The PR power of backlash: why the riot at the Rite of Spring wasn’t a disaster

Last month I was at the Royal Albert Hall, wedged into a too-small seat, listening to one of the most famous classical pieces of the canon: Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. The audience reacted with reverence. But when it premiered as a ballet in Paris in 1913, it was met with rage: the audience jeered, fights broke out, some say the police were called. One of the most influential cultural artefacts of the 20th century debuted as a disaster.

Today, more than a century later, that same score is a fixture of every major orchestra’s repertoire. The backlash appears to have given it immortality.

It’s easy to view that riot as a historical curiosity – a moment of misplaced bourgeois outrage at art ahead of its time. But for PR professionals, it offers something more useful: a reminder that sometimes the most powerful campaigns start with protest, rather than applause. And it’s no coincidence that this protest was sparked by something so deliberately Russian. The Rite of Spring had created a vision rooted in Slavic folklore, Russian rhythms, and a primal force that shocked a French audience used to elegance.

Confrontational and unfamiliar

The original production had all the elements of a provocation. Stravinsky’s jagged, pagan-inspired score inverted and fractured eastern European folk motifs, stripping them of their prettiness. Vaslav Nijinsky’s choreography was angular, stomping, deliberately primitive – one critic called it “a crime against grace”. Nicholas Roerich’s costume and set designs drew on early Slavic tribal aesthetics: embroidered tunics, folkloric symbols, and fertility gods. The story itself – a Russian pagan tribe sacrificing a maiden who dances herself to death to ensure spring’s return – was ancient, earthy, and ferociously un-western. Combined, the music, movement, and visuals created a work that was as confrontational as it was unfamiliar.

No one can quite agree on what triggered the chaos. Some say the choreography shocked a Parisian audience expecting tutus; others blame the music’s raw dissonance. Over time, as the ballet was dropped from the repertoire and only the score endured, the riot was blamed on the music alone. But that’s a post-rationalisation. It was the totality – the rupture from convention, the attack on form – that provoked the storm. In fact, the original choreography was lost for decades, until dance historian Millicent Hodson painstakingly reconstructed it in the 1980s, drawing from notes, sketches, and eyewitness accounts. Her revival confirmed just how radical and unsettling the movement truly was – and how crucial it was to the scandal.

There’s also the theory that Sergei Diaghilev, impresario of the Ballets Russes, engineered it all. He was a showman as much as a producer – and after the performance, declared: “Exactly what I wanted”. Whether or not that’s apocryphal doesn’t matter – it’s perfect PR. It reflects the mindset of a master of myth: controversy, if you control it, becomes part of the product.

Which is exactly what happened. The riot was The Rite of Spring’s christening, with every subsequent performance living in its shadow. The uproar became a reference point – a built-in origin story that gave the piece cultural weight. And while the scandal was real, the reaction to it was instructive. Stravinsky stood by his work. Diaghilev didn’t apologise. The lesson wasn’t ‘don’t cause a riot’, it was ‘if your launch causes one, make it mean something’.

Lessons for today's communicators

For communicators, there are clear takeaways. The first is don’t be afraid to polarise. The opening night audience split in two – some cheered, others booed. But what they weren’t was indifferent. In PR, the greatest danger is obscurity, rather than outrage. Launches that play it safe tend to fade, while the bold ones get remembered. Think of Apple removing the headphone jack, or even Marmite’s entire brand strategy. You might have rolled your eyes, you might have posted about it, but you didn’t ignore it.

We should also remember that a storm can be your spotlight, if you stand your ground. The Rite of Spring didn’t need a press release, the chaos was the story. Today, we see that logic in campaigns like Colin Kaepernick’s partnership with Nike, which drew ire as well as loyalty. Nike didn’t flinch, because they knew what they stood for, and that steadiness turned outrage into momentum.

Stirring up outrage on purpose is a risky game – but it can be powerful if done with intent. Diaghilev may or may not have orchestrated the riot, but either way, he harnessed it. He knew that a scandal, if aligned with vision, becomes spectacle. We’ve seen brands do this skilfully – Diesel’s Go with the Flaw campaign embraced deliberate imperfection, offbeat casting, and even a fake knockoff store to mock brand snobbery and celebrate authenticity. The result was headlines and cultural impact. When it works, it doesn’t just grab attention. It becomes a talking point, and a statement.

And finally, your flop can become your folklore. Tech companies are particularly good at this. How many startups now open their About pages with tales of being dismissed, derided, or down to their last £50? They make the struggle part of the brand’s mystique. You weren’t rejected – you were misunderstood. If your launch crashes, frame it as evidence of how far ahead of your time you were. The narrative of resistance and recovery humanises your brand and gives it grit.

It’s a lesson that resonates far beyond the west – especially in Russia, where The Rite of Spring had an unruly sibling in 1913’s other artistic scandal, the futurist opera Victory over the Sun. Different in form but united in purpose, both set out to raze the old order and build something radically new. 

For Evgeny Roshkov of Russian public affairs agency Kesarev, the connection to modern communications is clear: 

“The strength of a message depends not just on its novelty, but on whether the audience is ready to receive it. In public affairs, radical change in messaging or positioning must be matched by careful stakeholder preparation – otherwise you risk the ‘1913 effect’: being right too early, in the wrong way. But when your idea challenges the status quo, the backlash can become its most powerful advertisement.”

So the next time I sit in the Rausing Circle and hear that opening bassoon, I won’t just be hearing music. I’ll be hearing the echo of that first riot – a moment of rupture that became a moment of myth.

The show must go on – and sometimes, it’s the chaos that makes it unforgettable.

Oli Foster is senior media consultant at PLMR. He also wrote The original influencer: Eva Perón wrote the rules of political PR.