Study Guide
Miguel Cervantes’ Novel
“In a place in La Mancha, whose name I do not care to recall, there dwelt not so long ago a gentleman of the type wont to keep an unused lance, an old shield, a greyhound for racing, and a skinny old horse." First line of novel
With the publication of the first volume of Don Quixote, in 1604, Cervantes achieved financial success and popular renown. Don Quixote became an instant success, and its popularity even spawned an unauthorized sequel by a writer who used the name Avellaneda. This sequel appeared several years after the original volume, and it inspired Cervantes to hurry along his own second volume, which he published in 1614. Cervantes died the following year, in 1615.
Don Quixote is one of the earliest written novels in a modern European language and is considered to be the finest book in the Spanish language. Don Quixote is almost universally accepted to be the symbolic work of Spanish literature. The first volume was translated into English in 1612 as Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Often called the first modern novel and the world’s greatest work of fiction, Don Quixote was originally written as a comic satire on chivalric romances. Neither wholly tragedy nor wholly comedy Don Quixote gives a complete view of the 17th-century Spanish society.
Throughout history, different ages have tended to read different things into the novel. When it was first published, it was usually interpreted as a comic novel.
After the French Revolution it was popular because of its central theme that individuals can be right while society is quite wrong and disenchanting—not comic at all.
In the 19th century it was seen as an overall observation of society, but no one could tell "whose side Cervantes was on."
By the 20th century it became clear that it was not simply a unique and great moral study, of the human condition: class distinctions, public vs. private property and the contributions of virtue to society, but the first true modern novel.
The Ballet
Original Choreography by Marius Petipa
Choreography and staging by Mihailo Djuric and Milica Bijelic
Music by Ludwig Minkus
Premiered in 1869 at the Bolshoi Ballet
Petipa adapted his ballet originally to suit Bolshoi Ballet’s Moscow audiences by including several entertaining theatrical scenes: including dancing cacti; a laughing and crying moon, which Don Quixote mistook for his beloved Dulcinea; and a comic dance in which a clown attempted to catch birds. This Don Quixote was a monumental ballet in four acts and eight scenes that premiered December 26, 1869 in Moscow.
Using the same music and designs, but with major choreographic revisions, Petipa debuted the five act, St Petersburg version November 21, 1871. Petipa took into account St. Petersburg’s preference for a more classical interpretation of the ballet and created almost an entirely new version of the ballet. This version emphasized the ballet's Spanish flavor with traditional folk dances including a seguidilla and an energetic dance of the toreadors, and removed the scene with the cacti, bird hunt and crying moon. Minkus was commissioned to write additional music for a new fifth act.
Over the course of the twentieth century, Don Quixote was revisited by many choreographers including Rudolf Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov and George Balanchine. Petipa's version of Don Quixote, to the music of Minkus, was to become the standard ballet version of the tale and featured the popular virtuoso pas de deux that has been performed countless times as a concert piece.
Mr. Djuric staged the ballet with Festival Ballet Providence Ballet Mistress Milica Bijelic, based on Petipa’s 1869 version. Djuric and Bilejic have created a ballet that tells the essence of the story in three acts, a production that will last just over two hours. Djuric noted, “Audiences love this ballet because it has everything; brilliant dancing, delightful comedy and touching romance. While the ballet focuses mostly on the romance between Kitri and Basilio, I find myself drawn to the character of Don Quixote and his search for his imagined Dulcinea. We are all searching for something in life, something we may not get, but like him, we should dare to dream, and follow that passion. For Don Quixote, he ultimately realizes his own foolishness, but for Kitri, who dreams of following her heart, the ending is more sweet.”
Don Quixote – Synopsis
Characters
Don Quixote - knight-errant
Dulcinea - Don Q’s vision of his ideal women
Sancho Panza - Don Q’s servant
Lorentzo - town inn keeper
Kitri (Quiteria) - Lorentzo’s daughter
Basilio- Kitri’s boyfriend
Espada - Toreador
Mercedes - Girlfriend of Espada
Gamache - wealthy man
King and Queen of Gypsies
Cupid - appears in Don Q’s dream
Queen of the Dryads - appears in Don Q’s dream
Vocabulary
Knight-errant- A knight, often portrayed in medieval romances, who wanders in search of adventures to prove his chivalry; One given to adventurous or quixotic conduct.
Chivalry- the combination of qualities expected of the ideal medieval knight, especially courage, honor, loyalty, and consideration for others, especially women; the medieval concept of knighthood, and the customs, practices, social system, and religious and personal ideals associated with knights and their way of life
Quixotic- originating from the literary character Don Quixote; 1. romantic, tending to take a romanticized view of life 2.impractical, motivated by an idealism that overlooks practical considerations 3. impulsive, tending to act on whims or impulses
Satire- the use of wit, especially irony, sarcasm, and ridicule, to attack the vices and follies of humankind
Toreador- a bullfighter
Dryad- in Greek mythology, a spiritual being believed to live in trees and forests
Seguidilla- Spanish dance in moderate 3/4 time, usually accompanied by castanets and guitars
Festival Ballet, and a brief Ballet History
Festival Ballet Providence is a professional dance company and school based in Providence that believes everyone can dance and enjoy dance!
Let’s get a little background first, to understand how western dance started, and what it’s become today.
Hundreds of years ago, everyday people danced to enjoy themselves when they gathered, whether it was at the cross-roads between villages or in the village green. It was a time when people lived more rurally, and so when they got together, it was usually on the one day off a week they had, so it was a joyous time. Additionally, important occasions or seasonal events were noted with dance by many cultures, such as weddings, births, funerals, harvest season, etc.
In the 1500’s in the royal courts of Italy and France, these folk dances became more formalized into court dances, where only the royalty participated. With the intermarrying between French and Italian royalty, the Italian Catherine de Medici introduced Italian masque dances to the French royal courts in 1581, where upon France became the center of dancing in Europe. During the reign of the French king Louis XIV, dance was brought to such a high level that for the first time it became an art form for the stage, a performance to be enjoyed by a viewing audience. Eventually the art form of ballet required more and more physical training, and Louis XIV founded the Royal Academy of Dance in 1669. Soon these ballets were so demanding and the training required so rigorous, they could no longer be performed by royalty, and were performed only by professionals in royal theater settings as part of plays or operas.
As they refined the dancing, it developed into the early discipline of ballet and later spread back to Italy, and to other European countries such as Denmark, and eventually to Czarist Russia. With its origins so long ago in the French courts, the ballet terminology was French, and to this day it remains French. Because Louis XIV was quite a dancer, many of those early dances showed great attention to the dancing of men, and on their ability for jumps and swift footwork in those jumps.
Music was always played by live musicians. Early characters in the dancing included princes and princesses, gods, fairies and angels, in what they called Romantic themes. The kings and queens of the day became patrons of the arts, providing the large amount of money to create these new ballets, with extravagant costumes, headpieces, sets, new scores, live music, lighting and dancers. In the late 1600’s and 1700’s the true professional dancer came into his or her own, and ballet productions grew from short pieces to full-length ballets that told an entire story. In the 1700’s, as dance became more for ordinary citizens rather than limited to just the royalty, the entertainment quality became important, and the themes shifted from the aristocratic to the everyday. To achieve the sense of floating, women danced on their toes, which led to the development of pointe shoes, so the dancers appeared to be suspended above the floor and free from earth. Some dancers became real stars. Dancers toured all around Europe, the audiences grew enormously, and dance schools spread everywhere.
After the repression of the French revolution and the rule of Napoleon, dance entered the Romantic Period, where purity, magic, love, heroism, sacrifice, otherworldliness were exalted. It was during this time that ballet tended to focus more on the dancing of the women. One of the most famous ballets of the romantic period is Giselle.
Eventually the development of ballet reached what was called the classical period in the mid 1800’s, where women wore tutus and pointe shoes and men were there to lift them and make them look pretty. Still there was often a scene in those ballets where the early inspirations for ballet, the folk dances, were danced simply and joyously by dancers playing villagers. There was also usually a group of dancers who danced as the background to the scene or as a “frame” to the leading dancers. That group is called the “corps de ballet”. Famous ballets from this period include Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker, and Don Quixote.
In the 1900’s, as the world became a smaller place, dance developed in many new directions, into tap, jazz, modern and contemporary ballet. Influences on these evolving dance forms included traditional dance styles not just from Europe but also Africa and Asia. One of the most recently created new dance forms is hip-hop, which is how most young people today in this country first get to know dance. Please understand, this introduction to dance you are reading has focused soley on dance in Western Europe. There are long traditions of dance and its evolution in Africa, in Asia, the Pacific Islands, and even in Native American societies that predate those in Europe and evolved in a completely different way, but nonetheless enriched the world of dance as we know it today.
What Festival Ballet Providence presents to audiences in theaters is for entertainment, and done at a professional level; people pay to attend and expect to see a high level of ability. The professional dancers at Festival Ballet Providence have trained for years, are in top physical condition. In addition to being athletes they are most certainly artists. Sometimes the dances (or ballets) performed are from the older period called classical or romantic period of ballet, and sometimes they are much more modern, contemporary and up to date. Sometimes they tell a story and sometimes they express a feeling, or even might be just a dance for the beauty of the movement itself. Sometimes dances can be political, emotional, make one cry or make one laugh aloud. Hopefully the performances make you think about something beyond your normal daily life experience. Even though some are very old, they have lasted a long time because they are especially beautiful, dramatic or comical and so audiences can still enjoy them. Since Festival Ballet Providence’s theater audiences pay to see the performances, we feel we should deliver performances that are professional quality. Similarly, other professionals, from dancers on MTV to Broadway dancers to tap dancers and dancers in shows in Las Vegas, work to give you the best performances they can. Many start dancing as young children, but if there is the drive and determination and passion to become a professional dancer, it can be achieved at most any age.
In the Classroom….
Outside the theater, anyone can dance for any reason, from just having fun, to dancing at a party, to telling a story, or to expressing the way you feel sometimes. For equipment, all you really need is your body! Some people may take dance lessons, maybe someday to be a professional dancer, or maybe just to have fun learning something different from school studies. Basically, dance is movement, to a specific rhythm, in space. It can tell a story, relate a feeling, or just be pure movement without reason. To make it interesting, it’s usually nice to have some variety, such as fast or slow sections, sections that use lots of space or very little space, movements that are high, some that are low to the ground, some that are linear, some that curve and circle, etc. Some parts can repeat. Sometimes bodies can be stiff, sometimes very fluid. Sometimes only moving arms, or only moving legs or only the head. If appropriate it can even have sounds or speaking! Or even singing! Dance can relate to the other arts as well. Costumes, sets or simple accessories can be made to make the dance richer, but they are not necessary.
Exercises to try
1. Play a piece of music, and first listen to it first. Have students clap out the rhythm, and then maybe have them count it out. If it’s counted in eights, you can have each child make a movement that takes the 8 counts, and put them all together. The teacher can help students remember what each student’s movement was to put it all together. The teacher can also as the students to make movements in a theme. The easiest, for boys, is sports. They can make a sports dance! Or they can choose a theme like the sea and think of different things in the sea; fish, waves, crabs, lobsters, seals, whales, sharks, penguins, seaweed, boats, anchors, rocks rolling in the surf etc. It can be a great way for them to use their imaginations to discover things they know. Then they can find an 8-cont movement to go with it.
2. Similarly, they can choose a story or write a story, find music, and tell the story through dance. How does a mother move? A child? A sad child? Etc.
3. Find some African music, and have the kids make movements for jungle animals. Or have some be animals moving and others on a safari watching the animals or interacting with the animals…
4. Learn more about the background of dance and search the web for more about ballet, or about dance forms from other countries. Many parents not born in the US, particularly of Asian or Hispanic decent, have strong dance heritage and can often be tapped for a wealth of information. We are also very close to several groups of Native American who can share a great deal about their dance traditions. Some parents may even know of folklore groups in this area who would enjoy telling children about their culture’s dances. French language classes can put together a glossary of French ballet terms, and learn what they are.
Festival Ballet Providence is on RISCA’s Arts In Education Roster, and has lead some wonderful Artist In Residence programs in Rhode lsland, Maine and New Hampshire that have integrated dance into existing curriculum. One great one integrates immigration with dance, wherein classrooms learn dances of countries they are studying, and research that country’s culture. Such countries or regions have included: Africa, Spain, Italy, China, the Pacific Islands, Russia, the Balkans, the US, the Caribbean.
The company also provides very affordable performances specially geared to schools called “Discover Dance” in Providence’s most beautiful theaters, PPAC and VMA. The offerings vary from year to year, but will include in future years The Widows’s Broom adapted from a book by Chris Van Allsburg (read the book and then see the show!), The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, The Princess and the Pea.
For information, always feel gree to contact Festival Ballet Providence, 353.1129 or info@festivalballet.com.
