Rite of
Spring

The Rite of Spring — ballet and orchestral concert work created by Igor Stravinsky — was written for the 1913 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Complete mayhem erupted at the premiere: the realism of the finale and the sheer musical intensity drove the audience into a frenzy, and they destroyed the interiors of the theatre among screams and curses.

Foniadakis is well known for his gravity-defying choreography that tests the human limits to a point where it sometimes leads performers into an endorphinical ecstasy. What could be more challenging than to dress — or undress — the cast, taking them to a raw, tribal space, all within the premises of the Geneva Opera.

Multicoloured elastic velvet ribbons in rich jewelled colours, set against black details and nude colour mesh — composed, delicate, harness-style straps cross the torso, the hips, the chest and the upper arms. Almost like constructing an exoskeleton over bare skin. Crimson knee pads, crimson cord wound at the neck, a flash of teal or green at the throat: small eruptions of colour in an otherwise raw, stripped chromatic palette.

The costumes here do not dress the body. They mark it — like something prepared for ritual, or already mid-rite. Every binding deliberate. Every knot a decision.