Technology in
Tero Saarisen’s Hunt
Vesa Matteo Piludu
Helsinki, 2009
University of Helsinki
Department of Art Research, Semiotics
Teero Saarinen’s Hunt
 Solo dance
 Choreography: Tero Saarinen
 Dancer: Tero Saarinen
 Based on Rite of Spring
 Music by Igor Stravinski
 Multimedia: Marita Liulia
 Light design: Mikki Kuntu
 Costume design:
 Premiére: Venice Biennale, 2002
 First Saarisen’s solo, still performed
today
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (1882 –1971)
Игорь Фёдорович Стравинский
 Music scores commissioned by impresario Sergei Diaghilev and
performed in the ballets of the dance company Ballets Russes
(Russian Ballets) of Paris
 Le Sacre du Printemps or The Rite of Spring (1913)
 The ballet was considered innovative and avant-garde, even if they
were based on artists’ visionary ideas about Russian ancient
paganism
 It was typical of the period doing avant-garde based on folklore or
distant cultures (the so-called primitivism)
Juri Lotman’s theory and Stravinsky’s ballets
 Difference between the symbol (signifier) and the meaning of the
symbol (significans)
 Certain symbols have an enormous capacity of resistance
(conservativism or memory of symbols: folklore legends)
 The same symbol can have different meanings in different cultural
contests (cultural relativism, horizontal)
 If the cultural contest changes, the interpretation and the meaning
of the symbol could change (symbolic dynamic, vertical): same
signifier, different significants
 In the case of Stravinsky he used symbols and myths from Russian
folklore to produce avant-garde music and ballets: the symbols
could be traditional, but their meaning is completely different
from the one they had in the rural Russian oral culture
Stravinsky’s ballets as modern tradition
 All the Stravinsky’s ballets are now performed by numerous modern
dance companies. What was avant-garde became a kind of modern
tradition.
 Rarely these ballets are performed in the same way as the original
ones
 Often the interpretations contains radical changes and we can talk
about new ballets based on the original ballets
 We can say that the Stravinsky’s ballets are like jazz standards:
there is a basic theme, but large improvisations are allowed
 In contemporary dance, the public isn’t waiting for fidelity, is
searching for something new, surprising or even shocking
The Rite of Spring, 1913
 imaginary ancient Russia
 It has the subtitle "Pictures from Pagan Russia" (French: Tableaux
de la Russie païenne)
 Colourful idea of violent and cruel pagan Russia: a girl dance
herself to death for her community, in order to fulfil a sacrifice to the
god of Spring in order to gain his benevolence
 No reference to recent or living folklore: the Russian peasants’ spring
rites didn’t include any sacrifice in the XIX century
 Reference to a tragic romantic vision of a distant past (XIX century’s
and early XX century’s myths)
 Intensely rhythmic score, sometimes based on some extract of folk
music
Rite’s vision
 ”In St. Petersburg … I had a fleeting vision which came to me as
complete surprise, my mind at the moment being full of other thing. I
saw in imagination a solemn pagan rite: sage elders, seated in a
circle, watched a young girl dance herself to death. They where
sacrificing her to propitiate the god of spring … I must confess that
that vision made a deep impression on me, and as I at once
described it to my friend, Nicholas Roerich, he being a painter who
had specialized in pagan subjects. He welcomed my inspiration with
enthusiasm, and became my collaborator in this creation.”
 (Stravinsky, An Autobiography, 1990 (1936), Marion Boyard, London, page 31)
Nicholas Roerich's 1913
set design for Part I: Adoration of the Earth.
Performers at the prémiere of Rite of Spring
 29th May of 1913 at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées of Paris
 Set design and costumes by archaeologist and painter Nicholas
Roerich
 Original choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky
 Prémiere’s music conducted by Pierre Monteux
Score of Rite
 Stravinsky used asymmetrical rhythms, dissonance, polyrhythms,
polytonality, layering of ostinati (persistently repeated ideas)
 Opening of the final section, the "Sacrificial Dance“:
The scandal of the prémiere






The strong rhythm
The “primitive” and rude setting
The violence of the theme
The link dance/sexuality/fertility/death
The “unhappy end”
Nijinsky's radical departure from classical ballet’s clichés
(body components curled inward not opened outward, body pulled
down not lifted up, steps heavy not light, focus on grotesqueness
not elegance)
 shocked completely the audience accustomed to the conventions of
classical ballet
 The booing started at the very start of the performance
 Loud arguments between “denigrators” and “supporters”
degenerated in shouts and riots
 The police was able to restore the order, but not completely
The scandal
 I left the auditorium at the first bars of the prelude, which had at once
evoked derisive laughter. I was disgusted. These demonstrations, at
first isolated, soon became general, provoking counterdemonstrations and very quickly developing into a terrific uproar.
 (Stravinsky, An Autobiography, 1990 (1936), Marion Boyard, London, page 47)
Different reactions
 Stravinsky fled from the Theatre, crying
 Diaghilev affirmed that the scandal was "just what I wanted!"
Stravinsky vs. Nijinsky
 ”I should archive nothing until I taught him the very rudiments of
music: values – semibreve, minim, crochet, quaver, etc. – bars,
rhythm, tempo and so on. He had the greatest difficulty in
remembering all of this.”
 Nijinsky complicated and encumbered his dances beyond all
reason, thus creating difficulties for the dancers that were
sometimes impossible to overcome.
 It was evident that the poor boy had been saddled with a task
beyond his capacity.
 (Stravinsky, An Autobiography, 1990 (1936), Marion Boyard, London, page 41)
Stravinski on the choreography
 What the choreography expressed was a very labored and barren
effort rather than a plastic realization flowing simply and naturally
from what the music demanded. How far it all was from what I had
desired!
 In composing the Sacre I had imagined the spectacular part of the
performance as a series of rhythmic mass movements of the
greatest simplicity which would have an instantaneous effect on the
audience, with no superfluous details or complications … the only
solo was to be the sacrificial dances at the end of the piece.
 But there again, although he had grasped the dramatic significance
of the dance, Nijinsky was incapable of giving intelligible form to its
essence, and complicated it either by clumsiness or lack of
understanding.
 (Stravinsky, An Autobiography, 1990 (1936), Marion Boyard, London, page 48)
Steps and tempo
 For is undeniable clumsy to slow down the tempo of the music in
order to compose complicated steps which cannot be danced in the
tempo prescribed. Many choreographer have that fault …
 (Stravinsky, An Autobiography, 1990 (1936), Marion Boyard, London, page 36)
Rite and butoh
 the controversial, violent, pagan and primitivist thematic material of
the Rite of Spring, greatly influenced Hijikata and Tamano butoh
 Interesting is the fact that butoh is a kind of modern dance in which
isn’t necessary to follow the tempo of the music
Tero Saarinen’s Hunt
 The Hunt is a solo performance of Tero Saarinen based on the Rite
of Spring
 Saarinen is both choreographer and dancer, interpreting the girl that
will be dance herself to death
 The style is an interesting mixture of western contemporary dance
and Japanese butoh
 At the moment of the sacrifice, the multimedia artist Marita Liula
project and move photos of Saarinen itself on the body of Saarinen
 There are two dances at the same time: the one of Saarinen and the
movements of the digital photos
 At the moment of sacrifice, the digital images shown only separated
parts of Saarinen face … and finally Saarinen jump high and the
lights are turned off
Video
 http://www.terosaarinen.com/en/works/all_creations/
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8eunLu6JgI
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3hcSoIcY4o
The critic of techology in Hunt
 Saarinen wasn’t interested in the colorful folkloric exotism loved by
the Ballet Russe
 He seen the multimedia sacrifice as a metaphor of what happens
every day: people are sacrificing their soul and their bodies to
serve a technocratic society
 His protest against technocracy doesn’t include a complete refuse
of technology, which could be used in a creative and even liberating
artistic way, as in his dance
 So the problem is how technology is used, and if technology
became the only goal, not a way to achieve something else
Marita Liulia’s multimedia
Technology in Hunt
 Are we sacrificing ourselves and all
our ancestral knowledge, for the
flood of new attractive information
and invention?
 Tero Saarinen
 Social sacrifice: uncritical
acceptance of all is “innovation”
 Physical sacrifice: obesity,
asexuality, no contact with own
body
 Cultural sacrifice: loss of contact
with (the Finnish) nature and
natural mysticism
Reaction of the public and critics
 The public and critics were extremely positive towards the
innovations of Saarinen
 The social critics, as they were expressed in a creative and
surprising way, were also well accepted
 We are in a time in which the followers of ballets are searching for
something more than mere executions of classics and the even
the radical reinterpretations are more accepted than the most
pure philological performances
 Today, the public is less exited by colorful dresses and exoticism and
the primitivism’s artistic attitudes sounds somewhat ridiculous,
showing clichés of Russian folklore that are too distant from
nowadays realities and imaginary
 The new interpretations, to be loved and better understood, must
include references to the contemporary cultural and social contest
Conclusions
 The paradox of the contemporary Stravinsky’s ballets is that today to
be loyal to the Stravinsky’s tradition doesn’t mean to repeat exactly
all the movements of the original ballets or use the same
instruments, but produce innovations in the interpretation and be
loyal to the avant-garde spirit