Trivia / The Rite of Spring

• Creator Breakdown: Igor Stravinsky was so discouraged over the ballet's hostile initial reception that he checked himself into a sanitarium to be treated for depression. Fortunately, the piece was vindicated after a more successful revival performance the next year.
• Disowned Adaptation: Stravinsky was originally excited by the prospect of having his music used in Fantasia, but he came to dislike it thanks to the edits made to the score without his permission.
• Missing Episode: Nijinsky's original choreography, despite being groundbreaking for its time, was never properly recorded, so most later productions rechoreographed it using their own material. The closest anyone's ever gotten to an authentic revival of Nijinsky's choreography was the Joffrey Ballet's painstaking restoration in 1987.
• Troubled Production: Even before the disastrous premiere, the production was rather a mess: The dancers and musicians struggled to perform the bizarre rhythms and movements, Nijinsky and Stravinsky butted heads, the dance rehearsals fell way behind schedule, and the original Chosen One (Nijinsky's sister, Bronislava) got pregnant and had to be replaced by relative unknown Maria Piltz.

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