Histories & Topics
THEA-UT 801-002 Tuesdays 10:00-1:45p.m.
Professor Laura Levine
levine@nyu.rr.com
At the end of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, one of the lords at Leontes’ court describes a new statue of Hermione, Leontes’ wife, as being by “that rare Italian master” Giulio Romano. Critics have puzzled over the allusion because the play has gone to great lengths to establish Hermione’s chastity and Romano was famous in part for a set of pornographic images (I Modi), which depict couples in various flamboyant sexual positions. Four hundred years later, in his ballet of The Winter’s Tale Christopher Wheeldon puts a series of statues on stage that seem to invoke these images. The statues rotate, offering one appearance to us and another to Leontes. How can a study of a 21st-century ballet help shed light on an interpretive question in a Jacobean play? Is it possible, for instance, for a ballet to pose a philosophical question like the one Juliet touches on when she tells Romeo that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet? Is Shakespeare still Shakespeare without words? And does turning his plays into dance pose different challenges than those painters like Dali (below) faced or those that artists and choreographers face when they “translate” stories and novellas into new mediums? While focused on Shakespeare there will be room in the course for students to explore the ways that dance and visual art transform other sources. A student might, for instance, explore the way various Nutcrackers transform ETA Hoffman’s The Story of the Hard Nut or the way Salvador Dali imagines not only Romeo and Juliet but Alice in Wonderland. Students with an interest or background in ballet or art history are particularly invited to apply, though a background in these areas is not a pre-requisite for the course.
**Although the class will often meet from 11am to 1:45pm, students are required to hold 10-11 open for many longer class sessions, small group meetings and other required events.