Le Corsaire (Ballet)

[Anthony De Luca]

Le Corsaire
Feb 22nd - March 13th
Shanachie Ballet Company

Cast

Conrad - Dante Alvarez
Medora - Josette Wheeler
Lankendem - Darren Shaw (NPC)
Pasha - Michael Blanchard (NPC)
Gulnare - Brianna Parker
Birbanto - Rhodes Vasilakis
Ali - James Willis

[Anthony De Luca]

Synopsis

Prologue

A pirate ship sails across the high seas, captained by our hero Conrad and his faithful pirate crew: they are on a mission to rescue Medora, Conrad’s love, from the hands of the slave trader Lankendem.

Act I – The Bazaar

Lankendem is selling his slave girls in a busy market place. Conrad suddenly spies Medora peering from a balcony, and she throws Conrad a rose as proof of her feelings towards him.

When the Pasha, the Governor of the citadel, arrives, Lankendem presents three young women he wants to sell to him. All three are soon rejected, so Lankendem presents the enigmatic Gulnare. The Pasha buys her immediately. Meanwhile Medora attempts to escape with the help of Conrad’s slave, Ali, but is stopped. Peering under her veils, the Pasha is taken by Medora’s beauty and insists she dance for him.

As Medora dances everyone is entranced by her beauty; the Pasha, unable to resist such temptation, buys her as well. Consumed with love for her, Conrad commands Ali and the pirates to raid the village kidnapping both Medora and Lankendem and taking them back to their secret hideaway.

Act II – The Pirate’s Cave

Reunited again, Conrad shows his hideout to Medora, promising her all his treasures and possessions. Birbanto, the second in command, confronts Conrad, for all the riches are not his to give.

After Medora, Conrad and Ali dance to entertain the crew of pirates, she pleads for the slave girls’ freedom. Conrad agrees, but Birbanto rebels: a ferocious fight ensues with Conrad victorious.

Birbanto devises a devious plan: he sprays a rose with a sleeping potion, which sends Conrad into a drugged sleep. As Conrad lays unconscious, he decides to kidnap Medora, who cuts his arms when trying to defend herself.

In the confusion, Lankendem steals her back and escapes. When Conrad awakes, Birbanto feigns ignorance: his captain vows to rescue his love again.

Act III – The Pasha’s Palace

Gulnare is entertaining the Pasha and the Vizier when they are interrupted by Lankendem entering the palace with Medora. The Pasha is delighted Medora has been recaptured and declares he will make her his most treasured wife.

To celebrate, he smokes on his opium pipe and soon falls asleep, and dreams of his harem in his fantasy garden, with Gulnare and Medora dancing amongst flowers.

The Pasha is awakened by the arrival of Conrad, Birbanto and the pirates disguised as merchants, minstrels and conjurors. They trick their way into the palace, before revealing their true identities: Conrad and his men chase away the Pasha as the pirates dance in victory. Birbanto suddenly rushes in chasing Gulnare, and Medora then exposes Birbanto as a traitor and Conrad shoots him. Ali helps Medora, Gulnare and Conrad escape and they flee to the ship, now reunited.

((Post away! Hope you all have fun with it! ))

[Rhodes]

Rhodes Vasilakis did not have any nicknames at the Ballet, nor anywhere else for that matter beyond the use of the diminutive Rho, and even that was only used by his closest friends. Nothing as self-important as all of Dante Lorenzo Domínguez-Álvarez’s many epithets and sobriquets, the latest of which still amused him.

Every time Rhodes overheard the words El Tres he could not help but stifle a smile. That Dante had been (still was?) in competition with him during their winter show had come as a surprise to the Greek, information he was not let in on until weeks after the Nutcracker performance. It was also something of a compliment whether Dante meant it to be one or not. That the powerful artist that was the Black Eagle even deigned to view him as competition meant he must see Rhodes as a potential threat.

It was immense experience and practice married together with talent that had molded Dante into the spectacular ballerino that he was today—experience Rhodes was simply not old enough yet to have had and therefore he did not begrudge the man his spotlight and accolades. Rhodes knew he would get there someday.

And so he practiced; day in, day out, spending long hours in the studio even after rehearsals with the company and even taking in Dante’s advice when it was shared. While the man’s egotism was often grating (which meant he spent as much time ignoring Dante as he was attempting to learn from him), he would never deny the elder ballerino’s ability to command a stage. He’d done more leaps than Rhodes, and more turns, yes, but where Dante was focused on being better than those around him, the only competition Rhodes had was with himself and his only goal was to be better than he had been the day before.

Le Corsaire saw Rhodes in close quarters with Dante, acting as his second in command. Birbanto was not so much the villain of the story in Rhodes’ mind, despite bearing all the hallmarks of one with his violence, rebellion, and betrayal—at least not compared to those in the ballet who kept and sold slaves. It was an uncomfortable story for the Greek, whose own family had been touched by the slave trade in terrible ways. While he himself had not experienced that horror, it hit close enough home to sting if he dwelled on the story too long, and had therefore become fixated on the technical side of the performance.

Barbaric tale aside, Le Corsaire was filled with beautiful choreography and it was a joy to not only be surrounded by the talent of his fellows but to work alongside them so closely. There was Dante’s charisma, Josette’s grace, Brianna’s stunning turns. Each added their own unique splendor to the stage, but Ali’s pas were among some of Rhodes’ absolute favorites. Therefore it was James' powerful technique that outshined them all with his low, rock solid lunge landings and command of the choreography’s complexity at fervent tempos.

They were all of them responsible for encouraging Rhodes to elevate himself, to work harder than he’d ever done in preparation for this show, and the months spent working on his over split could be seen in each flawlessly executed grand jeté. Rhodes performed with abandon from every fluid moment of his opening sequence to the final confrontational act when Conrad dealt his killing blow.

[Josette Wheeler]

“In the stillness of your presence, you can feel your own formless and timeless reality as the unmanifested life that animates your physical form. You can then feel the same life deep within every other human and every other creature. You look beyond the veil of form and separation. This is the realization of oneness. This is love.”

~ Echart Tolle

Josette sat in one of the rehearsal spaces at the Shanachie Theater. Alone with her thoughts and the synopsis for the ballet company’s latest production Le Corsaire, Josette read through the overview of the ballet, its prologue which opens the story on the open sea, a rescue operation already underway to the bazaar and pirate caves and finally a battle in a palace. It all sounded like a grand adventure with exotic sets and extravagant costumes, yet the young ballerina felt a keen sense of disconnection. An unshakable sadness settled as she read the pages one more time…a kindred feeling to something within the tale that she could not quite yet put her finger on.

You cannot dance this ballet, Josette, if you choose to judge it. Any part of it. You will do as you have always done. With every costume you have slipped into from lifetime to lifetime. You will make it your own.

The voice rose up within her like a desert oasis though rather than calm and replenish it forced a rigidity into her limbs, the words making her tense as her insides felt cold and hollow. How like that voice to surreptitiously scrutinize her thoughts and recon her reticence, thus far, to embrace the role of Medora. Sure, she had to play the love interest of Dante, something the arrogant Black Eagle had been crowing about since the casting assignments came down, but there was morethere and her serious conversation with the foreign born ballerino still lingered in her ears—the words a bridge to topic of slavery and the lives such a terrible thing had touched, its repugnant ripples echoing throughout time.

“Do you think these things are a thing of the past?” Dante asked as he stretched upon the barre. They still happen. In this very city, in fact. Your brother warns you away from dockside for a reason. Still, it is our job to dance the tale of Le Corsaire and let each audience member take from it what they will, si?”

Josette enjoyed being able to get to know Rhodes through working together. She trusted him as a partner onstage. Fight choreography required an immense amount of trust for both partners. Even as their bodies tangled like the delicate branches of trees, Josette wielded the stage blade with a certain fierce intensity and easy familiarity—as if the art of defending herself with a blade had been taught to her at an early age. A bit breathless, even as the two mimed the fight, it brought up unpleasant memories, but it was their job to convey to the audience that this fight was indeed veryreal.

“He’s threatened by you, you know.” Spoken to Rhodes softly one day after rehearsal. She swept a bit of soft her dark hair back from the long nape of that graceful neck that had come loose from dancing the fight scene with Rhodes. “Dante would not be acting this way if he did not see something in you that he knew was utterly magnetic to the audience. It’s no excuse, I know. But you hold your own, you’re not cowed—and you don’t dance to compete and it shows. You bring something special to this stage that no one else can, Rhodes.”

A look to the clock and she uttered a soft curse in French. She was late for her costume fitting. Into her bag went her water bottle, towel and all the rest of her things before she was
fluttering from the room as she rushed to her fitting. “We’ll run it
again later, yes? Thank you, Rho.” A soft smile for the young
ballerino.


“There now…” One of the costume assistants murmured to Josette as she settled the gossamer veil atop Josette’s head. Long fingers lightly plucked at it to ensure it fell and draped as it should about the girl’s head and shoulders. “Such an enchanting look.” She commented as she eyed Josette’s light blue costume which left more flesh exposed than not. “We’ll start a bidding war with this look, hm?” She gently teased Josette. It was a stunning creation, the blue as light and soft as a dawn sky, the golden head piece glittering in the light and just enough red woven into the costume to create a stark contrast against
her soft skin.

Still—Josie did not feel beautiful in that particular moment. She felt like property. The veil settled like a stone weight about her, the little star aware in her vibrating DNA that a veil like this was a sign of ownership. It had originally meant to be a sign of respectability and high-born status. It was meant to seclude while slaves and prostitutes were forbidden the veil as a sign of their public availability. To Josette, it was a prison sentence. Either way, she keenly felt the pain and anguish within her cells and cellular memories.

When Josette was lifted upon auction dais by Lankendem to dance at the Pasha’s behest as he peeked beneath her veil, she could not help but feel the trauma such a location had endured. She could feel the vibration in her feet as she was set upon the altar of slavery and though it was, in this performance, a figurative sale, Josette distinctly felt the pain which had soaked into the very wood the set piece was built upon like the tears spilled by shattered families, by the blood of the defiant. Even the trees who had given the timber for its construction wept. It all soaked into the tiny ballerina as it threatened to choke her like an iron collar or smoke, burn her like a master’s brand, or flames all around her.

Witch

Thoughts of standing alongside Fia flashed through her mind. A
memory? A delicate hand raised to her throat unconsciously as memories of collars and ropes came flooding back to her and she could not seem to hold them back.

Your cells carry ancient memories. Let them go.

The night of the performance, there was a soft inhale of the Rose’s scent as if to strengthen her resolve before tossing the flower down to Dante’s Conrad. It was the symbol of a receptive vessel for the soul, the rose whose cup-like sepals supported the petals which bloomed to receive the influence of the Divine Feminine. The ancient Mesopotamian goddess Inanna, who preceded the western Aphrodite as the Goddess of Love and was originally associated with the planet Venus, claimed the rosette as her icon. The rose was a symbol of eternal love, its vibrational frequencies something much deeper that resonated
within her cells. Josie knew all too well that some were forced into such a life of servitude and slaver, that others even chose it whether it be for protection, pleasure, or that it was their chosen path to feel free—even empowered.

As a result, during the performance of her first entrance to her slave variation as Medora , Josette lifted her chin as she was lifted upon that auction block. Salome herself could not have enchanted more as Josette danced her variation for the Pasha and cast off all judgments like veils, each a new layer of utter vulnerability revealed. It was not Inanna’s descent into the Underworld, though there was a hint of an echo of the sultry Sumerian’s steps, but more of an ascension of sorts as she danced for herself and for each woman or man that had either chosen the veil or chose to rip it away.

The sound of coins changing hands ripped her from the moment to signal the end of her variation. They blazed like the sun whose light they caught in the stage lights as they exchanged hands all about her, as her worth and life were bartered on and haggled over. There was a price to pay, be it in a high price auction in a Mesopotamian marketplace or the Nile.

No Judgment

Jamie’s variation took her breath away as she saw her dance partner defy gravity with his leaps as Ali. Even now, her dance partner surprised her with what he brought to each role and his skill as he commanded the stage amazed her. When together with Brianna as Gulnare, the two dancers wove a heady opium induced dream like a veritable harem of flowers as the two moved together as unique and beautiful blooms about the stage. Enchanting the audience each night with the fervor of a fever dream.

There was also a quiet moment that Josette took each night during the performance to gather the roses that had been cast upon the stage. Who knew what secrets she whispered to the blooms? They would forever remain within each of the petals.

[Dante Alvarez]

Dante Lorenzo Domínguez-Álvarez occupied the rehearsal studio alone having arrived earlier than the scheduled time to get his own work in free of adoring fans, fellow performers, and instructors. It was a habit, arriving early and staying late, that Dante had begun years ago. Dante had fallen in love with dance during the festivals of Spain but had fallen in love with the pursuit of perfection at school in England. He had to be, or so he convinced himself, to achieve what he wanted.

The early start was a time to stretch and perform his own routines meant solely for his own body and mind. Headphones were donned, his own personal playlist selected to drown out the distracting world around him before he began to put his body through those first motions. Dante was aware, in those moments of clarity that came when mind and body were operating in perfect unison, that he was in pursuit of what he could never truly achieve. He was aware that perfection was a dream and that being the best was transitory, but that awareness and knowledge could not keep him from pursuing perfection with the time he had.

He had been viewed as an outsider; a Spanish born pretender to British Ballet despite having been born in Gibraltar. And so, Dante…Dante before the Black Eagle, El Tres and the Bad Boy of Ballet had existed, had resolved to become all those things those names would one day signify, to not just be worthy of respect, but to demand it in ways that could not be denied…demanded through a perfect dance. The choreography of the Black Eagle’s life in ballet had been a knife fight in a phone booth. Cutthroat competition full of judgments that had nothing to do with technical talent had been the norm and Dante had carved his path to the very peaks and summits of the ballet world by marrying talent with determination.

Along the way to career heights the world over, dance had become more than just expression for the outlaw ballerino. It was more than a display of dominance or simply an artistic story. No. Dante Lorenzo Domínguez-Álvarez saw dance as a conjoining of artist and audience, a journey of emotion that demanded his absolute best, that demanded…perfection. It was that background and current attitude that Dante now brought to his performances at the Shanachie Theater. It was a philosophy tempered by Cesare’s sentiments on one hand and consumed by the awareness of time on the other. One could not be a ballerino forever. Time would inevitably pull even the loftiest of grand jetés back to the stage and Dante had long ago decided there would be no slow decline to end the Black Eagle’s career.

A change had begun to take shape within him around Christmas...a change that brought home the realization of many things. Of time...of relationships...of legacy and memory. He had heard the rumblings regarding his demanding attitudes at group rehearsals and practices, that he was threatened by talented dancers like Rhodes, that the competition was pushing him to crack, and that age was just beginning to take its toll. Of course, Dante was also known for making up critiques and criticisms with his own imagination for motivation. Regardless, one did not threaten El Águila Negra. To soar where eagles dared was to reach rarified pinnacles and prominence and Dante openly invited the competition if only because it was lonely at the very top. Dante welcomed the push and would push back and demand the utmost in those teaching moments shared with Rhodes. Perhaps it was fitting, then, that their roles also competed with one another. It was not all demands and tirades as moments of celebration peppered the challenging rehearsals with applause for Jaime and Brianna, Josette and yes even Rhodes! El Tres wanted the absolute best…for himself, for the young ballerino (because there was greatness there), for the entire cast, for the Company and for the audience that would give of their time and money. He would except nothing less.

The same sentiment guided his conversation with Josette when they spoke after her arrival to the studio. Was she nervous at getting to play his love interest? She certainly would not have been the first caught up with butterflies at such a prospect! Do not fear, Marioposa…Dante will rescue you! Yet he had seen the talented ballerina carried a heavy weight upon her shoulders, a weight which left her seemingly troubled regarding a theme within the ballet. He brought a coltish energy to their interactions, a series of free performances meant to bring a smile to that heavy countenance. Dante caught the flung rose with a flourish and a grin, no one rehearsal exactly the same as he built a portfolio of takes to keep the performances fresh. Dante revealed the pirate cave hideout with all the wonder of a childhood tree fort and threw himself to the climatic chase and fight at the Pasha’s palace with an uninhibited zeal rarely seen from such a technical star.

Slavery was well known through the Mediterranean and practiced by whatever culture rose to power be they Egyptian, Roman, Persian, Ottoman or European. Dante tempered his delivery for the girl, yet still he spoke the truth. Whatever misgivings one might have about the subject of the ballet, they all owed it to one another, to the audience, to those who had been slaves in the past…owed them all top effort to give the audience not just a thrill…but a thought or two as well.

And so Dante, unused to the role of hero as much as mentor, would take the stage as Conrad for the performance of Le Corsaire with all the effort, diligence and determination which had governed his entire career. No longer young, yet not quite old… Dante Lorenzo Domínguez-Álvarez, El Águila Negra, El Tres, Bad Boy of Ballet… El Héroe Pirata…delighted the audience once more while forever pursuing that perfect dance with whatever time he had left.