Connections:Puppets

Dear Board and Patrons:
This weekend at Clark Opera Center , Ballet Memphis will perform one of the smartest, most creative programs we have ever produced, and you know we have produced a great many of those! Connections: Puppets takes our dancers , and thereby our audiences, to new levels of delight, surprise, and imagination. When Jane Comfort came here to set her work , Underground River, on four of our dancers, she had no idea that our ballet dancers would take her work to this height. Our dancers sing, speak, dance, and manipulate the most beautiful and evocatively simple puppets (by Basil Twist) all the way through the piece. It is , really, something that will take your breath away. I am moved with every rehearsal I am privileged to see. This is a work that is very, very smart on so many levels, and captivating from start to finish.
Lily Cai’s work follows, and anyone who has ever loved a child will be deeply moved . This piece has five women holding baby dolls all the way through the gorgeous Samuel Barber adagio, and the mesmerizing movements’ intensity and heartfelt love of parent for child is the perfect coupling to this rich and penetrating music.
When we get to Travis Bradley’s piece , The Ugly Duckling, prepare to be taken in another direction entirely, with a number of different puppets in a wide range of sizes being moved by the dancers, or dancing with the dancers. This is all on a backdrop of clear, bright color and texture, created and danced with high spirit, but still touching with all with its important message of self-discovery and delight in life.
Jane Comfort is one of the leaders in the world of theatrical dance. Lily Cai used to be a principal dancer with the Shanghai Opera before moving to California , and puppeteer Frank Kane, who has designed the puppets for Travis and is working with the dancers as well as holding a puppet workshop this Saturday afternoon before the performance, worked on Sesame Street with some of the greatest puppets most all of us have come to know and love.
This is not a program to miss. I can’t wait to see and hear your responses after you have experienced it! Thank you again for helping us bring these amazingly creative elements all together.

Most affectionately, and with great excitement,
Dorothy