With the help of novelist Laura Esquivel, Tony Award-winning choreographer Christopher Wheeldon cooks up a cinematic ballet for American Ballet Theatre’s summer season at the Met.
was first published in 1989, it has been translated into more than 30 languages and adapted into a cult-favorite film. Now, with Tony Award-winning choreographer Christopher Wheeldon at the helm, the best-selling novel sees its most ambitious adaptation yet: a ballet.
With an impressive resume of one-act ballets, full-length performances, and Broadway shows , Wheeldon finally felt the timing was right. Both The Royal Ballet and ABT sought to take on the scale of the work, which, in addition to Wheeldon’s choreography, required commissioning a score, the designing and building of sets and costumes, and working with Esquivel to adapt the novel to the stage.
Honoring the Mexican culture so central to the novel was of equal importance to the team, and visiting Esquivel proved to be a crucial starting point for their creative research, particularly for Crowley. “Laura lives in this extraordinary house, which could be in one of her books,” recalls Crowley. “She has this beautiful courtyard with tiles and flowers and Bougainvillea everywhere."
And for the costumes, Crowley chose period designs with each character assigned various earthy colors. “For me, costume both expresses the character, and at the same time, because there are no words here, what they’re wearing becomes information for the audience,” he shares of wanting to give each character a distinct look. “There was a lot of painting and hand-dyeing, so things look like the ochre is seeping from their hems upward.
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