Ballet Quad Cities' "More Twisted Tales of Poe" at the Spotlight Theatre -- October 17 and 18 (pictured: 2024's "Twisted Tales of Poe")
Even in the world of dance, it's not surprising when a successful original inspires a sequel, and on October 17 and 18, a Halloween-themed one comes to Moline's Spotlight Theatre in the form of Ballet Quad Cities' More Twisted Tales of Poe.
In this followup to last fall's Twisted Tales of Poe, Rock Island's professional dance company will again bring to life stories and poems from literary great Edgar Allan Poe, the stage performances boasting newly crafted vignettes alongside favorites from last year. But audiences, it turns out, aren't the only ones who value a well-constructed sequel.
“I really appreciate a round two,” says Ballet Quad Cities Artistic Director Courtney Lyon, who, as she did for the 2024 rendition, serves as More Twisted Tales of Poe's choreographer. “Last year's show was received very well by the audience, and I was so excited by the reception because I felt I really knocked it out of the park on a few pieces. On a few other pieces, though, I thought, 'Well, that's not exactly what I was going for … .'
“You know, we're all human,” she continues. “And when you create, and you have so many ideas in your head, and you're trying to get them all on stage, sometimes you only have so much time and energy. So I really appreciate getting to do Poe again – to make it even better for the audience.”
For More Twisted Tales of Poe, Lyon says, “Some pieces I'm not changing at all. They were awesome. Some pieces I loved so much that I wanted to expand them. And then other pieces are brand-new,” one of them a freshly conceived take on Poe's poem “Dream within a Dream.”
“It's not a poem I was familiar with,” says Lyon, “but it's a concept I felt I could do properly. It's a short poem, and the concept is that when you look back at life, sometimes it's hard to tell, 'Was it a dream? Was it real?' Poe makes allusions to sand slipping between your fingers – like you can't grab onto life and make it stop – and it's all about looking back and looking forward. So I created a group piece of all women in shades of white, and the idea is that there'll be fog, and it'll be very ambient and reflective.
“Another new piece is 'The Masque of the Red Death.' In it, there's a rich man who basically takes all his friends and walls them up inside his estate to keep them safe from the plague. They're all drinking and dancing and celebrating life – they're basically able to 'escape' this plague through the Seven Deadly Sins. They're lustful and gluttonous and everything. But there are seven rooms that are seven colors, all symbolizing something different, and the seventh room has a big ticking clock in it. And at some point, there's a masked intruder that no one has seen before, and it's essentially Death coming to get the man.
“It reminds me a little of COVID,” says Lyon. “Kim Kardashian, I think, rented an island for one of her birthday parties during the height of COVID and the world went crazy. And she was like, 'Hey, it's okay – we're on an island!' So I've known I've wanted to do 'Masque of the Red Death' for a couple years now.”
Among the Twisted Tales of Poe pieces getting a round two is “The Oval Portrait,” which, says Lyon, “is the pas de deux about the artist who's trying to capture his wife's essence in the perfect portrait. He essentially gets so involved with his painting that the poor woman gets neglected and she dies. But his painting is perfect.
“'The Raven' is also coming back. That one started as a little concept that I had three years ago that I kept developing, and I was really satisfied with it last year, so it's staying in its finished form.
“But I am expanding 'The Tell-Tale Heart,'” she continues, “the piece where the man is buried underneath the floorboards and the murderer is hearing the beating heart and the three cops show up. We use Jefferson Airplane's 'White Rabbit' for the music. I felt it was a great concept last year, and I just wanted to see more of it. So I lengthened the front end of it, expanding the section with the man beneath the floorboards and the murderer.
“And 'The Cask of Amontillado,' I think, is a really fun one. I remember reading that as a kid and loving it. It's carnival season in Italy, and one man has a grudge against another man. He takes him to his family's wine cellars far far underground, to get him to taste this certain special wine, this Amontillado. And then he walls him up underground behind bricks – he buries him alive. Above ground, everyone is celebrating and drinking in disguises, and there's a lot of fun and debauchery happening on the streets. But down below, this poor man is getting buried brick by brick.”
Lyon laughs. “What a delight Poe must've been! What a jolly man!”
“The Cask of Amontillado” was also a personal favorite for company member Eleanor Ambler, who was one of the principal dancers in the 2024 “The Oval Portrait,” and is now in her fifth season with Ballet Quad Cities.
“That one ('Amontillado') was the show closer last year,” says Ambler, “and it's so much fun. It has really grounded movement, but it's also sort of silly, and weird in a Halloween type of way. Poe was just a really cool experience.
“I'm a literature nerd,” she adds, “and so I've really enjoyed getting to work with Poe's stories. And Courtney has really unique approaches to some of them, where she'll focus in on a certain scene or a certain image, and the dancing gets based around that.”
“I have to narrow the stories down for myself or I'll get very overwhelmed with ideas,” says Lyon. “With 'Tell-Tale Heart,' for example, there are several pages on the front end with the murderer planning his murder and creeping slowly down the hall toward the old man – we spend a lot of time in the murderer's head. But the part that I did is essentially the last paragraph of the story, with the three cops coming in and the hiding of the sound of the heart.
“And with 'The Raven,'” she continues, “I was really fascinated not with the poem in its entirety so much, but with the fact that the poem kept repeating the same word over and over, and how much I could do with that. Poe's words just really bring an atmosphere to mind that I want to try to capture.
“I'm very old-fashioned,” says Lyon of her process in adapting Poe for the stage. “I will usually print the stories out, and then I'll be able to highlight or underline action words that really stand out to me. So a ballet or a piece of choreography might revolve around one sentence of his story, and I'll use every other part of his story to inform the background, or the costumes.
“But if I read something and don't see a dance in my head, I'm not going to force it,” she says, “Poe's stories put a picture in your head right away. Sometimes, though, I cannot figure out how to show that story through movement. For example, 'The Pit & the Pendulum.' I can see that story in my head, but I see it more like a movie. I can't see how I would realistically interpret it.”
Contributions from her company members no doubt make the process easier. “Courtney's very open to suggestions from the dancers,” says Ambler. “So if she thinks of something and it's not translating quite right onto someone's body, we might have an idea for what might feel better. She's very open to hearing that and appreciates it, so it's a really cool process to be part of.”
“Sometimes I like those challenges of not knowing exactly what to do,” Lyon says. “I want to figure out how to interpret it. But other times, oh man, I can see it so clearly – exactly what I want the outcome to be. And then I'll write all over the paper lots of ideals and free associations and I'll show it to the dancers – all these wrinkled notes filled with arrows and scribbles and coffee cup rings.
“And then, when we've finished, they go into my archives – like some day I'll want to look at them again.” With a laugh, she adds, “And sometimes I do!”
Ballet Quad Cities' More Twisted Tales of Poe will be presented at Moline's Spotlight Theatre on October 17 and 18, admission to the 7 p.m. performances is $15-30, and more information and tickets are available by calling (309)786-3779 and visiting BalletQuadCities.com.
