DEATH IN VENICE - Complete - choreo. John Clifford (1984)

Here is the complete ballet - theater piece I did for my “original“ Los Angeles Ballet which premiered at the Huntington Hartford Theater (now is the complete ballet - theater piece I did for my “original“ Los Angeles Ballet which premiered at the Huntington Hartford Theater (now Montalban Theater) in Hollywood, CA. My inspiration was my young genius level dancer, Damian Woetzel, who later became a major star with the New York City Ballet. He was just 15 when I choreographed this for him. I followed the main points of the novella by Thomas Mann and not the film starring Dirk Bogarde. In that book the God “Eros“ is mentioned and the relationship between random passion and order, which, in the end,is the undoing of “Eschenbach.“ His obsession with the 14 yr-old beautiful boy, “Tadzio,“ causes him to stay in Venice even after he discovers the Plague has taken over the city. This is not a story about homosexuality or an older man’s love of a youth and his beauty. To my mind it is the l