July 31st: Community Engagement Artists and Creatives Grant, December 31st: New England Presenter Travel Fund, December 31st: Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet Scholarship, December 31st: 24 Seven Dance Convention, December 31st: National Theater Project Presenter Travel Grant, December 31st: Breck Creek Artist-in-Residence Program
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"The Devil Ties My Tongue" by Amy Seiwert performed for the SKETCH Series, 2013. Photo by David DeSilva. Courtesy of Amy Seiwert's Imagery
By Kelly Apter
29 July 2019
In 2014, when Scottish Ballet premiered Helen Pickett’s one-act version of The Crucible, I wrote in my review that ‘the world needs more Helen Picketts’. Five years later, with the imbalance between male and female choreographers on the world stage still problematic, I stand by that statement. But happily, in 2019 what we do have is more of Pickett herself – literally.
That 45-minute, one-act adaptation of Arthur Miller’s play about the Salem witch trials has been razed to the ground and rebuilt – emerging as a full-length narrative ballet that will premiere at this year’s Edinburgh International Festival. Written in 1953, Miller’s tale of 17th-century paranoia and oppression has benefitted not only from Pickett’s punchy and intelligent choreography, but the assured directorial wisdom of James Bonas.
Each brings something unique and special – Pickett trained at San Francisco Ballet, spent 11 years working with William Forsythe at Ballet Frankfurt, then moved to New York to hone her own creative style. Bonas bagged a First from Oxford University then studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, before carving out a career as an actor, then theatre and opera director.
‘I’d never worked on a ballet before,’ concedes Bonas straight off the bat, ‘I didn’t even call myself a dramaturg, because I didn’t know what that meant. But the principal thing I could bring to The Crucible, is how to tell a story with people’s bodies – and a lot of the work I’ve done in both theatre and opera is coming from that place anyway.
Read the full article on The List.
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