Last weekend we had the pleasure of attending choreographer Septime Webre’s Wizard of Oz, performed by the Kansas City Ballet at the Kauffman Center in Kansas City. L. Frank Baum’s book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, first appeared as a stage play in 1902. It has since been adapted as a movie, the famous one with Judy Garland, along with Disney’s Oz, The great and Powerful, and as several Broadway shows such as The Wiz and Wicked. It has been spun-off as several television shows, and now is told in ballet form.
This new telling of the classic children’s story has been created in collaboration with the Colorado Ballet and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet with an entirely new orchestral work by Composer Matthew Pierce. The music is not what we are familiar with. There is no “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” or “Follow the Yellow Brick Road”, but it is at times enchanting and occasionally reminds you of that great dean of American music. Aaron Copeland. Instead of the Yellow Brick Road, there are “Roadies” dressed in costumes to mimic yellow bricks, that follow Dorothy and her three companions to a pseudo march tune that has you chanting ‘follow the yellow brick road’ internally as the character move down the road.
One of the benefits of the collaboration between the three ballet companies was that together they could produce a $1 Million dollar plus extravaganza by pooling their resources and they definitely succeeded. The show has everything you would expect and more. The costumes are spectacular. There are great video effects, acrobatics, enormous puppets and a very life like puppet representing Toto. It spectacularly depicts the original L. Frank Baum story.
Following the production in Kansas City, The Colorado Ballet will present the Wizard of Oz in February of 2019 and in May of 2019, it will be performed in Winnipeg. The production is so good, one hopes that it will be around for a long while.
It is interesting that it was three companies, hovering on the mid-western plains, that have come together to create such a fantastic production. Perhaps it is time for us to resume celebrating our mid-western values; celebrating that fact that we are not stupid, that we really have a heart, that we are courageous and that there really is no place like home.
We all have the tendency to get caught up in the tornadic whirlwind that society creates. We’re going about our way, minding our own business and everything seems to be so black and white when all of a sudden, everything swirls around us, confusing and frightening us and we realize that we have lost our way.
We run into all sorts of creatures, some that we have difficulty recognizing as our fellow human beings. It may be a more colorful world, but it is much more frightening. When we pull back the curtain, we see that there is nothing there to be afraid of, it wasn’t our imagination. It was just bluster that we fell for. We have had everything that we needed all along. All we need to do is go home.
On our way back to Emporia from Kansas City, we turned off the main highway and took the rural route home. We drove through the bronzed autumn fields of the prairie, past harvested corn fields, fields of grass and copses of trees turning red and gold. A bald eagle swooped low over the road as we drove past. It was Kansas at it’s best.
Whenever we travel, we always get one of two responses when we mention that we are from Kansas. “Oz” or “Dorothy” most people overseas will say. As if those two words are enough to convey that they think they know where we are from. If we’re here in the States, the response is usually “You’re not in Oz anymore”, usually with a somewhat demeaning chuckle. Neither response reflects accurately where we are from.
We are not from “Oz”. We are from Kansas. It may not be as colorful as Oz, but if a tornado is going to drop me anywhere, this is where I would want it to be. Home, amid the rolling plains, the magnificent sunrises and sunsets. Home, with those that I love, where life is simple but sure and predictable. Why would anyone not want to be at home?