In early 2017, Wayne McGregor adapted Virginia Woolf’s novels into a ballet triptych entitled Woolf Works and performed it at Royal Opera House in London. One of the triptych’s sections, ‘Tuesday’, is based on Woolf’s most experimental poetic prose The Waves (1931). Virginia Woolf’s texts attracts me for their unique style—not just rich of fictional imaginations but also exquisite in poetic imagery and rhythm. Especially The Waves has the potential to be adapted into dancing due to the movement and rhythm the text entails. I was touched to learn that McGregor finally realized the choreography of The Waves. To a large extent, I believe this illustrate how human creativity can communicate through two conventionally different genres—literature and performance.
I am interested in studying the rhythm and performativity of similar text that blurs the boundary of conventional categorization of literary text and performing art. Similar examples also include Italo Calvino’s text Invisible Cities (1972) that has also been adapted into a contemporary opera by Christopher Cerrone and was performed in the Union Train Station in LA in 2013.
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