Ballet Quad Cities' "Wickedest City in America: Dancing, Drinking, & Debauchery" at St. Ambrose University -- April 11 and 12.
In 1903 (the year jazz legend Bix Beiderbecke was born in Davenport), the Catholic bishop of Davenport Henry Cosgrove called this Iowa city “the wickedest” in America, mainly because of its downtown Bucktown area, teeming with bars, brothels, and theaters.
Ballet Quad Cities pays homage to this colorful history in its new original work Wickedest City in America: Dancing, Drinking, & Debauchery, choreographed by the professional dance company's artistic associate Emily Kate Long, and being performed April 11 and 12 at St. Ambrose University's Galvin Fine Arts Center. In this narrative ballet, streets come alive with music, movement, and unforgettable characters. Lights glow late into the night, fortunes change in an instant, and every corner holds a new story waiting to unfold.
The production is inspired by the story of Anita Ray, a 17-year-old Chicago performer who appeared at Davenport’s Iowa Theatre in 1903, and went to police after she experienced rough treatment.
At the turn of the 20th century, Bucktown was one of the most talked-about neighborhoods in the Midwest – a place in which music played, crowds gathered, and the night seemed to stretch forever. As the Ballet Quad Cities marketing states: “Beneath the sparkle and excitement were stories of ambition, independence, and people chasing their dreams.”
In the January 28, 1903 edition of the Chicago Record-Herald, Ray said: “If it is true that God has forsaken Chicago, then He has never even visited Davenport, Iowa. For to one who experienced what I did in that Iowa city, there can be but little doubt that religion and the Divine hand never touched Davenport.
“For a town of this size, there is more vice than in any other city in the country,” said Ray. “Why do I say it? Because I have seen it; I have experienced a week of it. and nothing that has ever happened in my life will ever again make such an impression on me as did this one week.”
Ballet Quad Cities artistic associate and The Wickedest City in America choreographer Long, as she said, partly used my 2016 book A Brief History of Bucktown as research for the new ballet, which reflects Anita’s experience.
“She just shreds Davenport with just that colorful language,” Long recently said of Ray, noting she wasn’t familiar with Davenport’s seedy history that included legalized prostitution for many years, starting in 1893.
“I used to live up the hill in Rock Island, so I would go past the Looney House all of the time and just sort of those things that are in the ethos of a place when you live there,” Long said of the ruthless gangster John Looney. “A lot of the really interesting stuff that I just found so fascinating from background information was the 'why' of legality, in terms of municipal codes and state laws. Like, Davenport was just sort of such an oddball mix of who's in charge of what and when.”
The Wickedest City ballet is not set in a specific year, and “is not a strict factual narrative,” Long said. “It's sort of my impression of what would it be like to show up in this place, and expect it to be one way, and have it be what you expected in some ways and so much different than you expected in other ways.
“I tried to sort of stretch out my imaginary time period in terms of the colors that I used in the music that I chose,” she said, “and the way that I edited things together to have some orchestral color and storytelling and some the kind of jazz that one expects to hear when you know that a ballet is set in Bucktown. It’s been really fun to create – to shape all of the different characters and personalities and environments.”
The last narrative ballet Long choreographed was Sleepy Hollow in 2023, and this one is more episodic. She said Anita Ray was in Bucktown for a week, and by day four, “She was so fed up that she went to the police matron for train fare home. And so over the course of that, we see the whole situation decline from revelry into near chaos.
“She arrives and becomes both fed up and frustrated. So the visual approach I'm trying to take is one of contrasts.”
The role of Anita Ray will be danced by Eleanor Ambler, who’s been a company member since 2021. “She's a fabulous dancer, but she's also a fabulous actress,” Long said. “She has this openness in her dancing that is really, really fresh. She’s a great Anita.”
The Bucktown ballet will be half an hour, in the second half of the program, with the first half composed of past repertory pieces that BQC has previously staged. Long added that the climactic ballet will be family-friendly, and won't get into too much wickedness.
“In some ways, it's sort of the classic innocence to experience or the expectation and disappointment. It's like you think something is going to be one way, and it's not that way. And that experience can take a lot of different forms. It's also the closer to our season, and it's a family-friendly program, so it's not a burlesque show by any means. It's interesting and evocative, but also very, very tasteful.”
The dance scene at a nightclub is fun and exuberant, she said, “like a big old dance showpiece. There are these side stories of drinking, gambling. I have a pair of pickpockets that are sort of comic relief.”
There’s also not a real villain in the ballet, Long said. “It’s not really a good guy/bad guy story. It's 'What does a person do when they are faced with these negative experiences?' Because she wasn't this innocent from her own words. You know, she had seen some things. By the time she got to Davenport, she wasn't all that green.”
Of the ballet’s shifty side characters, Long said, one of the men is up to something no-good.
“Maybe he's a bootlegger. Maybe he's the delivery guy. He's the connection of some sort. He and two of the women are sort of three of the more powerful characters, I guess, or characters of influence or the source of some of the tension.
“There's a section where two of the pickpockets have robbed him,” Long continued, “and then they run into him again and he chases them off stage and then comes back later and is, like, 'Give me my money back.' Then the guy takes a cut before he gives it back. So it's like, everyone's in it for something.
“Being transgressive can be very funny,” Long said. “So there's a sense of all the characters having a good time getting away with what they're getting away with in the raucous party sense.”
Ballet Quad Cities' Wickedest City in America: Dancing, Drinking, & Debauchery will be performed in St. Ambrose University's Galvin Fine Arts Center (2101 North Gaines Street, Davenport IA) April 11 at 7 p.m. and April 12 at 2 p.m. Admission is $15-30, and more information and tickets are available by calling (309)786-3779 and visiting BalletQuadCities.com.
