Rites: 3D, CBSO, Volkov, Royal Festival Hall

Digital ingenuity with Stravinsky's Rite of Spring isn't same as theatre artistry

by Ismene BrownMonday, 25 April 2011

Mach 2: The virtual Julia Mach, generated in a 3D computer digital space to Stravinsky's 'Rite of Spring'Images Klaus Obermaier/Ars Electronica Futurelab

Were the great Diaghilev alive today, surely he’d be working in the imaginative possibilities of electronic technology - this was the opinion given me by the arts panjandrum, the late Sir John Drummond. And given the developments of 3D, who knows? Would it be this manipulation of our perceptions that fascinated him? 3D is certainly everywhere in dance now, though the challenge is to leap the judgment of it as merely a gimmick. I reckon while Wim Wenders’ film Pina 3D achieved that, the version of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring by Klaus Obermaier doesn’t.

In the 21st century we have rather lost the plot, so far out of touch with previous generations’ comic-book inventiveness are we

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