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Ballet Austin: BELLE / A Tale of Beauty & the Beast

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BELLE / A TALE OF BEAUTY & THE BEAST
Choreographer: Stephen Mills

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◆ Ballet Austin

Ballet Austin opens its 2024-2025 season with Artistic Director’s unique adaptation of the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast with Alexander McQueen-inspired costumes by Michael B. Raiford, lighting design by Tony Tucci, and set to an original score by Graham Reynolds.

“When Stephen and I start collaborating, one of the first things we do is figure out the palette and instrumentation, and what kind of style the music might take. With BELLE, we came up with two opposing palettes,” Reynolds, said.

“The first is an acoustic side with piano and strings, instruments that sound and feel as timeless as the story. The other side is built digitally and electronically, with instruments and effects that lie solely inside my computer combined with electric guitar. The result is an electro-acoustic score that flows back and forth.”

Mills’ dark version of this classic tale was inspired by French filmmaker Jean Cocteau’s 1946 film La Belle et la Bête. “A beast, in this story, is those scars that we have and the way sometimes we allow that to dictate our lives,” Mills explains. “Even though Belle may be beautiful, there’s a beast inside of her, we all carry a beast inside of us. And so how do we wrestle with that?”