Shadowplay ballet is a one-act ballet that was choreographed by Tudor and first performed on the 25th of January 1967 at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.
The music was by Charles Koechlin (Les Bandar-Log and La Course de Printemps).
The scenery and costumes were designed by Michael Annals.
What Was Shadowplay Ballet All About?
The scene is a forest with a great tree with hanging rope structures for the monkey folk (Arbonreals) and, below it, out here, the boy with the matted hair is alone.
To the boy come inhabitants of ‘the penumbra.’
These are people who communicate experience, the world, and social attitudes.
Among them are the Arboreals, silly and annoying, then the Aerials, seeming like Cambodian dancers, communication perhaps more worthwhile values, then Terrestrial, who is a male dancer representing passion and experience. Finally, the Celestials offer the boy choice and combat.
In the end, after great struggles, he returns to his place below the tree, sitting as we found him.
This is an obscure but magnificent work and it appeared at a time when many people thought they had seen their last new Tudor ballet.
Two more ballets in the same genre had followed Pillar of Fire in 1942, Dim Lustre was staged in 1943, Undertow in 1945, and then nothing of the same quality had appeared since.
Tudor left Ballet Theater in 1950, worked briefly with New York City Ballet, and was associated for many years with the Metropolitan Opera as well as teaching for the dance department of the Juilliard School of Music.
It seemed that creativity had passed. Then in 1963, he produced Echoes of Trumpets for the Royal Swedish Ballet, a major work that contained all his old dramatic strength, psychological perception, and theatre sense.
A second phase of choreographic creation had begun in which Shadow play takes its place as an extension of the psychological drama in which he is a master.
Using symbols suggested by Kepling’s The Jungle Book which had inspired Koechlin’s music, Le Livre de la Jungle, he burrows deep beneath the surface of society to show the forces which mold individuals, and the individual struggling for self-assertion against these forces.
The point of departure is Koechlin’s music. The composer sees the monkeys as symbols or anarchy and vulgarity in opposition to the order and mystery of things and beings, represented by the jungle and its ‘noble’ creatures, and of course Mowgli himself.
In the World Premiere of this ballet Anthony Dowell danced the Boy, Derrick Rencher the Terrestrial, and Merle Park the Celestial.
On the 23rd of July 1975, the American Ballet Theater did this ballet at the New York State Theatre. The boy with matted hair was danced by Mikhail Baryshnikov, Gelsey Kirkland the Celestial, and Jonas Kage the Terrestrial.
In my opinion, Antony Tudor is a hell of choreographer! I didn’t know that he choreographed this ballet as well. Otherwise, Shadowplay shot the battle between good and evil, between silliness and wisdom, between light and darkness. At the end, the boy is found at his initial place in the forest but we don’t know what he chose? Too bad!