Creative Risk
If the ballet world now seems inundated with Dracula productions, Frankenstein adaptations are a rarer sight.
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How many ways to think about “Sleeping Beauty”? In the first written Italian and French versions, the plots outline the fate of a young girl as the object of family jealousy, trickery and, after being drugged asleep, ravishment. By the mid-19th century, the Brothers Grimm toned down the storyline, romanticized and adapted it as a story fit for children. Ivan Vsevolozhsky, Tchaikovsky, and Marius Petipa’s 1890 landmark ballet further refashioned it. But another few generations of scholarly research recognized the darker undertones and representations of girls in the fairy tale tradition. Apart from handsome swains or huntsmen who save damsels like Beauty or Red Riding Hood from stepmothers or disfigured crones, the producers of even the most treasured classics should take some measure of the plight of characters, even if fantasy.
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If the ballet world now seems inundated with Dracula productions, Frankenstein adaptations are a rarer sight.
Continue ReadingIt’s amusing to read in Pacific Northwest Ballet’s generally exceptional program notes that George Balanchine choreographed the triptych we now know as “Jewels” because he visited Van Cleef & Arpels and was struck by inspiration. I mean, perhaps visiting the jeweler did further tickle his imagination, but—PR stunt, anyone?
Continue ReadingAs I watch one after another pastel tutu clad ballerina bourrée into the arms of a white-tighted danseur, a melody not credited on the program floats through my brain. You know the one.
Continue ReadingMisty Copeland’s upcoming retirement from American Ballet Theatre—where she made history as the first Black female principal dancer and subsequently shot to fame in the ballet world and beyond—means many things.
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