A little prince and a naughty boy...don't you think we can all say we understand something of both? The ability to be elegant and the ability to make mischief? Throughout the history of art, there are countless times where the youngest ones tell us what we need to see, hear, and do, in order to understand and value life. Often, it is the most innocent who are the closest to what is most meaningful.
Pairing these two pieces is no accident. In The Naughty Boy, Cupid is manifesting our yearning to make sense of our loves, our relationships, those extraordinarily momentous happenings that bring us together. Is it happenstance? Is there a plan? Even if we do not have the answers, there are certainly times where our hearts soar and life feels like a lark. Cupid shoots a weapon but is love a wound? After all, our hearts are pierced. The initial love potion is strong, and delightful, but a wound, nonetheless. And our Cupid in this ballet has a tongue-in-cheek twist--he's a girl! There are no hard answers here. Our assumptions, our secure and comfortable boundaries, must be set aside if we are going to romp along with this ethereal creature. Choreographer Trey McIntyre planted a coonskin cap on his all-girl Tennessee Cupid, and takes us on a mad dash, pell-mell through a work created on Ballet Memphis that only wonderfully trained professional ballet dancers can execute. It was a hit when we premiered it in Memphis in 2004 and it was a hit when we performed it in New York in 2007. We are pleased to bring it back as we launch our 25th main stage anniversary season.
Ballet Memphis Artistic Associate and former San Francisco principal ballet dancer Julia Adam has reshaped and restaged her The Little Prince for us. Based on the French classic by Antoine de Saint Exupery, how timely this story is! The narrator, a pilot who has crashed in the desert, finds his days there far from barren. The Little Prince has arrived from a very small and fragile planet, and he sees things so much differently than a world-weary grown-up. Things are not what they seem. With a simple message like that, when a hat is really an elephant swallowed by a boa constrictor, we are being told not only that things are not what they seem, but sometimes there are deeper messages we are missing while we are rushing around. And we are being asked if we are taking care of a small piece of the world given to us, as the Little Prince has done on his planet? We actually are living in a time when so much evidence points to the need for us to take care of our earth, yet there is a loud national cry against this very apparent truth. Today, I fear the Little Prince’s tenderness toward his rose would meet a chorus of fear and denial which might even overwhelm those who beg us to take responsibility for our actions on our planet.
Our Little Prince innately is drawn to accepting the world around him and is curious about other worlds. The geographer tells him that flowers are not recorded, "because they are ephemeral." I find this a particularly poignant place in this narrative, to hear the thought that things that are "ephemeral" are discounted. In reality, isn't everything on earth ephemeral? And our art form itself, one moment of beauty after another, seized and released as the dance unfolds before our eyes, is overwhelmingly so. Is there not something tellingly true about valuing each moment given to us, because that is all we have within each moment we are alive? This ephemeral quality, this moment by moment miracle, is a reason to value beautiful dance.
When the Little Prince "tames" the Fox, and makes him a friend, he learns how beautiful and how painful attachment can be. (Remember Cupid's arrows?) As he thinks of the rose on his planet he has loved, nurtured, and protected, his heart has been pierced by what he has loved. The fox teaches him a concept which great artists, and great spiritual leaders are deeply tied to---"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye...It is the time you have wasted on your rose that makes your rose so important...You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed."
Think of the many things we love–and tame–in our lives. Do we waste our time on beauty? On the life earth gives us? The Little Prince knows that far away, unseen to him, are his planet and rose he loves. He believes in what he now cannot see. If there is one sacred thing that artist bring to our lives, it is the belief that there are worlds, people, things, and ideas we have not yet seen, things we cannot see. Our imaginations, fueled by love, justice, and curiosity, can be a part of creating these things, or illuminating them, or discovering them. We vividly picture deep within our hearts what we believe might be possible---and we write it, we sing it, we paint it, and dance it.
As we commence our main stage 25th anniversary season with these two beautifully crafted works by these internationally respected choreographers who have been closely associated with us over the years, let's promise to value what we cannot see, except perhaps in our imagination, our dreams, our hopes. Let's remember to waste time on the things in life that won't be "recorded" because they are "ephemeral." Art and heart sound very similar, don't they? Let's touch each others' hearts; let's use art to help us see what cannot be measured, but is incalculable.
Pictured top left, Ballet Memphis company members Crystal Brothers and Travis Bradley, as well as former company member Dawn Fay perform The Naughty Boy in New York in 2007.
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