The Yale Dance Lab is thrilled to announce the beginning of a new partnership with the Yale Symphony Orchestra that will culminate in an original production of The Rite of Spring in 2023.

The Rite of Spring famously premiered in Paris in 1913 with music by Igor Stravinsky and choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky. Both the music and the choreography hit a nerve, as harbingers of modernism at the turn of the 20th century. The music lives on in orchestral repertories, and the concert dance world has seen countless restagings that formally rework the original story to speak to contemporary concerns.

The Yale Dance Lab-Yale Symphony Orchestra production will draw on maps and travel images from the Beinecke collection, tracing transnational networks of cultural exchange across time to meditate on planetary crises and care.

The production will be co-choreographed by Emily Coates and Lacina Coulibaly, with musical direction by YSO conductor William Boughton.

The project will unfold in two phases:

Spring 2022: the Yale Dance Lab will hold a six-week choreography workshop that will culminate in a small-scale public showing in March.

Fall 2022-Spring 2023: the Yale Symphony Orchestra and the Yale Dance Lab will develop the full production with support from the Yale Schwarzman Center.