Thirteen ballet dancers danced in silence that felt almost violent.Darkness covered everything, until the moon appeared, revealing thesubtle beauty of white roses.

Suddenly a scream echoed fromfar away: the scream of a virgin being sacrificed. Music began to play.A group of contemporary teenagers went through their daily lives. Afigure dark as death appeared in one minute and disappeared the next.

When‘The Rite of Spring’ was first performed in 1913, the music was anexperiment in tonality, metre, stress and dissonance, according toJean-Claude Gallotta, who presented this version of Stravinsky's balletin Ho Chi Minh City .

Gallotta, one of France'sbest-known choreographers, explained that he used "the musical spirit toincorporate these aspects of the music into the choreography" bylistening to the music and then mixing it with separately choreographedsteps in silence.

"Either it combines well, or sometimesit can combine too well with the choreography and music working tooclose together," he said. "Music is like running water and I try toadapt it, so I do not care about the musical elements as expressed bytone, dissonance and accent,"

The ballet was performed at Ben Thanh Theatre, where more than a thousand seats filled with expats and Vietnamese.

"Thefirst performance in Paris, exactly 100 years ago, was a key momentin cultural history," said Fabrice Mauries, France's General Consulin HCM City, delivering a speech at the ballet's opening on June27.

Gallotta's aesthetic choices brought June 27’sperformance into the modern day. Inspired by the rock 'n roll costumesof the 1950s, the dancers wore jeans or black pants with jackets andshirts. Then as the dancers stripped, they took off their shirts andtheir pants until they were in their underwear. When they got dressedagain, they ended up looking slightly different.

Inbringing ‘Rite of Spring’ to Vietnam, Gallotta's goal was not toprovoke but to create something artistically interesting.

"InMuslim countries, we cannot strip down to our underwear, for example,so the dancers stay dressed. It does not change the nature of what isperformed. There may also be some sort of cultural shock — this happenedto us in Kazakhstan. The show may be well received. It may also berejected. But that is art," Gallotta said.

The performance ends with a white tsunami that sweeps everything into oblivion.

"Whatan interesting performance! Full of internal force! Strange! A newidea! The bright halo created by dancer bodies sweating under the lightswas so beautiful," said actress Kim Khanh. "It was an hour long, but itseemed so short!"

The ballet will entertain Hanoi audiences in June 29’s night at the Youth Theatre.-VNA