Dear CBT Family,
Greetings from Brooklyn! In December, I had written a letter to explain the philosophy and the principles on which Covenant Ballet was built. While we appreciate the importance of a “recital” is to give parents and students an opportunity to see and evaluate the specific dance progress made by a school's students (which we enjoyed doing at our June showcase!), our choice to develop original balletic material, we believe, affords even greater advantages overall. It is my hope to share more thoughts and experiences about this with you in the future.
This brings me to our big announcement: a new ballet is in the works, entitled Charles’ Carol! For this letter, I thought I would let you “in” on the journey of how this story was chosen to be nurtured into a full ballet, and share some insights into aspects and themes we are hoping to incorporate into, and then convey to audiences, through this production. The search for the concept began with a practical guideline: a seasonal work would fit our needs and hopefully our schedule. While scanning through possibilities, A Christmas Carol kept cropping up, demanding that it be explored as our work in progress. You might not be surprised to learn that there are a number of balletic re-tellings of this Dickens’ work, maybe not as many as the numerous movies and musical portrayals. However, no matter how beautiful these balletic productions were, there just seemed to be something missing to make this story CBT’s next ballet. The more I delved into A Christmas Carol and, more importantly, the life story of its author, the more riveting and revealing the story became. As Dickens' heart and some of its special burdens became more disclosed, these discoveries sealed my determination to make this “story within a story” our next major project.
Did you know that Dickens’ worked in a factory at the age of 12 because of his father’s debt that bankrupted the family? The rat infested factory left an indelible mark on him and kept him sensitive to the continued abuses of child labor in the factories across England. This triggered the writing of his most popular work, and has triggered our excitement for the premiere of Charles' Carol, November 16, 2024, at 7pm, at the Claire Tow Theater (formerly Whitman Hall) at Brooklyn College.
The work has begun with many hurdles to scale. If you would like to join us in getting this new production to the stage, you can make a donation online. My hope is that this note will strengthen the bond between our CBT community and the vitally important "village" that enables our work: YOU!
Thank you from the bottom of my heart!
Marla Hirokawa
Artistic Director and Founder
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