80th Anniversary Year of Rodeo,or The courting at Burnt Ranch 🎂🎊🥳🐎

October 2022-2023 and Ballet West marks the 80th anniversary of Agnes de Mille’s iconic American ballet Rodeo, or the Courting at Burnt Ranch.The ballet premiered October 16, 1942 at the former Metropolitan Opera House in New York City, Broadway and West 39th Street. Ballet West marked the event in November 2022!

The Beginning…

In 1942 Agnes de Mille was asked by Serge Dunham, Director of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo to create an “American” ballet for the company. De Mille partnered with American composer Aaron Copland and Rodeo, or The Courting at Burnt Ranch became a sensational hit. De Mille herself danced the leading role of the “Cowgirl,” with Frederic Franklin as “Champion Roper,” and Casimir Kokitch as “Head Wrangler. The ballet received twenty-two curtain calls. This triumph, with its Americana setting and the invention of an American aesthetic in dance and gesture, led Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II to select de Mille to create the dances for their musical Oklahoma! (1943). The immense triumph of these two works made American dance history.

About Opening night, Quote by Agnes de Mille:

“If it is possible for a life to change at one given moment, if it is possible for all movement, growth and accumulated power to become apparent at one single point, then my hour struck at 9:40 pm, October 16, 1942. Chewing gum, squinting under a Texas hat, I turned to face what I had been preparing for my whole life.”

(From Agnes de Mille’s book Dance to the Piper).

From de Mille’s original written scenario for Rodeo: The American southwest

When in 1942, the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo asked de Mille to create an “American” ballet, de Mille quickly wrote up a scenario, not unlike those for plays and films.

THe American Southwest

De Mille’s original written scenario conjured an iconic southwest - it’s immense sense of space, the “heavy” sun and a certain melancholy that she translated through her choreography, storytelling, staging and especially gesture. Below is a quote from the original scenario:

quote from de mille’s Original scenario:

“There are never more than a very few people on the stage at a time, and while they generate a lot of excitement between themselves, they are always dwarfed by space and height and isolation. One must be always conscious of the enormous land on which these people live and of their proud loneliness.”

(Agnes de Mille, original scenario, Rodeo. NYPL for the Performing Arts. Lincoln Center. Jerome Robbins Dance Division)

Fun Facts About Rodeo 🤠😉

“De Mille originally thought that the Cowgirl would eventually go off with the Head Wrangler. 😳 Frederic Franklin [original “Champion Roper” with Ballet Russe] came to feel that the Cowgirl had more in common with the amiable Roper than with the conceited Wrangler. Franklin […] threatened to withdraw from the cast if she did not change her planned ending. ‘You're right!’ […] de Mille finally exclaimed, having realized that the Cowgirl and the Roper were made for each other.” 🥰 (From Jack Anderson’s article: “In the Ballet World, America is still a Distant Shore,” New York Times, Jan. 12, 2003).

In 1938, de Mille originally choreographed all the horse-riding choreography (now danced by men) on women with the Ballet Rambert in London! 🐎 The women: Peggy Van Praagh, Charlotte Bidmead, and Therese Langfield told historian Barbara Barker in 1995 that before de Mille’s last version of Rodeo in 1942: “they performed everything the men did, but without the storyline.” 🤩

Pina Bausch’s company, performed Rodeo in 1974! 😃 Rodeo shared the program with Bausch’s Fritz (her first piece at the Tanztheater Wuppertal) and Kurt Jooss’ The Green Table. Rodeo’s title in German? Rodeo, oder Werbung auf der Burnt Ranch! 😱🎊

“The Running Set”

The sound of running Feet and clapping Hands

“Honor your Partner. [Bow to your Partner.] Honor your corner.[Bow to your neighbor.]”

Rodeo, or the Courting at Burnt Ranch 🐎

THE “Intrinsic AMerican” and the “Cowgirl”

De Mille wrote in a New York Times interview (Sept. 30, 1973), her life long search for the “intrinsic american”… qualities which were embodied in the character of the “Cowgirl” 🤠:

“Humorous, salty, bold, original, independent certainly, at times persnickety, and stubborn.”

(De Mille, interview in The New York Times, July 4, 1976

THe Cowhands and Horse-riding

Dancers as “centaurs”

How de Mille choreographed the riding sections of Rodeo so that the dancers look as if they were not only riding horses but also performing in a rodeo? Below is a quote by Agnes de Mille from Conversations about the Dance (Television, PBS, 1980) with the Joffery Ballet:

“Of course it would be ludicrous to attempt to imitate real horses, but you can give the impression of the emotion of riding: the joy, the sense of domination and controlling of a powerful brute. And you can give suggestions of the love of flying and the stones skittering out under the horses‘ hooves. Now these are AMERICAN horses, and the problem was to make them AMERICAN. These are not Gauchos nor French Calvary officers, nor Corsacks. How did we do that? Well, by the vernacular gestures, by the rhythm, by the body stance.”

Quote from de Mille’s original scenario:

“Twilight”

“THe Twilight Deepens. The sky grows Grey, almost mystic, a dance of courting, but abstracted, impersonal. It is more of a dance between people and darkness than between people and people. The few stragglers move like moths in the darkness. They are barely visible, outlined against the deepening sky. The girl [cowgirl] sits. She is lonely. But she is in love with the land around and the great glowing sky, and the smells and the sounds.”

(Agnes de Mille, original Rodeo scenario. NYPL for the Performing Arts, Lincoln Center. Jerome Robbins Dance Division).

80 years young!!! 🎉🎂🎊