The Tempest definitely isn’t the easiest Shakespeare play to stage. With its island setting, magical characters and various subplots, not to mention a giant storm, it is a huge undertaking.
But as 225 reports, Of Moving Colors is doing it with the added twist of translating the story into dance, with 15 performers, an original score from a visiting artist, the Baton Rouge Symphony’s Chamber Players and some spoken-word poetry, too.
Feeling queasy yet? Not to worry, Artistic Director Garland Goodwin Wilson is here to steer the ship.
“Cross pollination has always been my passion,” says Wilson, who has been with the company for about 20 years. “When I started at Of Moving Colors, I didn’t think it would be just a dance company. I thought it would be more of a production company that worked with a lot of artists and a lot of genres.”
Now ending its 30th year, the company has kept it interesting through collaborations with musicians, aerialists, martial artists and even furniture designer Peter Shire, who was an artist-in-residence at LSU at the time.
One such collaboration was with music director Timothy Muffitt of Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra and its Chamber Players for OMC’s first performance at the newly opened Manship Theatre in 2005. “We had a blast, so we’ve touched base about every year,” Wilson says.
When planning The Tempest, the timing was right for another partnership with Muffitt as OMC approached its big milestone. After a successful adaptation of Romeo & Juliet in 2015, Wilson was interested in exploring other Shakespeare works through dance.
She turned to New York-based Pavel Zustiak and New Orleans-based John Allen as choreographers. Both had worked with OMC on Romeo & Juliet.
“I am not an expert at adapting Shakespeare, but I’ve always been in love with it,” Wilson says. “And I felt like we had this really good team for the first collaboration, and I wanted to stick to that team.”
