Claudia Schreier on Her New Rite of Spring: “It’s a Guttural Scream of a Ballet”

February 3, 2025

Since its controversial premiere in 1913, Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring has inspired countless ballets over the decades. For Atlanta Ballet resident choreographer Claudia Schreier, The Rite of Spring remains as poignant and relevant as ever, and the layers of dance and music history it has gained in the meantime only magnify that significance.

“It’s impossible to enumerate The Rite of Spring—the music itself, the number of times it’s been performed, or the number of versions that have been choreographed,” says Schreier. “It’s the nowness, the inescapable relevancy of this work. It is timeless in the best and the worst possible ways.”

This February 7–14, Schreier will present her world premiere The Rite of Spring at Atlanta’s Cobb Energy Centre, part of a double bill with Helgi Tomasson’s 7 for Eight. Accompanied live by the Atlanta Ballet Orchestra, Schreier’s work features designs by some of her frequent collaborators, with sets by Jason Ardizzone-West, costumes by Abigail Dupree-Polston, and lighting by Ben Rawson. The ballet is performed in flat shoes, Schreier says, with eight women and eight men dancing the canonical story of human celebration, destruction, and sacrifice.

Pointe spoke with her to learn more.

A circle of dancers jumping together with one leg in retiré back, arms lifted and curved. They all face inward and dance with abandon. Around them, a larger group of dancers lunge forward with their arms crossed in front of their chests, heads tilted to the side.
Atlanta Ballet dancers rehearsing Schreier’s The Rite of Spring. Photo by Shoccara Marcus, courtesy of Atlanta Ballet.

How did this commission come about?

It started last year, when Annabelle Lopez Ochoa was producing her Coco [Chanel] here. In that ballet, there’s a depiction of ROS [Rite of Spring] because of Chanel’s relationship with Stravinsky. That sparked an idea for our artistic director, Gennadi Nedvigin, and he floated it to me for an upcoming production. I immediately jumped at the chance.

It was such an exciting prospect for me for so many reasons—chief among them this historic score. From there on out, it was thinking about what I wanted it to be and what it meant to add my name to this ever-growing list of artists who have the opportunity to call a version of ROS their own.

Does that ever-growing list ever seem intimidating?

One of the beautiful things about this piece is how enmeshed it is with dance. Part of what was so striking and shocking to its initial audience was the atypical, uncomfortable forms being made by both the instruments and the bodies. Knowing that it had such an impact from its seed, it’s a tall order to reimagine it. But it also allows a sense of freedom because there are infinite ways to interpret ROS, and there are infinite ways to receive it. That provides a really rich platform upon which to build thoughts and a movement vocabulary.

Sophie Poulain, back to the camera, uses her left arm and bottom leg to hold herself up as she pushes up from the floor, left hip to the floor. She arches up and back, her head to the ceiling, with a claw-like right hand as her arm extends.
Sophie Poulain rehearsing Schreier’s The Rite of Spring. Photo by Shoccara Marcus, courtesy of Atlanta Ballet.

How have you approached your own dissection of the score?

I’m over the moon to be working with Jonathan McPhee, a guest conductor of the Atlanta Ballet Orchestra. I’ve followed the sheet music quite a bit through this process, in part because the counts are wildly complex, to say nothing of the layering of the instruments and the building of sounds. Being able to watch the breakdown of instruments and watch a conductor live inside the music, to me, is very informative. The instruments are all fighting for dominance, which, as a choreographer, I see in the dance.

It’s all there in the music and in the history of this ballet about the brutality and rawness of humanity, and its need to overtake and destroy. There’s something inevitable about ROS. It’s like Romeo & Juliet—we know how it’s going to end, and that it will end in blood and tragedy, but we’re compelled to come back to it.

  • A close-up on a ballet costume spiral sketchbook laying on top of sheets of paper with photos for costume inspiration.
  • A close-up shot of several cream-colored ballet costumes made with textured fabric made to look insect-like.

Could you speak on the themes you’re exploring in your take?

I’m using the traditional first and second act, and there are two underlying themes: man versus man and man versus nature. In the beginning, you have these rituals and dances that are meant to reflect community and celebration in the coming of spring. And the way in which we do that is by taking down the life of another [a female sacrifice]. There’s such a bold and terrifying dichotomy at play there. And there are so many ways in which you can see that replicated each day.

On top of that, the inevitability of humanity is its attempt to overtake natural forces, only to be undone by them. The earth is going to cycle with or without humans’ actions, but, in trying to assert our authority, so much of the time we end up wreaking so much more havoc and devastation than if we’d just let the earth do what it’s meant to do.

It’s a crazy time to be doing this ballet, with the election and the wildfires in California. I’m not actively referencing those things in this work, but they’re certainly in the back of my mind. It’s what we’re living.

Mikaela Santos lunges in a large ballet studio wearing knee pads, a pink leotard, and black pants rolled up above the knee. She wraps her arms around her, one arm extended long, as she tilts her torso sideways at the hips. She has a pensive, methodical look on her face.
Mikaela Santos rehearsing Schreier’s The Rite of Spring. Photo by Shoccara Marcus, courtesy of Atlanta Ballet.

Why did you choose to include the female sacrifice in your version?

The depiction is not an endorsement. When I thought about what I wanted the sacrificial element to look like, I felt compelled to respond to the most distilled elements of what ROS was to begin with. It’s not a historical take, but I didn’t want to over-abstract the themes. Because, like I said, it feels so relevant to today that all I had to do was discover what that meant for me now.

The disrespect and the destruction of the female form is something that feels deeply personal, especially on the other side of becoming a mother. That makes this relevant and personal in a way that I couldn’t have related to before. That sense of grounding myself with the earth and with what it means to be a woman comes at a particular time for me where I’m grateful to be able to reflect on it in this way.

How would you describe the movement style?

It’s grounded and earthy; it’s a guttural scream of a ballet. I’ve really enjoyed getting to draw out this more raw, primal energy from the Atlanta Ballet dancers. There’s always the capacity for more: You want to find a sense of abandon and then push even further past that. And there’s an excitement there; it can be liberating to kind of feel that far flung and raw.