Choreography: Ruthanna Boris
Music: Louis Moreau Gottschalk, James Bland and Anonymous Minstrels; complied
by Paul Keuter and Ruthanna Boris
A classical ballet is the form of a minstrel show, Cakewalk was premiered
by New York City Ballet in 1951. At that time Lincoln Kirstein asked
Ruthanna Boris to do a ballet in costume. Ms. Boris describes the
ballet's beginning: "In the warehouse I came across the costumes
form Blackface, which had been a very serious ballet about black and white
in the South in the antebellum period, and when I saw them, the idea of
Cakewalk was born."
"I did a lot of research on minstrels and discovered that around
the period of Giselle (1842), minstrel shows were putting on caricatures
of this kind of ballet. Hortense, Queen of The Swamp Lilies, is
a kind of Giselle. And of course everybody was very busy with necrophilia
in those days. Finally, I found a lady in her eighties who had been
a cakewalk dancer and I took some lessons from her."
Ms. Boris choreographed a series of dances which evokes a minstrel entertainment
in the Mississippi showboat tradition. The choreography of the ballet
draws its character from polyrhythmic African dance sources as equally
as it draws its shape and content from European sources of balletic development.
Each individual dance is choreographed to reveal one single element from
the group of theatrical characteristics which have come to be associated
with the performing style and repertoire of American minstrelsy, circa
1830-60. Although the ballet has been composed to show forth in
the terms of American minstrelsy, it actually draws its entity and essence
from a deeply balletic concept. Ms. Boris has colored the balletic
movements with the inflections of folk dance and the rhythms and mannerisms
of the minstrel show.
The dancing style, developed through the use of academic ballet technique,
includes a strong infusion of the buoyant drive and foursquare energy
which are the basic qualities of traditional Cakewalk rhythms, kicks,
struts and style. The traditional cakewalk was invented and developed
by black people during their bondage in American slavery.
The choreographic structure of the work consists of appropriate combinations
of steps, movements, and floor patterns which have all been coordinated
within timing, phrasing, and accenting according to the specific quality
requirements of each individual dance.
There is no story to Cakewalk; the ballet is instead a series of dances.
The Interlocutor supervises all, and the Ends keep discipline on the distant
flanks. These three also have opportunities to dance as well as
to introduce the other dances.
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