The Rite of Spring these works Diaghilev recruited the choreographer Michel Fokine, the designer Léon Bakst and the dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. Diaghilev's intention, however, was to produce new works in a distinctively 20th-century style, and he was looking for fresh compositional talent. Having heard "Feu d'artifice" he approached Stravinsky, initially with a request for help in orchestrating music by Chopin to create the ballet "Les Sylphides". Stravinsky worked on the opening "Nocturne" and the closing "Valse Brillante"; his reward was a much bigger commission, to write the music for a new ballet, "The Firebird" ("L'oiseau de feu") for the 1910 season. Stravinsky worked through
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