisation, making the rehearsal process dynamic and rich.

Collaboration and improvisation were key elements, as opposed to rigid structure, in Coulter’s conception of L’Historie du Soldat. Even the choreography was a collaborative process between

Coulter and the dancer, Sara Mulry. “There will be elements familiar to a ballet aesthetic but [the choreography] is kind of a hybrid,” Coulter said. “When we were creating the movement, we were just playing.”

While the elements of play and spontaneity are found in the dance and dramatic action, the music is much more disciplined. It is incredibly difficult to play (Coulter describes it as “mixed meter beyond imagination”), requiring a high degree of technical proficiency, which the College’s music associates have in ample measure.

Although modern art music can be scary to approach, Coulter stresses that L’Historie du Soldat, despite its composer’s canonic credentials and the Ballet Russes’ position in aesthetic history, is totally accessible. It is a fairy tale, the music (despite its rigor) is fun to listen to, and the dancing will be engaging.

L’Historie du Soldat will have only one show this Saturday March 12 at 7:30 p.m. in Strider Theater. Tickets are free and available on a first come first served basis, so be sure to come early.