The Mother

Ballet 5:8 Artistic Director Julianna Slager's 2017 premier The Mother.

The Mother is an interpretation of the poem by Pulitzer Prize author and Chicagoan Gwendolyn Brooks.

The poem stands face to face with regret and refuses to blink. It presses right into the pain and allows the abortion of decades past to come bubbling to the surface with sorrow, rage and haunting visions of what might have been.   

Premiere: October, 2017
Choreography: Julianna Slager
Costumes: Lorianne Robertson

“The ambitious undertaking of giving visual voice to the exploration of being an ‘almost Mother,’ but making the very personal and private choice not be, and then, tracking the ramifications from that decision is the subject of Ballet 5:8’s sensitive and articulate The Mother. From the perspective of a ‘present time,’ choreographer Julianna Rubio Slager, deftly weaves the emotional questions that live on after such hard choices are made no matter the reasons. And she is fortunate to have in the lead role the artistic power of Lorianne (Barclay) Robertson, who dances in seamless clarity through this landscape of present pondering replete with lingering longings for lost lives and loves.”
- Pilar Garcia, Former acting coach to Gelsey Kirkland, on Ballet 5:8’s “The Mother”