This article was last updated on April 16, 2022
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Coleman Lemieux & Compagnie (CLC) proudly presents the world premiere of From the House of Mirth, directed and choreographed by James Kudelka from May 9 through May 13 at its new home, The Citadel.
Kudelka turns to America’s Gilded Age and Edith Wharton’s 1905 novel, The House of Mirth, as inspiration for his latest work. From the House of Mirth is a music/dance/theatre collaboration with original score by Rodney Sharman and libretto by Alex Poch-Goldin, featuring both choreography and theatrical direction by Kudelka.
Telling the story “not as a ballet,” says Kudelka, “not as an opera, and not as a sung play,” each of the art forms picks up the thread in turn. When the dance can no longer support the complexity of the drama, other devices take over the storytelling. When images need to be captured in a moment or themes presented in all their subtlety, Kudelka’s refined yet passionate choreography takes the focus. When emotions swell to the breaking point, the live music fills the space and carries us along its own intricate journey.
The novel tells of Lily Bart’s tragic descent from the glittering social circle of 1890s New York to poverty and a solitary death, her dreams of marriage – whether for wealth or love – shattered by convention and by her own conflicted desires. Kudelka’s challenge has been to create a vocabulary of movement, music and theatre that can evoke the story’s moral issues, while illustrating the heroine’s inner life and her relationships to the men that help her, make demands on her and would save her.
The whole evening is presented as a salon concert, staged in intimate venues including private homes. Plans are currently underway to tour it to The Mount, Edith Wharton’s home in the Berkshires, for the 150th anniversary of Wharton’s birth.
James Kudelka is widely acknowledged as one of North America’s most innovative choreographers. His mastery of both classical ballet and modern/contemporary dance has earned him commissions from companies as stylistically diverse as American Ballet Theatre, Chicago’s Hubbard Street Dance and Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal. Kudelka’s work covers an impressive range, from virtuoso pas de deux, through large-scale and always arresting adaptations of such classics as Swan Lake, The Nutcracker and Cinderella, to boldly innovative creative collaborations with dancers, designers and musicians. After nine distinguished years as artistic director of the National Ballet of Canada (1996-2005), James Kudelka continues to undertake collaborative projects that engage and challenge him as a choreographer. In 2008, Kudelka became CLC’s Resident Choreographer.
Coleman Lemieux & Compagnie, founded in 2000 by Bill Coleman and Laurence Lemieux, creates both intimate, small-scale performances and spectacular stage shows featuring some of Canada’s greatest dancers, as well as now-legendary site-specific events in both urban and rural settings.
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