The Rite of Spring is ballet by the Russian Composer Igor Stravinsky . The ballet was written for the 1913 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev , a Russian art critic and found of the Ballets Ruses that produced many famous and well respected dancers and choreographers such as Vaslav Nijinsky who choreographed The Rite of Spring . The ballet was described by Stravinsky as "a musical-choreographic work, pagan Russia...unified by a single idea: the mystery and great surge of the creative power of spring."[1]The Ballet Debuted on the 19th of may in Paris at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées which had just opened the previous month on the 2nd of April . The Ballet has received mixed reviews and even incited a riot at the premier , despite that…show more content… These two pieces contain a lot of similarities that were found in The Rite of Spring some of these similarities are pagan rites, sage elders, and the propitiatory sacrifice of a young girl . Laurence Morton who studied the origins of the Rite of spring said that "The Likeness is too close to be coincidental[2]". However in 1920 Stravinsky wrote an article where he stated that the musical ideas came first , that the setting was suggest afterwards and not the other way around . However in 1936 he then changed his story again in his autobiography where he said he got the idea in a "vision " when he was finishing the last pages of L'Oiseau de Feu or in English the Firebird a play that Stravinsky wrote in 1910 . By May of that year Stravinsky started talking about the idea to Nicholas Roerich , an expert on ancient Russian folklore and rituals. Roerich was also an artist and produced the designs of the stage for 1909 production of the Prince Igor [3].The both agreed on the working "The Great Sacrifice" or in Russian Velikaia zherva (This name is romanticised ). Diaghilev gave his blessing to Stravinsky's project however the project was put of for a year because Stravinsky was finishing the commission for Diaghilev , which turned into the ballet Petruskha . A year later in 1911 Stravinsky went to Talashikno just outside of Smolensk where he and Roerich