Thursday, April 10, 2008
The long-awaited ballet - BIG - a body of work set to the music of OutKast's Big Boi, opens tonight in Atlanta.
Big Boi's contemporary style may seem inherently different from the traditional and classical sounds that normally echo through an Atlanta Ballet performance. But, Stallings said, as a choreographer it's not a stretch to equate one of hip-hop's biggest names with some of the most venerated composers who are usually the backdrop for traditional ballets.
"For me [Big Boi's music] sounds like Shostakovich, Stravinsky a little ... just today's Stravinsky," Stallings said.
"Big" came about almost matter-of-factly. In an interview at his studio, Big Boi -- whose unprepossessing size belies his energy -- said the Atlanta Ballet's artistic director, John McFall, approached him at a fundraising event and proposed a collaboration. Big Boi said he had a split-second of uncertainty about a ballet project, but was intrigued by the prospect and quickly immersed himself in the work.
Stallings said the show is a dream marriage of artistic aesthetics that has been a long time coming -- and in this duality of differences, anything goes.
Audience members will be pulled on stage. Dancers will weave their way through the audience. Big Boi and a live band will perform some of his greatest hip-hop collaborations.
But the greatest collaborating may be the pairing created by Stallings and Big Boi when Giuseppe Verdi's "La Traviata" is intertwined with "Morris Brown," a cut from OutKast's "Idlewild" soundtrack.
Those contrasts -- "physical but sublime, beautiful but ugly, loud but soft," in Stallings' words -- are exactly the feelings this fusion ballet is intended to evoke, both artists said.
"Its very moving, sophisticated, elegant but at the same time it will tear your back off," Big Boi said.
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