Don Quixote Update

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"A sneak-peak into the rehearsals for Don Quixote with the company. Artistic Director Iain MacDonald and Ballet Mistress Lauren Slade discuss their roles in putting the production together. We also hear from dancers Tumi Lekana who plays Creado, the mischievous street boy as well as Ana Paulino who dances the role of the cupid Amour."

Don Quixote 2020 - Rehearsals
 
PARABLE OF CERVANTES
AND THE QUIXOTE


Tired of his Spanish land, an old soldier of the king sought solace in the vast geographies of Ariosto, in that valley of the moon where the time wasted by dreams is contained and in the golden idol of Mohammed stolen by Montalbán.

In gentle mockery of himself, he imagined a credulous man who, perturbed by his reading of marvels, decided to seek prowess and enchantment in prosaic places called El Toboso or Montiel.

Vanquished by reality, by Spain, Don Quixote died in his native village in the year 1614. He was survived but a short time by Miguel de Cervantes.

For both of them, for the dreamer and the dreamed one, the whole scheme of the work consisted in the opposition of two worlds: the unreal world of the e books of chivalry, the ordinary everyday world of the seventeenth century.

They did not suspect that the years would finally smooth away that discord, they did not suspect that La Mancha and Montiel and the knight's lean figure would be, for posterity, no less poetic than the episodes of Sinbad or the vast geographies of Ariosto.

For in the beginning of literature is the myth, and in the end as well.

-JORGES BORGES

Translated by James E. Irby
Labyrinths (1960)
 

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The Modern Don Quijote​

It’s a sunny morning and Don Quijote is opening his local shop. Like every morning, he’s drinking his coffee and waiting for customers to slowly pour in. Meanwhile, he checks his webshop.” Hurray! 3 Orders overnight.” Happy and full of confidence, Don Quijote opens up his accounting and starts copying the order data. (Read More)
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Unlike most other Quixotic illustrations, that often impart a sense of comic lightness and whimsy romantic playfulness, this particular depiction appears dreamlike, and, almost unearthly.

Shaded in an explicit predominant palette of intermediate color between black and white; the somber gray-tone evokes a host of mixed feeling and symbolic concepts that are both positive and negative, which appropriately enhances the existing mythology and figural imagery expressed.

What I find most appealing, inspiring, is the faint hint of light that gracefully accentuates a slight tinge of bluish cloud-covering at the rim of a dark oncoming storm.

The contrasting lighter sky appears heavenly, almost divine opposite the opposing tumultuous, telling backdrop for this deeply reflective and imaginative image of Don Quixote.
 
New Don Quixote tells a border tale for a modern era
iu
"The quest is the oldest and most retold form of story in human history. From ancient Greece’s 'The Odyssey' to Ming-era China’s 'Journey to the West,' the far-flung adventure tale is perhaps the most essential prototype of narrative we have."

"Cervantes’ 'Don Quixote' remains a foundational text in Western literature, whose themes on politics, chivalry and romance can speak to any era. So it makes sense that playwright Octavio Solis had no trouble retelling the story of a quixotic elderly man with a heart for adventure."

"In 'Quixote Nuevo,' at the Alley Theatre through Feb. 9, Solis has placed Quixote’s story in the modern era, in the fictional border town of La Plancha, on the Texas-Mexico border, starring a man who decides to see the world rather than be placed in an assisted living home." READ MORE
 


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