“The Rite of Spring,” was an iconic work of the avant-garde movement which shocked the dance world in the early 20th century. Choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky, it integrated Russian folklore with laboring bodies. The piece explored the enigmatic relationship between human and nature, depicting a pagan ritual where a group of elders sitting in a circle commanded a young girl to dance herself to death. Accompanied by Igor Stravinsky’s off-kilter, syncopated score, dazzling ballet leaps and spins were intentionally removed, with the dancers stomping strangely with force and keeping a low center of gravity. The experimental aesthetic split the audience into two rowdy groups. This scandalous 1913 premiere in Paris and the divided audience from the riotous night seemingly insinuated that while Europeans were attempting to establish a structure for global order, they also faced deep internal ironies and conflicts. Rituals have not dissolved due to the advent of technology, and the modern sciences have also not stripped humans of their fear of the unknowns in the universe.

A significant confirmation of “resistance” and “conflict,” “The Rite of Spring" has become one of the most iconic and influential works of dance history. For over a century, countless choreographers have been inspired to recreate their own versions of “The Rite of Spring,” an unfinished journey that has spanned modern humanism’s exploration of the Self, the Others, and the Community over the past hundred years.

Italian theater director Romeo Castellucci created a “non-human” version of “The Rite of Spring” in 2014, approximately a century after the original work was first premiered. Using an automated factory hall absent of dancers as a metaphor, the work shows a future urban scenario with labor operated by machines, similar to present-day Amazon distribution centers, where robots are used to pick up goods and deliveries are carried out by drones. In this human-less performance, the absence of humans creates a unique heterogeneous space. A “state of being” is then prompted by the “that-has-been” of humans, which subsequently opens up thoughts on the technological body in the Digital Age.

The “non-human” version of “The Rite of Spring” prompts the following questions on digital corporeality: How should digital corporeality be explained in the Age of Technology or perhaps even in the Anthropocene epoch?  How should the origin of dance be explained in the Digital Age? In the era of human-machine unification, how would the relationship between dance and the earth, gravity, leaping, and twirling differ from the past? After detaching from the concept and philosophy of humanism, how is digital corporeality perceived via this technological version of “The Rite of Spring” that is ‘without human’?

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