Ballet dancer gives lectures on 'Rite of Spring'

Classically trained ballet dancer Carrie Preston has made the leap into academia.

Preston, a professor of English and women’s, gender and sexuality studies at Boston University, has studied in-depth the influence of dancer Isadora Duncan on composer Igor Stravinsky and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky’s “The Rite of Spring.”

Preston gave two identical lectures on Tuesday in Hyde Hall, discussing both Duncan’s inspiration and those she influenced, intertwined with a dance lesson in the middle of the lecture.

Preston made leading a dance routine at nine months pregnant look easy.

“If I can dance at this stage of my pregnancy any of you can,” she said.

Preston has also written a book on dance, titled “Modernism’s Mythic Pose: Gender, Genre, Solo Performance,” which she mentioned in her lecture.

“I will be bridging my book project and some modern issues like Nijinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring’ and this incredible festival UNC has organized to celebrate ‘The Rite,’” she said in an interview.

Preston said dance has been a huge part of her life from a young age.

She graduated from Rutgers University with a double major in English and dance.

“I thought I was giving up dance for academics until I realized I needed to dance or I would drop out of school,” Preston said.

She said in her lecture that she wanted to put “The Rite of Spring” in context with other movements of dance.

Preston discussed Duncan’s Greek sculpture influence in contrast to Nijinsky’s Russian folk influence. She also talked about how both dancers rejected modernism.

“On one level we may see both Duncan and Nijinsky’s look back at Greek and Slavic art as modern primitivism — yet I see the anti-modernist critique as a complex blend of protest and accommodation,” Preston said.

Students, professors and community members were in attendance at this afternoon’s lecture.

Visiting professor Jessica Berman, who is teaching a class as a part of Carolina Performing Arts’ “The Rite of Spring at 100” celebration, required her students to attend the lecture.

“Preston’s lecture will give my students more historical context and understanding to the primitivism of Nijinsky and how their bodies move in the dance,” Berman said. “This brings it full circle for them.”

Although he is not in a “Rite of Spring” class, senior Jo Saberniak attended Preston’s lecture in place of his intermediate ballet class.

He said he appreciated the freedom of modern dance Preston discussed, but also questioned the present-day application of “The Rite of Spring.”

“What today would be so drastic and radical that people 100 years from now could look back and question it?” Saberniak said.

Contact the desk editor at arts@dailytarheel.com.