The Rite of Spring (MacMillan) and 2008) Mara Galeazzi (2005), Zenaida Yanowsky (2005), Steven McRae (2011) and Edward Watson (2011). MacMillan had been invited to create a new production of "The Rite of Spring" for the Royal Ballet in 1959, but had declined. The company had little history of presenting Stravinsky ballets, with the exceptions of Ashton's "Le baiser de la fée" (1935) and "Scènes de ballet" (1948), and MacMillan's "Dances concertantes" (1955), "Agon" (1958) and "Le baiser de la fée" (1961). MacMillan took "The Rite" up in 1962, creating a work conspicuously removed from the Royal Ballet's classical tradition. His conception of the piece,
The Rite of Spring opening Paris run and the London performances, events conspired to prevent further stagings of the ballet. Nijinsky's choreography, which Kelly describes as "so striking, so outrageous, so frail as to its preservation", did not appear again until attempts were made to reconstruct it in the 1980s. On 19 September 1913 Nijinsky married Romola de Pulszky while the Ballets Russes was on tour without Diaghilev in South America. When Diaghilev found out he was distraught and furious that his lover had married, and dismissed Nijinsky. Diaghilev was then obliged to re-hire Fokine, who had resigned in 1912 because Nijinsky had been