What is it about?
In May 2019 an international cooperative of researchers, performers, and artists staged Vernon Lee’s (Violet Paget, 1856–1935) pacifist drama The Ballet of the Nations: A Present-Day Morality (1915) at her Villa Il Palmerino, Florence. The site-specific performance was adapted from Lee’s text by director Angeliki Papoulia and producer Federica Parretti, with a focus on the text’s resonances with the current resurgence of the nationalist far-right movements and anti-immigrant manifestos. This article considers the genesis of this production, the research informing its adaptation, and the subsequent performance of the piece.
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Why is it important?
'A Present Day Morality for the Present Day' is the first critical essay that considers the development and staging of the first theatrical performance of Vernon Lee's 'The Ballet of the Nations: A Present-Day Morality Tale' (1915). The article was written by researcher Dr Sally Blackburn-Daniels, who was involved with the project from it's inception.
Perspectives
'The Ballet' was a pacifist allegory written during the first years of The Great War. In 2019 during it's first theatrical performance, the project was concerned about the growth of populism and nationalism across Europe. Now 'The Ballet' is even more important, as we try to think about what it means to be a pacifist or to take anti-violence as an ideological standpoint during a period of conflict in many countries across the globe.
Dr Sally Blackburn-Daniels
Teesside University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: <i>A Present-Day Morality</i> for the Present Day, 19 Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century, August 2020, Open Library of the Humanities,
DOI: 10.16995/ntn.2931.
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