Creative Work Project #2

Creative Work Project #2 is part of my Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA)
Sydney Conservatorium of Music
Wednesday 18 April 2018
‘A critical analysis of the auteur creation of Project Faust opera/ballet.’

Project Faust is a new opera/ballet work conceptualised and created by Sally Blackwood for Louisville Ballet and Kentucky Opera. This 2018 world premiere production was created over two years by an ensemble of extraordinary opera and ballet artists, led by Sally Blackwood and a creative team from across the US, UK and Australia. The ensemble has developed a performance language and storytelling aesthetic that aims to step outside the bounds of both opera and ballet for the creation of a new and innovative hybrid art form with a strong political voice. Project Faust asks: What’s your price? What would you sell your soul for?

Sally Blackwood is an opera director, specialising in the creation of new operatic form. Sally has developed an innovative integrated method for collaborative cross-artform performance practice in the creation of hybrid forms of opera, including opera/ballet work. Project Faust is part of Sally’s DMA research examining the curation of opera in contemporary culture and its role in examining gender bias and power relationships in the formation of personal and national identity through performance. Project Faust is reaction to the contemporary polemic concerning the future direction of opera. The work aims to explore, redefine and examine the assimilation and displacement of “opera” into contemporary culture. The creative research explores a deeper understanding and relationship between the medium of grand opera, operatic storytelling, and contemporary opera/music performance. As the curator of this creative research Sally interrogates and experiments with content and form through practice-based research in performance and theoretical critical analysis.