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The Paul Vasterling choreographed, Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi-live scored adaptation of renowned author Caroline Randall Williams’ 2015-released poetry collection “Lucy Negro, Redux” returns after a three-year hiatus, for the Nashville Ballet at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center’s James K. Polk Theater from March 18-26, 2022. The ballet will then embark on a nationwide tour.
The critically-acclaimed work explores the possibility that the “Dark Lady” that William Shakespeare describes in numbers 127-154 of his 1609-published collection of sonnets was a Black prostitute who owned a brothel in central London. Moreover, it questions how the desire for the Black female body has evolved from the Elizabethan age to the Jim Crow South to the modern era.
An exclusive Tennessean conversation with Vasterling and Williams reveals how the 2022 version of “Lucy Negro, Redux” does more than ponder “The Bard’s” creative influences. The ballet’s presentation is entertaining because it’s as much a musical concert as it is a dance performance. It’s groundbreaking and influential art made specifically for women — Black women, namely — who occupy spaces that are “historically quite white,” as Williams notes.
Williams herself is a unique Black multidisciplinary creative force familiar with this scenario. She’s a Nashville native and the daughter of Alice Randall, the first African-American woman to co-write a number-one country hit, Trisha Yearwood’s “XXX’s and OOO’s (An American Girl),” in 1994. In her own right, Williams is a Harvard-educated NAACP Image Award-winning writer who joined the faculty of Vanderbilt University as the Writer-In-Residence of Medicine, Health, and Society in 2019.
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“Lucy Negro, Redux” also benefits from Nashville Ballet’s choreographer’s current Artistic Director and Fulbright Scholar Vasterling’s once-in-a-lifetime scenario. In 2017 and 2018, he was a fellow in residence at The Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University. While there, he was tasked to produce a story ballet and originally suggested a production of Virginia Woolf’s 1928 novel, “Orlando.”
“However, when [‘Lucy Negro’] came into my artistic orbit, I asked for — and was granted — the ability to change course,” Vasterling says.
“The cultural and social statements, as well as the metaphors in Caroline’s book of poems, spoke to me strongly, foremost, as an artist and producer,” he adds.
In a 2019 interview regarding dancing in the role of Lucy, then Nashville Ballet principal dancer Kayla Rowser Tazik noted, “[It makes me feel like] I’m coming into my own skin as a woman. To be able to represent a strong and powerful woman who is unapologetic about who she is, onstage, in a ballet, is remarkable.”
Aiding Williams in her work is another creative who shares — to borrow a phrase coined by author Carolyn Finney — the “Black faces in white spaces” scenario in their lives: Rhiannon Giddens, the GRAMMY Award-winning roots artist and MacArthur “Genius” Grant recipient musician.
Pairing Williams’ work with Giddens’ art is ideal.
The power of the written word converging with the impact of live music is also essential to the success of “Lucy Negro, Redux.” Giddens’ work in the past included the Black female banjo-reclamation project “Songs Of Our Native Daughters,” alongside Allison Russell, Amythyst Kiah, and Leyla McCalla. That work saw the quartet source 17th-19th century slave narratives, reinterpreting them as modern conversations about slavery, racism and misogyny.
“Caroline and Rhiannon’s artistic ethos are well defined in ‘Lucy Negro, Redux,’ onstage. Foremost, Caroline’s poetry has a feel that is inherently musical,” says Vasterling.
Williams agrees, adding, “As a person as informed by classical Western education as I have been, Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter always plays as a rhythm in the back of my mind. Also, rock and roll, soul, blues, and country music are always playing in my head, too.”
Vasterling adds, “Rhiannon’s music lends itself well to the intersection of dance, music and poetry. [She] and her partner, Francesco Turrisi, have extensive experience in and knowledge of music, instruments and history. They especially shine in how they interweave African, American and Elizabethan-age European influences in bluegrass and blues-related sounds.”
To wit, in regards to his work choreographing dance to match Williams’ art, Vasterling says, “I was trying to insert scholarly, modern ideas into ballet as classic art.”
Most significant in aiding his framing of the piece, he name drops Elizabethan dance, and rock opera takes on Shakespeare like Rufus Wainwright’s 2016 studio album “Take All My Loves: 9 Shakespeare Sonnets” as significant inspirations.
Vasterling notes that “Lucy Negro, Redux” returns at a time in the world where Black, queer — and in general, all — women’s rights are being challenged. In his mind, the value of art’s ability to mirror or evolve with time, in this era, is ultra-important.
“Art, performance art is impermanent and ephemeral. It can only be of that time and inspired by the age in which you’re witnessing it. In the case of reviving ‘Lucy Negro, Redux,’ the world has shifted in a way where this piece is possibly more relevant now than it was three years ago,” Vasterling says.
Vasterling offers that the unique collision of race and culture represented by “Lucy Negro Redux” results in what he defines as something that does not just defy the expectations of ballet. As well, he feels that it also creates an impulse that can guide marginalized people through trying times:
“The chilling, emotional magic that happens when combining Caroline and I’s work creates a power that makes this ballet [perpetually] relevant.”
Aside from defying convention, Williams is proud of a more personalized success achieved by the ballet taking the stage on March 18-26 and continuing to tour nationwide:
“Feeling ‘othered’ can be the loneliest feeling in the world. So young Black women who have never heard poems or been to ballet performances [intimately] about their lives can watch [“Lucy Negro Redux”] and feel seen and served.”
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