|
CONCERNING ORACLES
Sally Brayley, Lance Westergard
Photo courtesy of Sally Brayley Bliss
Synopsis:
Concerning Oracles is composed of three episodes, both sinister and comic, concerned with the
gifts of prophecy. In the first episode, an Elizabethan lady thought to be Mary, Queen of Scots, confronts the
powerful symbols of kingdom (an orb), marriage (a chaplet), and death (a skull). The second episode, “Les Mains
Gauches,” (originally a small ballet performed at Jacobs Pillow in 1951) deals with the rose and the noose as possible
choices during a pas de deux. Though the original character of Fate was changed, the atmosphere of hidden horror
still pervades the dance. The third episode, “L’Arcane,” with its setting of a family outing at a picnic table
in nineteenth-century provincial France, was a prophetic comedy in which an imperfect fool becomes involved with
Tarot cards, love, war, and marriage.
|
| Choreography |
| Antony Tudor |
| Music / Composer |
| Jacques lbert, Suite Elizabethaine, Capriccio, Divertissement. Regard sur un Crystal. Les Mains
Gauches, L’Arcane |
| US Performance |
New York
Metropolitan Opera House
March 27, 1966
Metropolitan Opera Ballet |
| US Cast Premiere |
| Nira Paz, Donald Mahler, Jan Mickens, Edith Jerell, Carolyn Martin, Ivan Allen, Lance Westergard,
Sally Brayley (Bliss), Susana Aschieri, Nicolyn Emanuel, Sylvia Grinvald, Rhodie Jorgenson, Janet Morse, Sharon
O’Connell, Robert Davis, Martin Fredman, William Maloney, David Milnes, Franklin Yezer, Josef Gregory, Howard Sayette |
| Notated |
| NA |
| Number of Dancers |
| NA |
| Average Length |
| NA |
| Costume / Set Design |
| Peter Harvey |
| Costumes / Scenery |
| Metropolitan Opera |
| Licensing Information |
| NA |
|
