Gordon Peirce Schmidt is animated. He’s arranging three miniature set pieces on his desk, describing the opening scene of the Grand Rapids Ballet Company’s upcoming production: an original ballet based on theinfamous serial killer Jack the Ripper.
“This is how it starts,” he says. “There’s going to be unbelievably deep-red [background lighting] and a sliver of light cracking through the set pieces. You’ll see a row of people lined up with a rope at their waist. They’re so poor that the only way they can sleep is to sleep standing up, tied together. Then you’ll hear the [music], with all the sound effects and its creepiness…and out of the mass, the Rippers come out and begin a ritual dance.”
He can see me looking at the set pieces, quizzically. He stops and pushes them aside.
“Your mind is much more creative than these three set pieces,” he assures me. “I want to open your mind up to create the desolation and destitution of [London] in 1888 with a few set pieces, some lights, some music and dancing.
“You’re going to understand where you are, who these people are and you’re going to get the creepiness right off the bat,” he says, getting animated again. “From there, we’re going to go on a psychological sleigh ride.”
The past few months have been a quite a ride for Schmidt, artistic director of Grand Rapids Ballet Company.When he learned GR Ballet had performance dates over Halloween weekend this year, he set about trying to do something edgy that would appeal to a younger audience. He’d already created and staged a story ballet toDracula, and other creepy characters like Frankenstein and Jekyll and Hyde had been done as ballets, too. So he landed on Jack the Ripper, a character whose story has been a staple of pop culture for a century, but hasn’t really been represented classically.
For anyone not familiar with the story, Jack the Ripper was a pseudonym the London press gave to a serial killer who brutally murdered five women – all suspected prostitutes – during a six-week period in the fall of 1888. The murders were ghastly: The killer slit the victim’s throats and eviscerated them with surgical precision. The crimes were never solved, and there were more than 100 suspects. Schmidt plans to play on that uncertainty in the balletic telling of the story.
“Anybody on stage could be the Ripper,” he says. “Nobody knows who Jack the Ripper was, so I don’t intend on revealing it in the ballet. I just like the darkness of it all. It’s going to be somewhat of an impressionist take on the story, rather than anything literal.”
As always, music is a critical element. Scoring Ripper was a “real journey,” Schmidt says. Initially, he planned to score the entire ballet with the music of Hungarian composer Bela Bartok. He spent the summer putting together scenes with Bartok’s music, only to be rebuffed by the dead composer’s estate.So he took a 180-degree turn and considered using 100 percent Metallica music.
He compromised, and set about securing rights to music by three dead Austrian composers -- Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern – as well as one living American one: Ozzy Osbourne.
That’s right, Gordon Peirce Schmidt plans to do ballet to Black Sabbath.
He’s had to jump through a few hoops. When his production manager contacted Black Sabbath’s record label, they told him he needed to write a description of the scene in which it is going to be used.
“I said, ‘You have to be kidding me. This guy bit the head off of a [bat] on stage and they’re worried about how I’m going to use it in a ballet.’”
Ultimately, mixing Black Sabbath with modern, classical composers who are “kind of out there” works well, Schmidt says. “The music really sets up the creepiness and atmosphere of the place and helps define character.”
The opportunity to create original work such as Ripper continues to stimulate the former dancer. Since joining the GR Ballet in 1998, he’s created more than 50 new works, including pieces that incorporate both jazz and classical music to tell stories such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Scheherazade.
“You’re not going to find a Ballet company like this in the rest of America that does so much new work,” Schmidt says. “It’s almost like a theater company. It’s a dance drama company. We tell stories through movement. We do the abstract pieces, but everything is based on the theory that the dance we do is going to have a lot of emotional value, and you’re going to be affected by it.”
When Schmidt compares GR Ballet to a theater company, he’s not talking about a community theatergroup staging revivals. He’s envisioningtheaters like Chicago’s Goodman or Steppenwolf, which have built international reputations for presenting original, edgy works marked by realism.Schmidt has choreographed for both.
“[Our] approach is more Steppenwolf or Goodman than it is melodramatic opera,” he says. “I’m not a big fan of ballet acting that’s over the top, I like to keep it internal until you don’t understand what I’m talking about, and then I’ll open you up a little bit.”
