Scottish Ballet – A Streetcar Named Desire

In what promises to be a fruitful combination Scottish Ballet Artistic Director Ashley Page has paired contemporary choreographer Lopez Ochoa with theatre and film director Nancy Meckler to create a new full length work which combines drama with dance.

A Streetcar Named Desire was one of three potential stories initially discussed between Lopez Ochoa and Meckler. Streetcar, written by American playwright Tennessee Williams, was the first story Lopez Ochoa read.  “I didn’t have to read the other two books; I knew this was the story,” she says.  “It’s very intricate, it’s beautiful, there’s a lot of detail and it’s very human.  Blanche gets rejected by the village that she was born in and then at the end of the piece she gets rejected by her own family; her sister. That’s the only thing she has left, that is so painful.”

Just as this production combines dance with drama, Streetcar further combines contemporary dance with ballet. “I’m using both techniques in this piece because Blanche DuBois is a character that doesn’t fit into the society she was born in.  So we put her on pointe shoes at the beginning of the ballet and it’s very elegant and polite.  And as she comes into emotions and into New Orleans it’s all very grounded, on the floor, hair loose, women throwing themselves on men and that sort of thing.” 

Ochoa Lopez identifies herself as a contemporary choreographer who’s happy to explore the aesthetic of classical lines.  But a theatrical language infuses her contemporary work. “I always dreamt I would do my first full length work with a director and now that I’m working with a director I think I should always do it with a director. They see storytelling in such a different way from a choreographer; they’ve learned it and I have learned to make movements in space so we really become a force together.” [Susannah Radford]