The Rite of Spring

With the love and lust typical of spring, burlesque star and performance artist Julie Atlas Muz restaged Stravinsky’s Modernist Masterpiece, The Rite of Spring, as a fierce dance epic inspired by the life and death of Jon Benet Ramsey. The music was played live by Chicago’s Butcher Shop Quartet, the only metal band to accurately transpose Stravinsky’s orchestral masterpiece to two guitars, a bass, and drums while retaining compositional integrity. 

The monstrous cast of 14 ripped apart the sweeping majesty, complicated rhythms, and brute force of the live music in a visceral and visual dance ritual to the death.

This dance extravaganza was included in the 2004 Whitney Biennial  and enjoyed an extended and sold out 5 show run at NYC’s Dance Theater Workshop.

"the choreography (more honestly than any other "Rite of Spring" that I have ever seen) portrayed the truly uncivilized, nasty, bloody-loving  side of sacrificial rites." -Faith Pilger- Dance Insider