Orlando Ballet’s production of Peter Pan is flying into the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts.
That flying is literal! Some of this ballet actually happens in the air.
This version of Peter Pan is the brainchild of Orlando Ballet Artistic Director Jorden Morris, who says this production’s uniqueness starts from its inspirations. Morris went all the way back to J.M. Barrie’s 1904 book for his adaptation, and he chose music from Barrie’s era and hometown – works he would have heard when they were new in Edwardian London.
While Morris’s ballet has been performed internationally, only a deeply abridged, stripped down version has been performed in Orlando before, during COVID.
“I had to basically cut out seven scenes, which equates to about 42 minutes of music, in order to get it into the 90-minute time that the COVID restrictions had put on us. You couldn't be in a theater for more than 90 minutes without an intermission,” Morris explained. “It was one of the most challenging creative problems I've had to solve in my entire career! It’s like taking something that you have created from A to Z, and then you tell me, I need to take 14 letters out of that alphabet.”
I’m flying!
But this time, the audience will experience the full version, with all the Tinkerbells and whistles, so to speak – and that includes flying! Technically, it’s called “aerial choreography,” and Morris said he recently put his dancers through safety checks and into air harnesses.
Since he wrote, choreographed, and has traveled internationally with this production for 20 years, he has seen this before…but he says he never tires of the moment when the dancers are hoisted into the air by a harness for the first time.
“It’s always a great thing to look at someone’s face the first time they fly. Because there’s just that amazing sense of “magicalness” and gravity-defying, ‘what is happening to me?’ And then they start looking down at the floor, and [at the view] around them,” he smiled. “There’s just that, as in Peter Pan, as in the story, there’s that sense of wonder.”
Best medicine
And there seems to be a desire to be reminded of that sense of wonder in the world, noted Morris. And this production has that, and more. “I think I would like people to take away whatever they're craving at the moment. You know, if they're craving some tenderness and family-ness and sense of community, there is a lot of that. If you want to see something that is humorous and adventurous, there is that. If you want to see beautiful dancing …to see some great sword fighting and some great aerial choreography to sort of wow your senses, there is that.”
“And I think people want to see that,” Morris added. “They want to see family. They want to see love. They want to see a sense of community. They want some light-hearted moments, and they also want some very tender moments to sort of keep us connected to each other and to this sort of crazy world that we're all sort of spinning in. Take a moment to fly somewhere and let your imagination be the driver for a couple of hours in the theater. I think that's the best medicine for anyone at this time.”
