Choreographer James Sewell of Minneapolis-based Sewell Ballet is at work with veteran documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman on a ballet based on Wiseman’s Titicut Follies.
The 1967 flick brought to light the residents and inmates at Bridgewater State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. The film incited controversy as state authorities tried to prevent its release because it “violated inmates' privacy.”
"When I first saw the film -- so intense, so strange -- I thought, 'how could you make a ballet of this?’ But the elements are all there -- humorous, poetic, horrifying, sad," Sewell said.
According to Sewell, the ballet will require almost 10 male dancers to portray the state hospital's doctors and nurses.
A fellow at the Center for Ballet and the Art set to open at New York University; Wiseman announced the Sewell ballet this week as part of the fellowship.
On Wednesday, Sewell said the collaboration came out of phone conversations he and Wiseman have been having this summer. Wiseman is due in Minneapolis in late September to meeting and in-studio improvise the idea.
“Wiseman is a visionary," Sewell said, "and it extends beyond his medium. We've synthesized how our worlds can connect."
Wiseman derived the title for the film from an annual variety show the inmates and officials put on at Bridgewater.
"These violent criminals and mentally ill inmates would put on a show, singing Gershwin with pom-poms in their hands," Sewell said.
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Wiseman, 84, won the Golden Lion Career Award at the Venice Film Festival. Watch below the medication scene from Titicut Follies.
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