The Dalcroze Method, Marie Rambert, and Le Sacre du printemps

The standard narrative about the original production of Le Sacre du printemps is that the Ballets Russes dancers hated Nijinsky's choreography; that rehearsals were prolonged; that the work outraged audiences, who rioted; and that the ballet failed and disappeared, but Stravinsky's music endured as modernism's masterpiece. This article offers a revised history, drawing on archival and practice-based research on the method developed by Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, who incorporated movement into music teaching. Starting with what Nijinsky and Diaghilev observed at the Dalcroze institute at Hellerau, I turn to how the dancer Marie Rambert brought embodied knowledge from her Dalcroze background into the rehearsal process to help Nijinsky prepare the dancers to perform the complex work. I then take up the coverage of Dalcroze and Nijinsky that overlapped in newspapers and journals of the time. Finally, I reflect on why their reputations, first joined a century ago, remain intertwined.