The Red Shoes Ballet Suite

The Red Shoes Ballet Suite is music created for the dance theater Ballet of the Dolls’ production “The Red Shoes,” produced in 2001 and 2002. The show is based on the 1948 movie The Red Shoes, directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger in 1948, which incorporates Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale about a young girl’s love of dance.

In Hans Christian Andersen’s tale a shoemaker presents her with a magic pair of dance shoes at a street festival, and dance takes control over her when she puts on the shoes. She continues to dance until exhaustion, and can only stop when her feet are chopped off. In “The Red Shoes” movie authoritarian ballet company Director Boris Lermontov rules over his protégés, demanding complete submission to his rules, which include not allowing personal relationships to interfere with their art. He brings a new dancer, Victoria Page, into the company, and cultivates her to play the leading role in their new ballet, The Red Shoes, composed by the company’s resident composer, Julian Craster. Victoria falls in love with Julian, creating a conflict of tragic proportions between Vicky, Julian, and Lermontov. Vicky’s internal conflict between her passion for dance and her love for Julian leads her to commit suicide.

The original production of Ballet of the Dolls’ “The Red Shoes” was produced at the Ritz Theater in Northeast Minneapolis in 2001, and was re-envisioned and produced at Theatre de la Jeune Lune in 2002.

Credits

Composer: Craig Harris
Sound Design: Craig Harris
Piano: Tom Linker
Violin: Gary Schulte
Voices: Bradley Greenwald, Julie Tehven

© 2002
Copyright by Interference Arts
All rights of the producer and of the owner of the work reproduced reserved.
Unauthorized copying, hiring, lending, public performance and broadcasting of this material prohibited.

Return to the main Interference Arts Shop page.

MUSIC
SCORES
DIGITAL ILLUSTRATIONS
& PHOTOGRAPHS