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Something Wicked Puts a Witchy Spin On Shakespeare

In a new adaptation of Macbeth, Paul Vasterling conjures a bewitching spectacle of power, murder, and dance.
Photos by Marianne Leach. Images courtesy of Nashville Ballet

Greed, power, and fate are the main themes of Macbeth, arguably William Shakespeare’s bloodiest and creepiest of plays. Now, the Scottish tale has been adapted into a ballet by Paul Vasterling, choreographer and artistic director of Nashville Ballet. Vasterling started choreographing it during the Emergence workshop series in 2013, and has since expanded into a full-length ballet called Something Wicked, opening this month.

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Vasterling is no stranger to adapting Shakespeare to dance: “A ballet performance of Shakespeare is a great introduction (or re-introduction) to his work,” he tells The Creators Project. “Instead of scouring the text trying to understand each and every word, we’re extracting the major plot points and themes and portraying them through a different language—in this case through dance, music, and visual design. We’re appealing to a different set of senses to capture the spirit of the piece. […] The performance breaks down some of the walls people typically have up toward Shakespeare’s written work and allows audiences to just sit back and appreciate it.”

Something Wicked focuses on the role of the three witches in Macbeth. Instead of them planting the seed that eventually lead the title character to murder, they “actively manipulate him as a pawn in their own greedy quest for power.” With this reimagining, as Macbeth’s original motivation of seeking power becomes his madness, Vasterling explores difficult questions about free will, violence, and human nature.

Though they're explored without words and only through movement, the existential power of the story itself still stands. Keenan McLaren Hartman, who will be dancing as one of the three witches, tells The Creators Project that “dancing in such a psychologically intense ballet not only feels physically demanding, but can also be very emotionally exhausting. Dancers are artists first and foremost, so when presented with an emotional ballet, it forces us to dig deep into our beings and discover parts of ourselves that can often be dark and surprising. But this is what makes ballet—even the tragedies—so beautiful.”

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There have been plenty of ballet adaptations, most famously Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Vasterling has staged his own versions of both). With this production coming out just in time for Halloween, it gives viewers an opportunity to dig deep into their own psyches to answer questions about our human obsession with theater and stories, art and fear. Something wicked, indeed.

Something Wicked runs Oct. 20 - 22. Tickets and more information can be found on Nashville Ballet’s website.

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