Ballet 5:8’s ‘Scarlet‘ Adapts Famous Book
A book from high school English inspired Julianna Rubio Slager to write a full-length ballet.
Slager is the artistic director at Ballet 5:8 in Frankfort. She created and choreographed "Scarlet," a ballet-film hybrid adapted from Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic novel, "The Scarlet Letter."
Ballet 5:8 will perform "Scarlet" at 7 p.m. Feb. 17 at the Hemmens Cultural Center in Elgin.
"Scarlet" explores themes from the novel from a 21st-century perspective. Film elements are produced by choreographer and filmmaker Preston Miller. The performance is scored by composer Charles Ives, with spoken word created by Chicago artist Kylla Pate. The theme of the ballet is hypocrisy, shame and ultimately, the hope of redemption, Slager said.
They performed the show once in Chicago last year and have spent the year looking for funding and locations to take the show on the road — literally. After Elgin's date, the company will go on tour with "Scarlet" to dates in New Mexico and Texas, she said.
She read the book in high school and the poignant themes of judgement and hypocrisy stuck with her.
"The content of the work is timeless and that's what drew me back to it later in life to consider it as source material for a work," she said. "Hawthorne's writing style has so much description about what is happening inside the character and what is happening in between the characters, so it's not just what is happening in real time, there's a lot of internal dialogue that he deals with. I felt that that was a great thing to bring to light through dance and film. Dance can really bring an audience alongside a character emotionally in a way that many other art forms cannot, because dance can tell a story in a very tender and emotional way so you have the opportunity to evoke emotion."
Film, of course, allows a story to be told quickly and clearly, so having the two disciplines come together allowed her to tell a much broader and deeper story, Slager said.
Putting the dance together was an intense labor of love, she said. She spent about two years researching and then another roughly six months choreographing the dance. There are 18 adult dancers in the cast, plus a few children's roles as well.
She's hoping that Hawthorne's 1850 novel of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter through an affair in Puritan times, will inspire 21st-century kids to pick up the book.
"I've far too many times how much people hate the book, which is sad. It is dense, it's a lot to wade through especially with our 21st century lack of tolerance for deep reading," she said. "I actually had a high school group come to the premier. It was really neat to see a lot of the kids engage with the work on a whole other level. I do hope to inspire the younger generation to look at Hawthorne's work because even though it is dense, it is certainly worth wading through it to get the concepts and the themes that he presents."
Annie Alleman is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.
'Scarlet'
When: 7 p.m. Feb. 17
Where: Hemmens Cultural Center, 45 Symphony Way, Elgin
Tickets: $15-$40
Information: 312-725-4752; www.ballet58.org