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Synthesis Essay: Dream Ballet Vs. Oklahoma !

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Although the term “dream ballet” is often applied to dance not within the ballet style, it is important to consider why early choreographers utilizing this form specifically selected ballet. Due to the theatricality of ballet, its use helps to enhance the function of expressing something when words are not enough As a style, ballet benefits these sort of more-than-real-life sequences “due to its heightened narrative capabilities in contrast to many other varieties of dance” (Petermann 98). And it is those narrative qualities of ballet that keep the term as “dream ballet” and not something else. As part of the function of dream ballets is to expose something more about the narrative, “it’s natural to refer to such interludes as dream ballets, …show more content…

Oklahoma! is infused with themes of sexual awakening and navigating emotion in a conservative society. Therefore, it makes sense that the dream ballet version of Laurey is also the feminized version. Laurey is able to experience sensuality in her dreams in a way that she is unable to express in her real life. She also is able to navigate her desire for Curly without the eyes of the community and her friends upon her. Thus, in the dream ballet, “desire reveals itself as unmistakably addressed to a version of the body that threatens to exceed the regulatory order imposed upon it by civil society” (Filmer …show more content…

A powerful example of this function and adjustment of the structure is the choreography by Bill T. Jones for the original Broadway production of Spring Awakening. The musical portrays teenagers navigating burgeoning questions of sexuality and figuring how to express them. The choreography of Spring Awakening suggests “only their bodies...can express those feelings, for which they have no words” (Sulcas 1). This idea of the body being able to elucidate what words can’t heavily harkens back to the function of dream ballets. It is especially evident in songs like “Touch Me” and “The Guilty Ones,” which expressly deal with sexual feelings and acts of sex, in which it is really about the thoughts of one character, but Jones utilizes the bodies of the entire ensemble to express the urges the character is experiencing. The dances seem to “interrupt the actions rather than continue it” in order to place emphasis on the inner lives of the characters instead of the narrative plot structure (Sulcas 2). Although these dances do utilize lyrics in addition to movement to express these emotions, it is evident that the legacy of the function that dream ballets established lives on in musical

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