One Dead at the Paris Opera Ballet La Source 1866-2014
others at the same time-and in the same ways-as they were thinking about plants. Along with these stereotypes, with a flower promising hybridity in a green ecology, and the death of the embodied Source recuperated as a force for regeneration, the ballet can be read as a fable of science and the
performance as its demonstration. Programmed for the opening gala of the new Opera, the Palais Garnier, in 1875 the ballet reflected not so much a timeless Orient as timely colonial policy and engineering in North Africa, the management of water and women. One Dead at the Paris Opera Ballet takes readers to four historic performances, over 150 years, showing how-- through the sacrifice of a feminized Nature-- La Source represented the biopolitics of sex and race, and the cosmopolitics of human and natural resources. Its 2011 reinvention at the Paris
Opera, following the adoption of new legislation banning the veil in public spaces, might have staged gender and climate justice in sync with the Arab Spring, but opted instead for luxury and dream. Its 2014 reprise might have focused on decolonizing the stage or raising eco-consciousness, but
exemplified the greater urgency attached to Islamist threat rather than imminent climate catastrophe, missing the ballet's historic potential to make its audience think.
Publisher Name | Oxford University Press USA |
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Author Name | Hagendorf, Col |
Format | Audio |
Bisac Subject Major | PER |
Language | NG |
Isbn 10 | 0190061820 |
Isbn 13 | 9780190061821 |
Target Age Group | min:NA, max:NA |
Dimensions | 00.91" H x 00.06" L x 10.00" W |
Page Count | 224 |
Felicia McCarren, Professor of French at Tulane University in New Orleans, has been a fellow of the Paris Institute for Advanced Study and the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme (2016-17). She is a member of the seminar in the cultural history of dance at EHESS, Paris and the international
research group PARIFA (Performance, Archive and Repertory in the Francophone Atlantic).