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 Pagan Russia in Two Parts"; the scenario depicts various primitive rituals celebrating the advent of spring, after which a young girl is chosen as a sacrificial victim and dances herself to death. After a mixed critical reception for its original run and a short London tour, the ballet was not performed again until the 1920s, when a version choreographed by Léonide Massine replaced Nijinsky's original. Massine's was the forerunner of many innovative productions directed by the world's leading ballet-masters, gaining the work worldwide acceptance. In the 1980s, Nijinsky's original choreography, long believed lost, was reconstructed by the Joffrey Ballet in