October 13th: National Leaders of Color Fellowship Program, October 15th: Keshet Makers Space Experience, October 16th: Bethany Arts Community Residency, October 16th: The Shubert Foundation Grant, October 21st: Collective Imagination for Spatial Justice, October 28th: GRACE 2025 (Individual Artist Grants), November 15th: Dresher Ensemble Artist Residency, November 19th: Carmel Dance Festival Dance Fellowship, November 21st: Cultural Sustainability, December 2nd: Public Art for Spatial Justice, February 28th: National Dance Project Travel Fund, April 30th: South Arts Individual Artist Career Opportunity Grant, April 30th: South Arts: Professional Development & Artistic Planning Grants, April 30th: South Arts: Express Grants, September 16th: The Awesome Foundation Micro Grants, September 16th: New England States Touring (NEST 1 and 2), September 30th: New England Presenter Travel Fund, September 30th: Amplifi Napa Valley - Emerging Artists Grant
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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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