Vaslav Nijinsky, a dance prodigy and the star of Serge Diaghilev’s company Ballets Russes, shocked Europe when his groundbreaking work Le Sacre du Printemps ("The Rite of Spring") premiered in 1913. Choreographed to Igor Stravinsky's musical composition of the same name, Sacre caused a near-riot at its premiere in Paris at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and received only six performances. Sacre is an iconic work with enduring legacy even today. Stravinsky's music appears in pop culture phenomena like Disney's Fantasia, and prominent figures in the dance world continue to restage their own versions of Le Sacre to audiences worldwide, but Nijinsky's original steps have not survived. Nobody knows exactly what the original dance looked like. So why do choreographers keep constructing their own versions of Sacre? To answer this question, I researched four different modern versions of the dance: the Joffrey Ballet and Millicent Hodson's 1987 reconstruction of Nijinsky’s original choreography, Pina Bausch's Rite of Spring, Molissa Fenley's State of Darkness, and Jürg Koch's Rite of Spring, which premiered at the University of Washington last winter. I analyzed the sweeping themes apparent in each dance, regardless of the varied choreography, and compared them with what remains of Nijinsky's original ballet and artistic vision. Through interviews, historical archival research, and my own physical embodiment of aspects of each dance, I am making an effort to piece together Sacre's impact and continued allure, positing the history of Le Sacre as anything but a straight line.

Athol Fugard’s play Sizwe Bansi is Dead explores significant racial influences in culture. Fugard writes about the apartheid that controlled South Africa beginning in 1948. The play debuted in 1972 in Cape Town, South Africa. Two years later, it premiered in London, winning “The London Theatre Critics Award” for “Best Play of 1974”. This was quite a win for a piece of work that stemmed from improvisation. Although the narrative topic is that of a “black” issue, the majority of the audience that witnessed the work was white. Now, it is even more fathomable that most of the audience members were middle to upper class white majority. This might have changed the projective interpretive communities that the author and director originally had in mind. In this paper, I propose examining evidence, such as reviews and historical content regarding Sizwe Bansi is Dead to help fully understand which interpretive communities were involved. I will be taking a phenomenological approach: analyzing the audience's interpretation of the play, and answering the question “How are we creating social change?” I also intend on researching other works by the author, to prove that Sizwe Bansi is Dead was not his only attempt at bringing clarity to the terrible events that occurred under the apartheid. By discovering which groups were involved, it will help us gain a deeper understanding for the play, and allow us to gauge the audience’s take on the performance. Did audience members really exit the theatre with a deeper knowledge and sympathy for what happened under the apartheid? Did knowledge of the apartheid change how we see the world? How can we relate the apartheid to other elements of our history, such as the horrific tragedy known as the Holocaust? And finally, can art help our society sympathize and avoid future “apartheids”?

Athol Fugard is regarded as one of the most prominent playwrights of South Africa; in a time of racial tensions and political dismay he brought to the stage the turmoil facing the peoples of South Africa. His play, Sizwe Banzi is Dead, is a stark play addressing the real life issues of race and tensions between the Western and African ideology, and basic survival in an the apartheid world. What his play fails to address is any significant way is the plight of women struggling with similar issues. Within the play only four women are ever mentioned, Styles homemaker wife, only mentioned in passing reference, Banzi’s wife a lonely helpless homemaker, Buntu’s radical wife and a friendly woman peddling oranges to the drunken men. None of these women are given any depth of humanity in the play and are merely used as objects to reinforce or detract from the masculinity of the men involved. I assert that in a world were being a “man” is determined by having a wife and children as Styles father claims, there must be a societal predisposition to the value of women. However, if we follow the plays view of women they seem almost disposable or at least interchangeable. But the women of South Africa at the time were not all passive flowers in the apartheid world. During this time period the Federation of South African Women was created and was politically active in attempting to stop the many changes in apartheid. In my essay I examine the stereotypes of women mentioned in the play, compare those to the realities of women in South Africa at the time and consider the negative repercussions of a play in which women are on the sideline. In the grand scheme of history what is the cost when we forget to include the women?