Ballet fine tunes ‘Mirror Mirror’
Pink dabbles with details of 2014 piece
Once upon a time, fanciful, dark folk tales served as moral education and a common culture for much of the western world.
Historians inform us that the story of Snow White has been told since the Middle Ages. It was famously adapted and published by the Grimm bothers in 1812 and, even more famously, found its way to film in the 1937 Disney animated adaptation.
For someone in the business of telling stories through ballet, such as the Milwaukee Ballet’s artistic director Michael Pink, the story of Snow White and its themes of good vs. evil, vanity, envy, seduction and betrayal are far too rich to pass up.
Pink created a vivid new ballet based on the story in 2014, titling it “Mirror Mirror.” Pink’s “Mirror Mirror” returns June 1 to the Marcus Center’s Uihlein Hall as the final production of this Milwaukee Ballet season.
Speaking recently about the return of the production, Pink said, “Audiences respond to seeing things again in a short time. Particularly something as complex as ‘Mirror Mirror.’ You can really only absorb so much in a first viewing.”
“It will feel like a new experience,” Pink continued, “but with more depth of character and detail in subsequent viewings than the first time people saw it.”
He compared seeing a ballet more than once to rereading a favorite book, saying that in the first viewing/reading one tends to get swept up what’s about to happen and where the story’s going. But in a re-viewing/rereading, details and subplots are more apparent, and the story becomes richer than in a first experience of it.
Speaking of the ballet adaptation, he said, “It’s the power of non-verbal theater that you have to contribute your own interpretation to what you see.” He added that an audience works harder, whether intentionally or not, in non-verbal theater.
Pink said that bringing the ballet back now also gives him the luxury of going back into the work to “dabble, play, finish, and change” a few things.
“We know that the ballet works,” he said. “Now we can go back to finetune some of the details and develop a few things further.”
One of Pink’s favorite scenes in the ballet is “the first time Claudia opens the mirror and sees herself. She is immediately transfixed by the vanity of seeing herself, and the demons of the mirror are manipulating her. I always refer to it as though she’s floating in water.”
He called composer Philip Feeney’s scoring of that scene particularly beautiful.
Feeney’s score came up again in a conversation with Douglas McCubbin, Milwaukee Ballet production manager, who performed the title role in
Pink’s “Dracula” with the New Zealand Ballet (2000) and the Milwaukee Ballet (2005). McCubbin was stage manager for the debut production of “Mirror Mirror.”
He finds the lighting of “Mirror Mirror” “so cool and effective, particularly the scenes involving the
mirror.”
McCubbin said that lighting designer David Grill was “really able to have a good bit of fun with the mirror to create some interesting lighting effects throughout the show.”
He said that when he stage-managed the debut production of the show, he “had the most fun getting into the score and trying to understand as much of the music as I could. I really do enjoy the score.”
Speaking of his fondness for Feeney’s music in general, McCubbin said that whenever he had a night off from dancing the role of Dracula, he would spend that show sitting in the pit with the musicians, enjoying the score from their perspective.
The Milwaukee Ballet has made a “Mirror Mirror” book to accompany the experience of this production. If readers take a close look at the pages of music that are included in the book, they will see McCubbin’s markings from the ballet’s premiere, including the vivid “Demons in trees.”
The Milwaukee Ballet recommends this ballet for adults and for children 9 and older, in part because the ballet’s story and its medieval roots are part of a tradition of teaching morality through dark, somewhat disturbing stories. Bad acts and bad behavior had dire consequences in these tales.
Stories changed over time, picking up elements of the culture of eras through which they passed and the areas in which it they were told.Some historians believe the Snow White story originated in Lohr, Germany. The Spessartmuseum, which maintains a “Snow White” exhibit, makes a pretty convincing argument, even explaining the idea of a “talking” mirror.