At first blush, Once Upon a Rose, may appear to be a pleasant little tale put to dance. In essence, however, it is a morality play that draws from several existing fairy tales, including, Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, and the less obvious, The Wizard of Oz.
Like Little Red Riding Hood, who was purposely clad in the sexually implicit red cape, our ingénue’s sexuality is suggested in her red dress. While a contemporary reading of Little Red Riding Hood urges a wariness of “the wolf”, the underpinnings of that medieval poem served as a cautionary tale for girls to be wary of male predators. Its poignant verse, “Now as then, tis simple truth, broadest smile hath sharpest tooth,” speaks to that threat.
The parallels to Sleeping Beauty are quite obvious. In both stories, innocent young maidens become the victims of an external evil force. In the original tale, the wicked fairy is the force of evil who placed a curse of interminable sleep upon the young beauty. A more contemporary force of evil is characterized in our story as a sexual predator attempts to violate the young girl’s innocence and virtue after which she too is cast into a death spiral. Along with redemption and resurrection, victimization is a core theme in our tale.
To insure the aura of consummate purity, our danseuse is projected as delicate and ethereal in her physicality, her countenance and her movements. Her light and airy dance steps were selected purposely to convey that ethereal quality. Her movements would include no bounding leaps or grand jete’s, but rather quiet and delicate elevations – the assemble’, coupe’s and soutenu. Faithful to the illusion of weightlessness, she would dance sans slippers to insure that no sound would be projected as her foot touched the floor.
The male character, the self-absorbed Everyman, strutting and high stepping his way through life, is oblivious and mindless of the scourge of others. In some respects he is the embodiment of Dorothy’s three hapless companions in, The Wizard of Oz. His dismissive behavior exposes the reality of his missing brain, courage and heart. After his display of total indifference to the forlorn character under the cloth, he has a dream, whereupon, he is awakened to his own insensitivity. He learns in the dream of the circumstances that prompt the rejected, abused, and dispossessed to devolve into homelessness… and he is touched. In the action that follows, we witness his transformation, whereby, he acquires a brain, processing the reality of the homeless person’s torment and hopelessness, the courage to approach the unknown under the cloth, and the heart and tenderness to provide warmth and nourishment. His moral epiphany having triumphed, he is redeemed.
As with Sleeping Beauty, our story’s lamentable beauty is resurrected by an act of kindness. She is forever clutching the rose that has been symbolic of her virtue, reassuring us that although an assailant had attempted to violate her innocence, she broke from his grip with her flower and virtue intact.
As she evaporates into the shadows we realize, as in many Greek plays, that she is the apotheosis, purity in human form, leaving behind her rose, emblematic of the male character’s transformation from abject indifference to consummate compassion. He embraces the rose and drifts off, content in the notion that he has become whole.