Cathy Marston on Transforming Books into Ballets

[pherank]

Summer and Smoke: Cathy Marston on Transforming Beloved Books into Breathtaking Ballets
by Alanna Love

https://enfacemagazine.com/blog/2023/03/01/summer-and-smoke-cathy-marston-on-transforming-beloved-books-into-breathtaking-ballets/

 

Edited April 25, 2023 by pherank

[maps]

How ballet companies adapt classic novels for the stage - The Washington Post

Wheater on Joffrey's Anna Karenina and Pickett on The Crucible.   There were no protests at the Kennedy Center for Anna Karenina. 

Edited April 26, 2023 by maps
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[Helene]

4 minutes ago, maps said:

There were no protests at the Kennedy Center for Anna Karenina.

That doesn't surprise me, as I haven't seen don't remember seeing protests against Nutcracker -- which finances so many North American companies -- Swan Lake, and Sleeping Beauty from the classic rep, or Onegin or A Month in the Country (although performed relatively rarely).  Criticism against La Bayadere and Le Corsaire has been content-based.

There was a protest at the 2013 Met Opera opening night after Putin's homophobic legislation was enacted, but that was a decade ago, and the protest seemed to be targeted against Netrebko for remaining silent, and Gergiev, whom no one expected to speak out.

[Quiggin]

In old Hollywood there was a saying that major works made less than satisfactory movies whereas minor works, like short stories in Saturday Evening Post, made very good and sometimes great movies. In ballet Don Quixote is based on a small story within the novel and Nutcracker and Coppelia on ETA Hoffman’s short stories. Onegin seems less good to me than its source (though I do like the duel scene very much), conveying little of Pushkin’s ironic/romantic tone and mistakenly having Tatiana tear up E Onegin’s letter which importantly is kept, though in much folded and unfolded form, til the end in the novel/poem. (Balanchine, who didn’t much like the musical choices of the Cranko ballet, did a series of dances for an opera version of EO in 1948 involving four couples, which one can only speculate about - perhaps there are remnants of it  in Liebeslieder?). I can see doing an opera based on Madame Bovary before making a ballet on it. Flaubert is the first modernist and his novel is based on the ordinariness of everyday life and inappropriate choices to mitigate it – at least how I remember it. To translate the novel to ballet form without destroying its tone and formal qualities and without heroising the character of Madame B will be a difficult chore. Maybe Flaubertians  will indeed come out and picket. 

Edited April 26, 2023 by Quiggin

[volcanohunter]

It boils down to whether dance or music can add an emotional layer that compensates for the loss of so much text. But the tone inevitably changes.

[Fosca]

8 hours ago, Quiggin said:

and Nutcracker and Coppelia on ETA Hoffman’s short stories. Onegin seems less good to me than its source (though I do like the duel scene very much), conveying little of Pushkin’s ironic/romantic tone

If you compare what the libretti of Nutcracker and Coppélia did to ETA Hoffmann's dark and sinister, psychologically sophisticated stories to what Cranko did to Pushkin, you will know that Cranko is the one who cared much more for literature.

[angelica]

We will also be able to see this in Wheeldon's LWFC--coming to New York soon! In the old days, ABT would be only one week away....sigh.