A prince is lost in a forest. A mythical creature, her headpiece sprouting red plumes, gives him a magic feather. He will need it. There is a monster on the loose and a princess and her maidens are trapped under his evil spell.
In most every version of “ Firebird” a feather saves the day. It and the mythical creature — the Firebird — rescue the world from darkness and despair. Lately, the ballet world has been teeming with these glittering birds. In a time of war and fear, the Firebird, a symbol of hope, the light-over-darkness sort, is dancing as fast as she can.
Pacific Northwest Ballet and American Ballet Theater have recently staged productions, and this spring New York City Ballet will bring George Balanchine’s version, with sets and costumes by Marc Chagall, back into repertory.
In this crowded field, one interpretation casts a singular spell. Dance Theater of Harlem’s “Firebird” (1982), choreographed by John Taras, takes place in the Caribbean, with sets and costumes by the inimitable Geoffrey Holder. It’s a lush, almost fragrant landscape for a Russian tale set to shimmering music by Stravinsky.
Holder, a Trinidadian-American artist whose career included acting, dancing, choreographing, directing and painting, transplants “Firebird” to a place of heat and vibrant color. For this production, the reconstruction of the costume and scenic design has been overseen by Léo Holder, the son of Geoffrey, and the dancer and choreographer Carmen de Lavallade. Léo consulted with some of the original collaborators on the work, which was modeled on the style of the 19th-century landscape artist Martin Johnson Heade.
The backdrop includes “vegetation that you only really find in the Caribbean,” Holder said of his father’s design. “First and foremost, he was a painter, and everything comes as an extension of that.”
It’s like a canvas that has come to life. Robert Garland, Dance Theater’s artistic director, said that Holder’s “Firebird” designs “are early evocations of what we now call Afrofuturism — he took this Russian story, plopped it in the Caribbean and just Geoffrey Holderized it.”
Dance Theater will present “Firebird” on every program of its New York City Center season, which starts on April 16. Dance Theater hasn’t performed the ballet in more than 20 years, not since it went on a hiatus, in 2004, because of financial problems. When the company began touring again, in 2013, it was smaller, with just 17 dancers. Now, more than 10 years later, the “Firebird” revival is a sign that Dance Theater is growing, slowly and steadily, in the right direction.
Anna Glass, the company’s executive director, said: “You can’t do a ballet of this scale and be hobbled and have the challenges that we had of the past. We have really worked hard to get to this moment.”
While Dance Theater has grown over these last years, it still needed more dancers — there are currently 28 — for “Firebird.” The plan to bring the ballet back came from Endalyn T. Outlaw, a former Dance Theater principal who is now dean of the School of Dance at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. She proposed filling out the corps de ballet roles of Beautiful Maidens and Creatures of Evil with student dancers.
Outlaw, who performed in “Firebird” while at Dance Theater, said she wanted to give her students a professional experience and also to help bring back an important ballet with this “beautiful repositioning of it in a tropical forest.”
“Firebird” quickly became a signature work for Dance Theater, elevating the company at a pivotal time in its growth. “In some ways, Dance Theater of Harlem was still in this in-between space,” Glass said. “In the costumes and in the set, ‘Firebird’ allows us to still be rooted in who we are and be ballet with a capital B.”
Dance Theater of Harlem was formed by Arthur Mitchell and Karel Shook in 1969 after the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The first Black principal dancer at New York City Ballet, Mitchell left his position there to start Dance Theater with Balanchine’s support as well as many of his ballets.
And while progress has been made in terms of diversity in the art form, Glass said, “there’s still some hesitation in some spheres around who gets to do ballet.”
It was no coincidence that the costume Misty Copeland wore during the “Sinners” tribute at the Academy Awards ceremony was from Dance Theater of Harlem’s “Firebird,” with the Holder-designed, leg-baring front and barely-there spray of tutu jutting from the back. (Before retiring from American Ballet Theater, Copeland had performed the Firebird, but in the version choreographed by Alexei Ratmansky.)
“The look and feel of our Firebird feels timely,” Glass said. “When you get toward the end of the ballet, there’s just this feeling of, fly girl! I think we’re starving right now as a society to root for something, to feel good about something, to come together around something.”
The genesis of the Dance Theater “Firebird” came after Mitchell’s company performed Balanchine’s “The Four Temperaments” at City Center. Mitchell, who died in 2018 at the age of 84, told Garland that he and Balanchine were hanging out backstage when he asked Balanchine what he thought Dance Theater should do next.
“Mr. Mitchell said that Mr. Balanchine looked off and it was almost like he was remembering being at City Center,” Garland said, referring to an earlier time, in 1949, when Balanchine’s “Firebird” premiered at the same theater. “He said, ‘I think you should do the ‘Firebird.’ It was our first hit, and I think it will be a hit for you.”
Balanchine recommended that Taras, a ballet master at City Ballet who had created many works on Mitchell, be the choreographer. In a documentary about the production, Taras said: “I’m unstressing the Russianness. I prefer to put it into a mythological kingdom. The firebird is almost a supernatural character.”
The pointe work has a piquant attack. Tanaquil Le Clercq, the City Ballet principal whose dancing career was ended by polio, was a teacher at Dance Theater and coached the first Firebird, Stephanie Dabney. Charmaine Hunter watched from the doorway.
“She would describe the bird as this otherworldly creature that was so fast, so fiery that you hardly saw it,” Hunter said. “It was like you would shine a light in the room and it would move that quickly.”
While on tour, Dabney became injured. Mitchell asked if anyone knew the Firebird role. “I raised my hand — sheepishly,” Hunter said, “thinking, ‘What does he want me to do? Teach somebody?’”
From watching rehearsals, she knew the role inside and out, she said, adding. “And he goes, ‘Well, if you know it, then show it to me.’” And she did.
Mitchell approved and told her she would go on that night. After the performance, Hunter saw that he had tears in his eyes. “I thought, ‘Wow, are you crying?’” she said.
Hunter taught and coached Alexandra Hutchinson, the current Dance Theater Firebird, telling her to stab the floor with her feet. “I wouldn’t say I’m a safe dancer,” Hutchinson said, “but I like to make sure that everything goes well. She pushed me past myself.”
The Firebird is a part that means a lot to Hutchinson. Her mother, a dancer as a child and a fan of the ballet and of Dance Theater, would play the music frequently, even holding headphones over her belly before Alexandra was born. “She said I would kick my legs when I heard it,” Hutchinson said.
When the company unveiled its revival of “Firebird” in Paris in February, Hutchinson danced the lead role. “I felt every part of it,” she said. “I wasn’t just going through the motions. A lot of people said that I really looked like a bird — that I didn’t look like a dancer — and that was such a relief. Sometimes it can feel like too much or not enough.”
Donald Williams, the production’s original Young Prince who worked with the new cast, helped her with what is now one of her favorite moments in the ballet. It happens in the pas de deux between the Firebird and the Prince. “I was doing the steps correctly, but he told me, ‘Stephanie used to do this incredible stark look to the audience — and almost, like, crazed eyes.’ It’s become one of my favorite parts because you’re just so tired at that part, and it kind of makes you hit a refresh button. It’s not feeling like, Oh, I want to be the prettiest thing right now: Be a bird.”
Hutchinson, who trained with the Balanchine ballerina Violette Verdy, is strong and musical, but above all a dancer with a glittering, old-school presence. “I feel like a ballerina, that I’m doing what I always dreamed of doing,” she said. “It makes me excited that people are realizing the power of Dance Theater of Harlem and the magic of it. This ballet is the key. It’s like that story of Mr. Mitchell going to Balanchine and asking him: ‘What do you think could take the company to the next level?’ And he said, ‘Firebird.’”
Gia Kourlas is the dance critic for The Times. She writes reviews, essays and feature articles and works on a range of stories.
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