Light Cue 23

A few years ago I lit a production of Lilac Garden for New York Theater Ballet reconstructed by the late Sallie Wilson. I was given the following to help guide my lighting of the piece. It is written by Antony Tudor, choreographer for the ballet.

Wilson was rather exacting with her reconstructions and this was given to me as a means of most accurately addressing the lighting for this piece. In deference to the rigor with which we reconstructed the ballet, I am including Tudor’s words, unedited, with the inclusion of grammatical and spelling errors, as per the original.

I hope you enjoy.

“Jardin aux Lilas” is more often requested by companies for inclusion in their repertory than any of my other ballets, and is often asked for by groups with little experience and small resources in matters of technique, personal, or training. It must be supposed that, to a director, it must seem very practical in every way, but this is a misconception and a delusion. And the delusions seem to include that of regarding this piece as “romantic”, because there is a romanticism about the scenery with its overwhelming masses of lilacs, and of the predominantly blue lighting, for the dim light filtering through from the right off-stage area where we suppose the house to be is the only other color used.

Although the short story based on the idea of the “Droit du Seigneur” was abandoned, the situation remains a dramatic one, without the former melodrama, and the “dramatis personae” of the four principals are thrown into relief by the background of the young friends of Caroline with their easy sort of romanticism of the adolescents and teenagers.

The ballet is steeped in the conventions of the beginning of the twentieth century, when young girls of good families were trained in the good manners of young ladies of refinement, with the right social graces and an understanding that a girl remains a virgin until she is Married. Caroline’s young friend who makes his appearance unexpectedly, having unexpectedly, having played “french leave” from his Academy, has grown up with her as children together and they probably always assumed in their innocence that they would eventually be married with each other.

Unfortunately the diminishing fortunes of her parents, having no longer the wealth that was formerly theirs have arranged a betrothal, with her consent, to Caroline with a very rich young man of considerable financial means. He has great ambition, is very successful and is accustomed to knowing what he wants and always getting it, and his marriage to Caroline will open doors to many of the old families who still wielded enormous influence. The fourth of the group of principals is the fashionable about-town woman with whom he has conducted a love relationship of long standing, and she also appears unexpectedly upon the scene through the side entrance. It is understandable that characters of this complexity cannot expect to be performed by young talented technicians whose sole education seems to have been acquired in the limited conversations of the ballet studios and dressing rooms. And they can be very limiting.

In this ballet I had the inestimable advantage of working is out with dancers with whom I had worked very much before, and we were able to understand each other and to be truly “simpatico” but all of whom were bringing adult minds with them.

They understood my approach and worried with it, but Rambert herself did not and after a few incidences when she tried to get my dancers to put more motion into it, to “feel with the emotions” or in other words to ham it up and turned it toward the melodrama that I was so studiously avoiding, then it became necessary to forbid her to attend any further rehearsals of this piece, and if she as much as poked her nose in the door than all action came to an immediate halt.

This ballet concerns itself with the hiding of emotions from public display, but still conveying through the performance the emotions that were being concealed. As is the case with the majority of my ballets the performers must recognize the existence of the audience’s presence and the fourth side of the stage in “Jardin aux Lilas” is as much overgrown with lilacs in the old part of a manor house garden as are painted scenery on stage, and the proscenium arch is not there in essence. And the audience are witnessing the action clandestinely.

The ballet continues a regular course of narrative choreography until the moment of Caroline’s swooning into her betrothed’s arms. The succeeding sleepwalking episode, which should be handled as though water divination was happening, and the succeeding sequence for the four principals should be looked upon as if the ballet until this moment were being regarded nostalgically from a period still forty years ahead. This is ended by the White girl beckoning that the carriage has arrived to take Caroline and her future husband into their new life far away, and the ballet ends with her young friend left alone and solitary in the deserted garden, and regretting that he will likely never see Caroline again and that this last time together was made impossible of any joys of being together by the constant interruptions by other people in the ballet. Now all of this of the past and the future is now present.

Musically it is necessary that Chanson’s guiding remarks shall be followed and also that the main theme whenever it returns shall also return to the “l’istesso tempo”, especially with the entrance of the orchestra after the original exposition by the solo violin.

The lighting should be as though moonlight was filtering through overhead branches and should be of various shades from blue spotlights to cover the whole dancing area of the stage.