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The Joffrey Ballet's Othello: A dance about a handkerchief
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Joffrey Ballet's Othello. Photo: H. Migdoll
William Shakespeare's well-known tragedy, Othello: The Moor of Venice, has inspired a fairly steady stream of theatrical, film and opera interpretations. But from a concert-dance perspective, only the late choreographer Jose Limon had been most closely associated with a dance version of the Moorish general driven to jealousy and murder by his jilted ensign Iago. Limon's Machiavellian 1949 quartet, The Moor's Pavane, reveals layers of deception through the stately formations of the Renaissance court dance of the pavane. Enter Lar Lubovitch.
Lubovitch, the acclaimed Chicago-born choreographer and artistic director of New York's 41-year-old Lar Lubovitch Dance Company, tackled Othello in 1997 as a full-blown three-act classical-contemporary ballet for a collaboration between San Francisco Ballet and American Ballet Theatre. Beginning this week, the Joffrey Ballet will present the Midwest premiere of Lubovitch's Othello: A Dance in Three Acts at the Auditorium Theatre. Jealousy and betrayal are the driving forces behind the play, which centers on a Moorish general, his wife Desdemona, his envious ensign Iago and Othello's lieutenant Cassio. In it, Iago schemes to incite Othello's own jealousy by planting Desdemona's handkerchief on Cassio.
The choreographer wanted to show this charged emotional conflict solely through dance - minus the silent movie-style pantomime often associated with story ballets. He has taken artistic license by devoting Act One to the back story of Othello's and Desdemona's wedding celebration. Throughout, Iago performs a series of sequestered solos in which he visibly portrays his inner and outer conflict through excruciating isolations of his limbs, pelvis, torso and neck. He appears to vivisect himself, struggling to conceal diabolical motives beneath a cordial exterior. Elliot Goldenthal's pulsating original score (something of a distorted version of Sergei Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet) drives Lubovitch's swirling, slicing and refracted movement, including a tidal wave of tarantellas -- a dance believed to cause insanity. It culminates in the confrontation that destroys Othello and those around him (including Iago, devastated by the carnage he incited).
As a student at the University of Iowa, Lubovitch saw a performance of Limon's The Moor's Pavane and recalls being moved by the realization that Othello and its layered emotional conflicts could be conveyed solely through movement, versus a melodramatic recreation of the play in gesture. Lubovitch also traced Shakespeare's source material back to Italian writer Giraldo Cinthio's 16th century collection of stories, including one titled The Moor. He then combined Cinthio's characters with Shakespeare's psychology and found a way to craft his own story, which clearly becomes more about Iago than Othello.
Lubovitch calls his Othello "classical ballet seen through a broken glass" - Venetian glass, to be precise.
The Joffrey Ballet performs Othello: A Dance in Three Acts Oct. 14-25 at the Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Congress Pkwy. Tickets: $25-$145. Call 800-982-2787 or www.ticketmaster.com. For more information: www.joffrey.org.
Also playing...
Lucinda Childs, one of the original members of New York's Judson Dance Theater - credited with ushering in the post-modern dance era in the 1960s - comes to the Museum of Contemporary Art Theater, 220 E. Chicago Ave., Oct. 15-17, to reprise her collaborative DANCE for its 30th anniversary. Set to music by Philip Glass, with cinematic visuals by Sol LeWitt, the work has the dancers soaring across the stage in difficult and repetitive patterns. Tickets: $32-$40. Call 312-397-4010 or visit www.mcachicago.org.
More historic dance abounds when the Unity Temple Restoration Foundation and Momenta Repertory Ensemble present Moving in Parallel, a concert celebrating the artistry of two great Oak Park artists: architect Frank Lloyd Wright and choreographer Doris Humphrey on Oct. 17 and 18 at 3 p.m.. In addition to four historic Humphrey pieces (from the years 1928 to 1931), the dancers will perform a new site-specific work by Sandra Kaufmann, formerly of the Martha Graham Dance Company. Tickets: $15-$20. Performances take place at Wright's Unity Temple, 875 Lake St., Oak Park. Call 708-383-8873 or visit www.utrf.org. For more information: www.momenta-dance.org.
And on a further related note, The Moving Architects (a new contemporary dance company closely connected to architectural theories) performs The Tasting Room, an evening of dances by artistic director Erin Carlisle Norton, Oct. 16 and 17 at 8 p.m. and Oct. 18 at 7 p.m., at Links Hall, 3435 N. Sheffield. Guest artist Ayako Kato also will perform her latest meditative work. Tickets: $15-$18. Call 773-281-0824 or visit www.linkshall.org. For more information: www.themovingarchitects.org.
Dance for the Camera 2009 is a free two-evening program - sponsored by Hedwig Dances and the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs -- featuring innovative dance films by artists from the Midwest and around the world. On Oct. 13 at 6 p.m., films by Pina Bausch and Michael Jackson will be shown and will address themes of character, gender and personality. On Oct. 14 at 6 p.m., Jan Bartoszek, artistic director of Hedwig Dances, will preview her modern company's film, Arch of Repose, and show live excerpts. The performance will be followed by a discussion with members of the film's creative team, moderated by yours truly. Events take place at the Chicago Cultural Center's Claudia Cassidy Theater, 78 E. Washington. For more information: www.hedwigdances.com.
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