Kashchei's Infernal Dance

The Infernal Dance belongs to the second half of The Firebird, the ballet Stravinsky wrote for Diaghilev in 1909–10 on a scenario by Michel Fokine: the firebird's magic feather forces the sorcerer Kashchei and his whole retinue into a dance they cannot stop until they collapse. The music is built on displaced accents and a syncopated brass figure, and it is the passage of the score in which the direction of The Rite of Spring is already audible. It appears in all three of the concert suites Stravinsky later drew from the ballet.