Birds, flowers, bondage: Just part of famed ballet

Ninety-five years ago, composer Igor Stravinsky and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky premiered "The Rite of Spring" in Paris. The ballet's modernist aesthetics and primal depiction of virgin sacrifice was a scandal. Riots ensued. The infamous event signaled a new era in art history.

No screaming or protests greeted Myron Johnson's "Rite of Spring," which premiered Thursday. But this 90-minute version, co-created with the unlikely collaborators Zorongo Flamenco and Live Action Set, is astounding, profoundly disturbing, even brilliant at times in its singularly brutal way.

Just try erasing these images from your mind: Zhauna Franks ripping her lean muscular body through off-kilter leaps, dizzying turns, grasping stretches and primal sculptural poses in a pre-verbal expression of raw physicality. Digging her knife through a pile of animal fur. Fending off attacks from a tribe of Gothic burlesques in black bondage costumes. Then being strung up as the tribe twitches in perfect unison below her -- all to strobe lights and a heavy-metal score by Fantômas.

This horrifying, mesmerizing middle section of "Rite of Spring" is a visceral tour de force for Franks, and a black-hearted and arresting piece of choreography for Johnson.

The opening section of "Rite of Spring," by Susana di Palma and Zorongo Flamenco, sets the production's tone with its Gothic, funereal setting. As La Conja, accompanied by Pedro Cortes Jr., sings of flowers in the spring and dogs digging up gardens, three hollow-eyed women emerge from a coffin.

They drill their passions into the earth with rhythmic footwork in a sensual dance of death that is interrupted by flag-waving and Sachiko returning on crutches as military music blares.

After the Gothic horrors of sections one and two, Live Action Set's finale -- with its childlike simplicity, quirky but revelatory movements and post-modern juxtapositions -- is a palette cleanser. As birds twitter, Galen Treuer and Sarah Jacobs mock-execute each other during silly games.

The wreckage of the past meets the present and looks toward the future.

Camille LeFevre is a Twin Cities dance critic.