Dance to the Piper: Big Happy Dance and the Gypsy Camp!

SONNETS.
The end is here.

After all of the turmoil and angst of the trio of unhappy lovers. We have the brief return of Cupid. As he and the narrators leave the stage, they are replaced by the dancers. The picture above shows Anna Counts performing the first movement that was ever choreographed for this ballet on the first person it was choreographed on. This finale (along with the Pleasant Peasant section) was worked out during our summer program. Although it was altered to suit the professional dancers of the company (and the inclusion of the male dancers), the structure was pretty much worked out on the summer students. Anna took part in that program.

This is a later section of the same dance, but back in the studio. There is no subtext here apart from everyone dancing joyously in the rapture of love.

Back to the stage version, the piece is pretty much made of different groupings of dancers who swoop onto stage in off balance extensions and turns. Much as love keeps us off balance.

As you can see sometimes the dancers are off balance on appendages other than their legs. This is an instance of the cardinal rule of working with me. Either in dance or theater.

"If you are messing around in the rehearsal space, don't ever do anything that you wouldn't want me to put in the show."

Because I WILL put it in the show, if it makes me laugh.

The finale is really made up of two sections. The first is this soaring, free flowing melange of bodies. We keep building towards a big finish, but instead go to a transitional moment of swirling leaps across the stage, which is broken through by...

Chelsy and the guys.

The music takes a very sudden shift and becomes slightly melodramatic. The voicings also change. So I had a choreographic quandry. Do I try to make sense of this musical change or go with the flow?

Chelsy was also part of that summer program. As she was working with us, it was apparant (to us, at least) that we were seriously think of her as becoming a company member. so I took the opportunity to see what she could do. So I made a virtuoso solo for her. As it was shaping up, I knew that I would add the guys once we took the piece into the company.

For some reason when this section begins, I always think of gypsies storming the stage and taking over. It is as if Chelsy is a gypsy campfire that is inciting the men into a more passionate side of love than we saw in the earlier section. The acceptance that as much as we talk about l-o-v-e, the underlying reason that we do th things we do (including write poetry) is because of l-u-s-t. And that there is nothing wrong with that. Its life. Its humanity. Its why we dance.