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Since its premiere at the Theatre National de l’Opera in Paris, many major ballet companies have staged productions of The Firebird, some recreating the original choreography while others designed their own interpretations. 

On behalf of Ballet Austin in January 2002, Stephen Mills accepted the invitation of The John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts to perform his production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream as part of the Kennedy Center’s Youth and Family Public Performance season.

As a Chinese person, the second act of The Nutcracker has always bugged me. Looking more broadly at the historic depictions of “Chinese” people on the Western performing arts stage, we see fantasy elements of what Europeans thought Chinese people looked like handed down to us from the baroque era. Sallow “grotesque” dancers would don Fu Manchu mustaches and rice paddy hats then shuffle and bob around the stage in between acrobatic tricks. In the diverse multicultural society we live in now, and with an awareness of over 5,000 years of rich Chinese cultural heritage to choose symbols from, can we not make better creative choices for today?

For a dancer, starting a new season is like unwrapping a gift. This year, as the dancers of OBT open the gift of the 2021-22 season, mystery and delight are intensified and weighted by the uncertainty and devastation these artists, and the world, have known.