“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.
There are many theories about the “Dark Lady” of Shakespeare’s sonnets 127 to 154, one of which is that the bard had a black lover. Williams traces her belief to the research of Professor Duncan Salkeld of the University of Chichester, and opens her book with evidence from Sonnet 132: “Then will I swear that beauty herself is black,/And all they foul that thy complexion lack.” The sonnets, though, are only a trigger to the deeper truths that Williams explores in her anything-but-Elizabethan poetry, exploring the experience of black women in the Jim Crow south and in the present. When Vasterling was given a copy of Williams’ book, he saw the possibilities of a new story that would meet one of his own prime goals – to speak and give voice to the whole community -- and he had a company who could express the poetry and the story that Williams offered.
The connections among the key players in the making of the ballet came not only from the shared passion of its key collaborators, but from a combination of luck and community that made the work seem inevitable. Rhiannon Giddens, a MacArthur award winning composer whose work sings with the complexity of black heritage (from spirituals and African rhythms to hip-hop and call and response, among many sources) met Vasterling at a party with Williams’ mother. At the same time, she was beginning a collaboration with Francesco Turrisi, a European composer connected to minstrelsy and early Renaissance music. Turrisi also had experience composing for ballet.
The path to creating the music for “Lucy Negro Redux” was not geographically convenient – writing across European and American locations, Giddens created themes and the two invented improvisations, as Turrisi added the Ottoman Lavta to the instrument mix, and giving the music an Eastern tuning system. As they composed, the choreography and Williams’ verbal score for the work evolved, even making text edits to allow time for the music-makers to change instruments.
Key to the project was the casting of Lucy, the black heroine of the poetry. Kayla Rowser has been a company member since 2010 and is in her own ascendance, named as one of “25 Dancers to Watch” by Dance Magazine. Williams describes Rowser’s “power en pointe” dance as embodying Lucy’s taking of her own power. Through Rowser’s “captivating” dance and presence, Williams hopes that black women will not only hear this story and its messages – but will, themselves, feel heard.
The trio of black female artists who have encircled Lucy are supported and enabled by a broader and more diverse cast of artists. Their own force and beauty, though, is the heart of “Lucy Negro Redux,” opening in Nashville on Friday, February 8, with Rowser in the lead role, Owen Thorne as Shakespeare, and Nicolas Scheuer as the “Fair Youth” of the sonnets. Williams will perform the vocal score, and Giddens and Turrisi will premiere their musical score. The coincidences of meeting and melding, and of ideas that have been hiding in plain sight for perhaps hundreds of years, are about to find new voice.
Photos:
Top: Caroline Randall Williams, Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi in “Attitude: Lucy Negro Redux” © Heather Thorne.
Bottom: Kayla Rowser and Owen Thorne in “Attitude: Lucy Negro Redux” © Heather Thorne.
copyright © 2018 by Martha Sherman
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