“Attitude: Lucy Negro Redux”
Nashville Ballet
Opens Friday, February 8, 2019
by Martha Sherman
copyright © 2018 by Martha Sherman
Finally, wherever you turn, black women – in politics, academics, and the arts – are in their ascendance. In "Attitude: Lucy Negro Redux,” the Nashville Ballet’s new work based on the book by Caroline Randall Williams, this ascendancy couldn’t be clearer – or more welcome. Williams, whose book of poetry was triggered by her discovery of a thesis that Shakespeare’s “Dark Lady” sonnets may have been written for a black Elizabethan brothel owner who the bard loved, is articulate and convincing as she describes the importance of “taking on one’s power as a woman of color, of finding one’s beauty.” In the Nashville Ballet’s project, the urgency of spreading that message was shepherded by Paul Vasterling, who has been Artistic Director of the company for twenty years; it was brought to life by a trio of young black women, including Williams, who are demonstrating and harnessing their power and beauty to bring the story to life.
Photo: Kayla Rowser, Nashville Ballet ©Chad Driver.
