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In this final lecture, we will focus on one of the best-preserved Diaghilev productions, The Prodigal Son, a strikingly beautiful ballet by Prokofiev/Balanchine/Rouault.
This lecture explores these notions through an examination of the film Silent Running (1972), which imagined gardens in space, in which the last remnants of Earth’s vegetation are preserved aboard gigantic spaceships.
Diaghilev seemed to be the nemesis of traditional ballet, but he was ready to draw on the rigorous classical schooling of his dancers whenever it suited him.
This lecture examines the work of Hugo de Vries, a Dutch botanist who was one of the first to claim that science would allow plants and animals to be designed to order.
This lecture examines the fascination surrounding works that are left unfinished at their composers’ deaths. It also looks at the urge that certain of us have to complete these uncompleted works, however unwisely and however unbidden.
We will trace the musical, visual and choreographical consequences of this new trend through several later Diaghilev ballets: Parade (Satie/Picasso), Chout (Prokofiev/Larionov), Le Pas d’Acier (Prokofiev/Yakulov).
How do the different versions reflect the politics and culture of their own particular times? What makes a good Carol movie? Is it truth to the original or is it something else?