Brooklyn Ballet performs Martha (The Searchers)
Brooklyn Ballet dancers, Elizabeth Sherlock-Lewis Tollett, Courtney Cochran, Acee Francis, Christine Sawyer and members of Gleich Dances developing the Martha stories in rehearsal.
I am so pleased to be sharing my new ballet, Martha (The Searchers) with the lovely dancers of Brooklyn Ballet. We had a week-long rehearsal period in April and then another in early June to re-create the ballet. The ballet continues to evolve as different dancers develop the roles. It is a pleasure to continue to explore this fertile ground in its early forms and am already working on the "feature length" performance for October. "Martha tests some of the basic tenants of ballet by deconstructing pivotal but cliché moments from historical dances and using a backdrop of an insouciant corps de ballet built upon the Western swagger. The choreography is developed from the role of Martha, in the iconic 1956 John Ford Western The Searchers. A tragic character not unlike Giselle, her world is constructed in a series of episodes that explore the tangents of ballet and Hollywood’s Wild West." Visual Artist Elana Herzog, a 2017 Guggenheim Fellow, collaborates.
And here's a trailer for the Brooklyn Ballet 2017 Season: