Two local dance groups will be joining the WSO’s Classics B series October 19 and 20 at the Centennial Concert Hall.

Dancers from Buffy Handel’s Aboriginal School of Dance, Odette Heyn-Projects and over 100 performers and musicians will take the stage during the performance. Stravinsky’s most famous ballet was last presented at the WSO eight years ago. The Rite of Spring is accompanied by Three Dance Variation from Fancy Free by Leonard Bernstein and Suite from Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss.

“Stravinsky wanted to convey ‘the surge of spring, the magnificent upsurge of nature reborn’ as inspired by his childhood memories in Russia of ‘the earth cracking,'” writes WSO Artistic Operations Associate James Manishen. “He developed a libretto with Roerich around ancient Slavic ideas of earthly joy. Bold new music unlike anything ever before was to be the rule. ‘I was guided by no design,’ Stravinsky wrote. ‘I heard, and I wrote what I heard.'”