- In this edition of "ARTEFFECTS a popular fantasy novel turned beautiful ballet.

(bright classical music) - [Rosine] I'm so honored that through all these years, I'm the only choreographer that he's authorized to do a ballet based on his work which makes me so, so happy.

- [Beth] Bringing movement to sc - [Gabriel] I really enjoy tapping into the machine that is the human mind.

(bright music) - [Beth] And a play turned balle turned steampunk fantasy.

- [Ananda] When you start saying everybody's name, it gets really confusing, and that's why I think when we watch the action only, it can actually be more clear.

- It's all ahead on this edition of "ARTEFFECTS".

(bright rhythmic music) - [Announcer] Funding for "ARTEFFECTS" is made possible by Sandy Raffealli with Bill Pearce Motors, (bright music) Meg and Dillard Myers, in memory of Sue McDowell, The Carol Franc Buck Foundation, and by the annual contributions of PBS Reno members.

- Hello, I'm Beth Macmillan, and welcome to "ARTEFFECTS".

Over the years, many people around the world have fallen in love with the fantasy novel, "The Last Unicorn".

Rosine Bena of Sierra Nevada Ballet is one of those fans.

The novel inspired Rosine to create an original ballet based on "The Last Unicorn".

It debuted in 1989, and was so well received, that it performed again in 1991, and now, has returned to the stage decades later in Reno, Nevada.

In this segment, we learn what i to make this ballet happen once and what it means to those who are bringing it back to life.

(bright classical music) - And it's my pleasure to welcom you to "The Last Unicorn".

It's gonna be great.

(audience applauding) "The Last Unicorn" is a full length story ballet based on the book by Peter S. Be I read the book in the early '80 and I really loved it, and I had never done, at that po an original full-length story ba but I had this passion for this and my daughter, who was then re said, you know, "Why don't you do a ballet?"

And so, I decided to try my first full-length original story ballet based on t but it was a long journey, because it took me three years t I had to start out by getting the permission from Peter Beagle.

- I'm Peter S. Beagle, I'm the author of "The Last Unicorn".

- And he was wonderful.

He was very enthusiastic about doing the ballet.

That was an easy part.

I'm so honored that through all these years, I'm the only choreographer that he's authorized to do a ballet based on his work which makes me so, so happy.

- I remember her, I can't believe it's been that long.

She came to talk to me.

I can remember we went to a coff and we talked for a long time about what she wanted to do.

It's so completely out of my han so utterly out of my hands, that all I can do is lean back and enjoy it.

- And now, without further ado, it's my pleasure to present to you after 34 years, "The Last Unicorn".

(audience cheering) (lively classical music) - Basically, it's a fairytale.

It was always meant to be.

It's a fairytale about an immort who comes to believe that she is the last of her kind.

- [Rosine] And so she asks all the other animals, and all the other animals say they've never seen a unicorn.

- But she has to leave them to f if there are other unicorns in t and she does find that out, and she finds that in certain wa more than she wants to know.

- She meets the butterfly, and the butterfly tells her, and they were captured by the evil King Haggard and his servant, The Red Bull, and they've all been put in the They're prisoners there, and they can't get out of the sea, and so, the unicorn goes on a jo to find those other unicorns, and on the way, she meets some incredible characters, like Schmendrick the Magician, she meets the wonderful Molly Grue, who is a servant, and has always waited her life to meet a unicorn, and those are some of the main characters in the story.

When the unicorn goes on the jou the magician turns her into a wo and then she falls in love with Prince Lir, and then he turns her back into and I think that's the saddest part, from anybody watching, is that she loves this prince, but she can't be with him, because she basically is a unico It's a beautiful story, 'cause it's not only for children, and there's a lot of incredible I really identified with the character of Molly Grue.

Molly Grue says, when she finally meets the unicorn, "I've waited my whole life, "and you come to me now when I'm like this," and at the time I did the ballet I was retiring from the stage, I was going to retire from the s and I was thinking the same thin and for ballet dancers, you know, your career is short.

I was facing that, and that's ho I felt like, you know, you come when I'm like this.

It was pretty magical, because my daughter, in the original ballet in 1989, and she was the bunny rabbit, and now, she's grown into a professional dancer, and she played Molly Grue, and that made me very happy, because that was my favorite cha And Peter, when he saw her performance as Molly Grue, he said it brought tears to his and that made me feel so good.

(bright classical music) I recreated the ballet for many My parents were both ballet danc and my father, he was a ballet d and then he turned into a set de and he created all the original and my mother, at the time, directed the ballet.

It was a family kind of love thi I just felt like it was such a special creation, and I wanted to bring it back, even though both of them are gon and I thought, someday, you know I wanna see that ballet before I leave this earth.

I wanna see it again on the stag My father's sets were found in a in San Mateo, California.

For 34 years, they were in the w and we managed to get the sets and restore them.

I have to say, when I saw those sets go up, it was like wow, you know?

It was just like going back in t - I have the same respect for da that I have for actors, because they're out there using all your skill, everything you've learned, everything you've screwed up, everything you know that you'd like to do one more time.

Me, it's the same, very much the They're doing it for an audience that was right there, right there in front of you, and I'm doing it for an audience I may never see.

- Yeah, one of the things that Peter said in the original, which I thought was really cute, King Haggard went, he looks at Lady Amalthea, who is the unicorn turned into a he says he can see her.

He can see that she's a unicorn through her eyes.

Well, showing that in ballet was and so what I did was I had King Haggard dance with the Lady Amalthea, and then I had somebody as a unicorn going back and forth, and one of the things that Peter said when he first saw it, he said, "How did you, how did you do that?

"What made you do that?"

And I said, "You did.

"Your words, I did in ballet," and he thought that was...

He said, "That's genius," and I thought, well, not really, because, you know, I think in ballet terms, and he thinks in words, but it's the same kind of thing.

- In any case, I honor the chore just because there she is with her own work out there, and she's worked on it so hard for so long.

There's nothing I can do possibly but applaud.

We're in the same business.

We speak the same language.

- Because it was my first original story ballet, I wondered if I would like it ag because I remember it as being this incredible, magical thing, and I wondered if it would be how it would be received, and if it would be as good to me after all these years, but it was, it was, I loved it, and the audiences were amazing.

You always, as an artist, always well, maybe I think this is good but does anybody else gonna think this is good?

And that was great.

It was pretty amazing when the curtain came down to hear the screaming of people.

I mean, they just screamed for j and I thought that was, that really, you know, that was pretty moving to me.

(audience applauding) - To learn more about Sierra Nevada Ballet, visit sierranevadaballet.org, and to learn more about author Peter S. Beagle, visit beagleverse.com.

And now, it's time for this week's art quiz.

Ballet originated in Italian Renaissance courts in the fifteenth and sixteenth c but it wasn't until the late 160 when the first national ballet company was formed.

Which French King was a ballet e and contributed to the formation of that ballet company?

Is the answer A, King Charles IX B, King Louis XIV, C, King Henry IV, or D, King Nap And the answer is B, King Louis Artist, Gabriel Gaffney Smith's Woodcarvings evoke movement.

As a former professional ballet he imbues his intricate creation with energy and feeling.

In this segment, we visit Columb to meet the artist and find out (bright piano music) - I grew up in Upstate New York, and I started dancing like, 12 i called Saugerties Ballet Center.

I always was like a kid that like, needed to do...

I needed to be physical, I needed to use my mind, I was never good with boredom ev like if I'm bored, it's just not good for me, so, but then also, like, the physicality of ballet, the sport aspect of ballet, it's underrated, especially like, in the states, and compared to like, Europe.

it's incredible, 'cause you get to use your mind, you get to use your musicality, you get to use, and it's like, the hardest thing physically compared to anything that I did with baseball, and soccer, and any sport that I did, it did not compare to what I could do with ballet, 'cause I could work on it every and I could dive into it as deep as I wanted to.

Plus, it was a way for me to express myself that I never had before, and I just caught the bug, and then it just like, kind of, it took me on this ride.

(rhythmic music) Roller coaster of a career, like, the ballet, for anybody who's in the ballet it is like a roller coaster, and that's just inevitable.

You're with a group of artists, everybody in the room's an artist, you know, so there's the dynamics of it, and you know, you can have your highs and high and lowest of lows with injuries and things, but yeah, it was awesome.

I danced here at BalletMet for 12 seasons with Gerard, and then Edward took over, and then I retired 2020.

Now that I'm kind of outside com I kind of have freedom where I can do anything I want.

I can put together anything, lik the sky's the limit, but then that puts more pressure because I'm like, okay, I have to take this bubble of a thought that I have, and I was like, I think it's possible to...

So it's slowly been over like, the last like, four or five years, where it's like, started to like, morph into something that can be physical.

(blade screeching) I'm the fifth generation of a hardware store.

My father being a woodworker, an he'll say he's not an artist, but he is an artist, and my mom's an artist.

Art was very important in my hou so I am kind of them put togethe I grew up with saws, I grew up with all these tools, I grew up, go out in the woods and build a tree house, like, you know, so I always used and I always knew how to use too and then like, slowly, (cover clicking) but surely, I would acquire my own tools.

Like, I remember I bought my first band saw from Habitat for Humanity (blade screeching) for 50 bucks.

The first piece I ever made, I had all these extra pieces, 'cause I was making furniture for my house, and I didn't want to pay $3,000 for a table when I could make it for nothing So then I had all the extra scra and I just, you know, I bought this band saw, so I was like, oh, cool, I can do these little, tiny cuts now that I couldn't do safely on the table saw, 'cause I wanted to keep my finge and then I just made a circle, and it just like, and I just had it relief and go out, and then I would put it on my wa and then at that time, BalletMet was asking dancers to kind of donate.

You can have like, a dinner with and so they asked me, and I said "Hey, I'm making this art," and then yeah, I donated it, and that's how that started.

(bright piano music) So that's what I'm doing now, I do it every day.

I create pieces, basically starting a new career from the ground up.

Like ballet, it's all on me, like I have to create the pieces I have to, which is a thing that I like to do the most, but what I'm working on now is where I have a piece of art that emotes some type of feeling which then I would compose music and then I would choreograph like, a little short, a little ballet.

(bright guitar music) I like the pressure of like, putting a timeline on something so that I have to do it, 'cause I feel if I don't, then I oh, I want to do this, oh, I want to do this, 'cause again, I don't like being and I do a lot of different things in the art world, but they all inspire each other, so that's why I was like, I need to figure out how I can put 'em all together, because then I can create someth that is super unique to me, and 'cause it's always been like, I but I dance, but I create art, and it was always like I would have to talk to people separately about everything I did, and then it would be like, oh, but you compose, and then, you know, so it was al I would always go like, this is my composing mind, and then this is my dancer mind, and then this is my... (blade screeching) But they're all linked to me, all the movement.

For me, creating the art now, especially, and before, is like, this state of flow that because I'm not around my phone.

Dancers are so fortunate and so to be able to go into a studio and have interactions, these powerful human interactions with people, and finding this state of flow.

(bright piano music) When I was a dancer, creating th was something that I didn't have so I could be like, a little sor and I could just sit at the tabl and it's just a very slow proces gluing one piece at a time, so I think it was a form of me getting away from the ballet world, like say, the ballet world was just super dramatic that day, I was like, okay, I need to get so it was always a way for me to but to still be creative, and to still feel like I had my and I could find a state of flow and then once you're done, you have something to show for i I really enjoy tapping into the that is the human mind, (guitar playing) instead of everybody's on a comp and everybody's filtering through what the computer can do for me, but tapping into this, and how you can dive deeper into your mind and create, I think is something that I've always done my whole life.

(bright music) There's definitely a correlation between the mindset that I can put myself in, where I can lose myself, 'cause that is like, the best high in the world is to be able to go in and just completely lose yourself, and not be aware of how much tim and that's what art did, that's what dance did, music, performing.

Yeah, I'm super fortunate and lucky to be able to do that.

- For more information about the check out gabrielgaffneysmith.co and instagram.com/gaffsmit.

Imagine for a moment the grace o the stiffness of steampunk, and the antics of a Shakespeare How can these three elements mix to create something cohesive and That's what Sierra Nevada Ballet with their production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream".

Let's take a look at how this incredible team pieced it all together.

(bright classical music) - Well, "Midsummer Night's Dream is a classically complicated sto like, it's one of Shakespeare's that people always say, "I get confused about this."

- But we have interpreted it in a different way to add a steampunk element, and an ethereal element as well.

- "Midsummer Night's Dream" has three little sections.

There's a story about a couple, a girl whose father is very, how can we say, male chauvinistic.

He wants her to marry the person he wants her to marry, but she doesn't wanna marry that she's in love with somebody else and she tells her best friend, H about the fact that she wants to be with this other person.

Now, Helena loves the person her father wants her to marry, so it becomes a little, (chuckle a little complicated there.

Now, they run away, the two people who wanna get married, to the forest, where the other plot happens, because it's a story about the queen of the fairies and her husband, who have a strange relationship.

They have a good marriage, but they're always trying to better themselves, like in other words, if one was strong character, the other one wants to be strong - When you start saying everybod it gets really confusing, and that's why I think when we watch the action only, it can actually be more clear.

- Ananda spent a lot of time with the actual script of "Midsummer Night's Dream", so Ananda is very familiar with the dialogue, which is very helpful when you'r to translate something without w So we were able to go through th and break down what needed to happen in each scene, and it's great, as a choreograph to have somebody who knows the dramaturgy like that, because this is a direct interpretation from Shakespeare, so it's very important to be able to go back, and be like, did we hit the marks we needed to in that scene?

Yes, we did, let's move on.

- [Ananda] We did the choreograp with all of the action from the play, having to change certain things, because the dialogue about stuff that happens off stage doesn't work in ballet, so it has to happen in front of but basically, we did the whole Shakespeare play as a ballet.

(bright classical music) - [Rosine] For us to translate from words to movement, is not that difficult.

We use a lot of mime.

- So we will use, like for example, you and I, and love, and so we have hand gestures and pantomime that we rely on, but you can also interpret that in the body.

So if somebody's uncomfortable, their body language will change to keep continuing that story on (dramatic classical music) - One of the goals of our ballet was to help people understand Shakespeare's work a little bit better, a little bit easier, and I think with the costuming, that was one of the elements we wanted to bring in was that the fairies are fairies the villagers are villagers, and then the couples are specifi that do go together.

- [Alex] Ananda had the great idea that all of the humans in the story are all from the steampunk world, and so when you see any of the lovers or the royalty, they're all part of this world that we've built that's steampunk.

- [Ananda] And because it has li sort of the Victorian style, even though it's outlandish, and amazing, and whimsical, it still gives us a feeling more of the every day, and then versus the magical.

- The townspeople, we actually k to a pretty strict palette of more muted tones, and the reason why is we wanted to give the audience the impression that the villagers are kind of boxed in.

They don't see the colors, they don't see the otherworldliness that's going on and so the fairies, you'll notice, are dressed very boldly in bright colors.

They're all body painted to give it an otherworldly effect so that the audience would recog these are not the same people, they don't belong together.

(mysterious music) Each individual costume has individual elements to it.

What we tried to do was tried to what a street child in Victorian times would have worn, but then add pieces that they would have looked for to be steampunk.

So for a lot of the children's c we added bustles or petticoats under their skirts, but then also added leather cors or leather waste pieces, things of that nature to kind of give it that industrial element, but also really stick to that Victorian theme.

(lively classical music) - When you build a ballet like t you want it to all be one cohesi and you want it to all make sens so that takes a lot of planning with the designers, with the people building the cos and then actually trying to take the costumes that you build and make sure they work for the production.

It takes a city, it takes a lot to put on a production like this and luckily, we have a wonderful community here that helps support us in that.

- The extraordinary thing is when they first asked me to do "Midsummer", like, last year, and I started thinking about it, I came up with this idea, I had this vision in my head, and watching this ballet, and seeing that it looks exactly like that vision has been so amazing.

I'm like, I can't believe it, it That was in my head, and now, it and I'm watching these talented people do all this stuff, you know, and all of this amazin that I hoped we would have, that we do have, and then the most extraordinary thing for me has been listening to the audience's laughter, not in my scenes, but in the other scenes, (audience chuckling) so I can just be there and see t and hear the like, guffawing lau (audience laughing) (mysterious music) One audience member told me, she "I laughed so hard, I snorted," and I was like, that's perfect.

That's exactly what we wanted to is that people watch the ballet, and they just like, lose it in their seats.

(lively classical music) - Check out Sierra Nevada ballet's upcoming performances online at sierranevadaballet.org And that wraps it up for this edition of "ARTEFFECTS".

If you want to watch new "ARTEFFECTS" segments early, make sure you subscribe to the PBS Reno YouTube channel, and don't forget to keep visiting pbsreno.org to watch complete episodes of "ARTEFFECTS".

Until next week, I'm Beth Macmil Thanks for watching.

- [Announcer] Funding for "ARTEFFECTS" is made possible by Sandy Raffealli with Bill Pearce Motors, (lively music) Meg and Dillard Myers, in memory of Sue McDowell, The Carol Franc Buck Foundation, and by the annual contributions of PBS Reno members.

(bright rhythmic music)