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Does It Matter If You Know the Story?posted by Wendy Perron on Thursday, Jun 21, 2007 |
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I always get excited to see a new Wheeldon ballet, so before I went to see The Nightingale and the Rose at New York City Ballet, I read the Oscar Wilde story that it’s based on. It’s about a Nightingale who sacrifices her life for a young man’s hope of love. A thorn must pierce the bird’s heart as she sings all night long to produce a red rose that the youth can present to the girl he has a crush on. I thought this was a perfect role for Wendy Whelan, who’s been Wheeldon's muse for many abstract ballets. She has a creatureliness and a subtle all-out energy that would suit a magical, tragic bird. After seeing the dance last week, I think I (and he) was right. But was I right to read the story first? My friend Nancy, who hadn’t read the story, loved the piece—the quirky twisting, the beak-and wing shapes, the aura of sadness—but didn’t really get anything about the story from it. The Playbill did have an insert that summarized Wilde’s story. But how many people in the audience read that? And how would I have reacted (I loved it too) if I had not read the story? Would the images have coalesced for me? Would that group of men who revealed red under their unitards have seemed like a rosebush? Or would I have seen something else, something even more interesting, in that group of men with waving red limbs? |
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