Florence Peake: RITE

Florence Peake’s RITE exhibitions opens at De La Warr Pavilion on Saturday 12 May and runs until Sunday 2 September. Prior to this there will be an open rehearsal on Friday 4 May, 2–4pm (free), and a performance on Sunday 6 May, 7pm (ticketed) (The performance is for those over 16 as it contains nudity). Book here

Through performance, sound, sculpture and painting, Florence Peake’s RITE re-interprets a moment in modernism’s history: Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, composed in 1913 for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky, the original performance is notorious for the riot it provoked on the opening night.

Six tonnes of clay stands as a wet landscape in the centre of the gallery, activated by a host of dancers who perform in it. A sound score composed by Beatrice Dillion forms part of the sculptural environment, drawn from audio recordings of Peake handling clay, slipping and throwing it whilst listening to Stravinsky’s discordant, polyrhythmic score.

Accompanying the frieze and the clay bed is a film in which dancer Rosemary Lee performs a piece choreographed by Peake and filmed by Becky Edmunds.

Image: Anne Tetzlaff