D is for Dance

How about a six degrees connection between Pablo Picasso & Sesame Street via his stage designs for Satie's Parade?

Picasso's 35 ft. x 55 ft. curtain created for Parade

Picasso’s cubist constructions designed for this wartime theatre production caused quite a stir, when the ballet premiered in 1917. Apparently, the production angered the audience to the degree that oranges were thrown.

Picasso’s horse was made up of two people dancing together as the front & back ends. During the dress rehearsal, the rider fell off the horse and they yanked the horse from the remaining performances. The ballet actually cause a riot and Satie & Jean Cocteau were labeled “cultural anarchists.” They locked Satie up for 8 days!

Years later in 1971, the Joffrey Ballet decided to revive Parade, and they received Picasso's blessing to recreate the sets and costumes. Robert Joffrey turned to designer Kermit Love, who had made costumes for the Ballet Russe and Balanchine, to work up a new version of Picasso’s horse.

As part of the Joffrey’s 1971 remounting of Léonide Massine’s 1917 work, Parade, for which Picasso designed the original costumes for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, Love was asked to reconstruct the cubistic creations. These characters included the Manager on Horseback, manned by two dancers, as well as two large constructions, the French Manager and the American Manager.

Migdoll says that Picasso’s original costumes (made out of papier-mâché and wood) were too heavy for the dancers to move in, so Love refashioned them with aluminum tubing and Styrofoam, enabling the men to move and jump around with ease. “Picasso signed off on the ballet,” adds Migdoll, “and Massine was impressed that the work was going to have a brighter life than it did in its first incarnation. Kermit’s work made it very fresh and it was extremely successful for the Joffrey.”

http://dance-teacher.com/content/kermit-love

Now, when we watch Picasso's charming horse dance, it’s hard to imaging that this was once perceived as an affront to the audience!



Love's role reworking of Picasso's infamous horse is even more interesting when you learn that as a young boy, he was thrown from a horse and seriously injured. Bedridden from the age of 12-15, Kermit passed the time using his imagination to draw characters based on the voices that he heard in radio serials.

Here’s the cool Picasso-Sesame Street connection:

What was Kermit Love best known for?

Love was the creator of Big Bird, and his first full-body puppet design made his initial appearance on Sesame Street in 1969. How sweet to find out that Jim Henson’s height and way of walking inspired Love's development of Big Bird's design. Love also designed Mr. Snuffleupagus, Oscar the Grouch and Cookie Monster.

Love recalled Balanchine's appreciation of Big Bird and the character's unique way of moving.

Even Balanchine, who would sometimes meet Love at the Sesame Street studios on the Upper West Side--a short walk from Lincoln Center--was an admirer of the Muppets. "Balanchine came to the studio and saw Big Bird moving and said, `little like dancing, little like dancing.' You see, he believed, he believed in Big Bird. There was nobody inside it, it was Big Bird. He accepted it totally. That was the sheer magic of the man, that he believed in every moment of Nutcracker--and to question his belief was to deny him." Love says with quiet intensity, "I could never question him."

... Love's designs are testaments to that sublimation of artistic personality and ego he discusses: "That very vulnerability is an exercise in self-examination. That's the role I am most excited by. Something sparks--an incredible vista in your imagination. And you follow that. And that leads you to things you express. It's all in how you approach it The minute you deviate from the accepted formula, you're running a terrible risk--but that's the risk you take. You either survive or you fail by it. Half the time you fail. But sometimes it's great."

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1083/is_1998_Dec/ai_53280637/