The voice of the turtle is heard in the land

Actually the American mourning dove, though it used to be known as the "Carolina turtledove"—turtledoves are a different species, properly speaking, in Europe—but it is a harbinger of spring, and I was woken up by my first one of the season this morning, around 5:00. Also the first one since I learned that it was a mourning dove. I'd waking up to them regularly for years, but thought it must be some kind of owl. It certainly never sounded mournful to me, but erotic. That's all I really wanted to say about it.

Zenaida macroura, mourning dove, from John James Audubon Birds of America, between 1827 and 1838, via Wikipedia.

Equinoxious

Monsieur Bouffant has posted the last bit of Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring performed on a computer as an offering for the season, but complained, "Where are the virgins?" So I found some.

Not the usual attempt to present the work as some kind of almost conventional ballet, this is the lost original choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky as reconstructed from documentary evidence and staged by Nicholas Roerich, and it doesn't look like anything else ever. I saw it in New York sometime in the early 90s and I have to say I thought it was too weird, though I really love the music. Cheap seats a mile from the stage, of course, in what is now the (ew!) David Koch Theater, so it was pretty hard to tell what was going on. It looked like a Russian primitive aerobics class where one of the students dies at the end.

Do at least watch through the credits. If you want for contrast something more contemporary looking, there's a complete version of the Pina Bausch, but I've only watched a (stunning) extract.

Now I think the 1913 choreography is exceptionally cool. I love YouTube!