The Concord of This Discord: Adapting the Late Romances for the Ballet Stage

Abstract

This essay engages with Alan Brissenden's claim that Shakespeare uses dance as a metaphor in his last plays to indicate a complex interplay between concord and discord, virtue and vengeance. While Brissenden deliberately does not address the ways in which this interplay might have been embodied through movement on the early modern stage, this essay analyzes two recent ballet versions of The Tempest (American Ballet Theatre, 2013) and The Winter's Tale (Royal Ballet, 2014) to demonstrate how choreographers can realize this dramatic conjunction through dance. Choreographers Alexei Ratmansky and Christopher Wheeldon emphasize the destructive anger of Prospero and Leontes, and both ballets end on notes of sadness, longing, and loss. Yet each also incorporates harmony and hope, primarily through the redemptive relationships between the young lovers.