This definitely isn’t the easiest Shakespeare play to stage. With its island setting, magical characters and various subplots, not to mention a giant storm, The Tempest is a huge undertaking.
Of Moving Colors is doing it with the added twist of translating the story into dance, with 15 performers, an original score from a visiting artist, the Baton Rouge Symphony’s Chamber Players and some spoken-word poetry, too.
Feeling queasy yet? Not to worry, Artistic Director Garland Goodwin Wilson is here to steer the ship.
“Cross pollination has always been my passion,” says Wilson, who has been with the company for about 20 years. “When I started at Of Moving Colors, I didn’t think it would be just a dance company. I thought it would be more of a production company that worked with a lot of artists and a lot of genres.”
Rebecca Sawyer plays Miranda in The Tempest. Aaron Hogan / Courtesy Of Moving Colors
Now ending its 30th year, the company has kept it interesting through collaborations with musicians, aerialists, martial artists and even furniture designer Peter Shire, who was an artist-in-residence at LSU at the time.
One such collaboration was with Music Director Timothy Muffitt of Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra and its Chamber Players for OMC’s first performance at the newly opened Manship Theatre in 2005. “We had a blast, so we’ve touched base about every year,” Wilson says.
When planning The Tempest, the timing was right for another partnership with Muffitt as OMC approached its big milestone. After a successful adaptation of Romeo & Juliet in 2015, Wilson was interested in exploring other Shakespeare works through dance.
She turned to New York-based Pavel Zustiak and New Orleans-based John Allen as choreographers. Both had worked with OMC on Romeo & Juliet.
“I am not an expert at adapting Shakespeare, but I’ve always been in love with it,” Wilson says. “And I felt like we had this really good team for the first collaboration, and I wanted to stick to that team.”
Zustiak connected her with another New Yorker, violist and composer Christian Frederickson, to put together a new score for The Tempest.
Frederickson will perform with BRSO’s Chamber Players in the production, with choreography from Zustiak, Allen and Lindsey Dietz Marchant, also of New York.
On outsourcing the choreography, Wilson says, “I think it’s food for the dancers when we bring in someone new with a national perspective. … It’s also quite a compliment to Baton Rouge—they always seem to have such a great time here that hopefully we’re creating more awareness about what we have to offer.”
Calvin Rowe plays Prospero in The Tempest. Aaron Hogan / Courtesy Of Moving Colors.
And about that spoken-word poetry component? Chancelier “Xero” Skidmore, executive director of Forward Arts Inc. and a local poet, was enlisted to join the cast.
“In Romeo & Juliet, we had quotes projected on the wall, but everyone knows the story there,” Wilson says. “The Tempest is so much more of a detailed plot, so we thought we could really undergird our non-verbal performance by putting in some spoken word to help take the audience with us.”
That journey seems to bring everything full circle for the year that OMC, and Baton Rouge, recently went through. After the August 2016 flood, OMC recalibrated its October performance set to Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons to reflect a more somber take on summertime.
In January, its annual community production put into perspective the number of families still struggling after the storm. OMC saw an increase in scholarship applications to offset the cost for children to participate.
With The Tempest—besides its obvious connection to storms—Wilson honed in on the theme of forgiveness, as Prospero eventually learns to forgive his jealous brother Antonio for setting him adrift at sea years ago.
“If we can be one little step to allowing people to forgive just what happened, whether it’s God, whether it’s life or nature … maybe not even forgiveness but a little bit of ointment for the [problems] people are still living with,” Wilson says, “I don’t think the arts can be called to anything much greater.”
ALL ON BOARD:
Of Moving Colors’ production of The Tempest is set for May 5-6 at the Manship Theatre. Find out more at ofmovingcolors.org. The performance features a strong cast of 15 dancers and local and national collaborators. Here’s a look at some of the team:
Garland Goodwin Wilson – Of Moving Colors artistic director
Timothy Muffitt – Baton Rouge Symphony
Orchestra music director
Chancelier “Xero” Skidmore – Forward Arts Inc. executive director
Christian Frederickson – New York-based violist and composer Pavel Zustiak and Lindsey Dietz Marchant – New York-based choreographers John Allen – New Orleans-based choreographer
This article was originally published in the May 2017 issue of 225 Magazine.
