6 days ago
3
by Mell P
Listening to the late Trinidadian-American artist, dancer, and creative force Geoffrey Holder describe his reimagining of Firebird took me back to when I was a child and we would gather in a circle under a tree, in the cooling dark of evening, to listen to mythical stories of folklore, featuring spirits, shapeshifters, and creatures.
That is the feeling Geoffrey Holder gave the world when he reimagined Firebird.
At its heart, Firebird is a timeless tale: a prince who traps a magical firebird in the forest, then releases her, and in exchange, she gives him an enchanted feather. A promise, or maybe a talisman, or perhaps a thread that binds their fates together across a journey of danger, love, and transformation.
It is the kind of story made for telling under trees.
The Russian composer Igor Stravinsky first brought it to life in 1910, and for decades, Firebird lived in the cold beauty of a Russian folktale, snowbound forests, ancient magic, imperial grandeur. It was magnificent. But Geoffrey Holder saw something else inside the story. He saw the Caribbean and the two components that come with it…heat and color.
Geoffrey Holder’s Vision: A Canvas Come to Life
Portrait of Trinidadian-American actor & dancer, Geoffrey Holder (1930 – 2014) New York, New York, 1975. (Photo by Ellen Graham/Getty Images)When the Holder transformed Firebird for the Dance Theatre of Harlem in 1982, he didn’t simply redecorate the stage. He relocated the soul of the story.
Gone was the cold Russian forest. In its place, a lush, breathing tropical landscape alive with giant orchids, cascading vines, and passion flowers in full bloom. Holder drew inspiration from the 19th-century painter Martin Johnson Heade, whose luminous botanical canvases seemed to pulse with life. The stage became, in Holder’s own vision, a painting that had stepped off the wall and started to dance.
His costumes were nothing short of iconic. The Firebird herself was dressed in something he described as “scantily gorgeous”, radiant, electric, impossibly alive. Koshkei’s sinister minions became nightmarish carnival figures: towering butterfly-winged creatures with giant, unblinking eyes that sent chills through the audience even as they dazzled.
Stravinsky’s transcendent score remained. John Taras’s choreography anchored the movement. But Holder’s Caribbean reimagining gave the entire production a new center of gravity, warmer, wilder, and more sensuous than anything audiences had seen before.
It was, from its very first night, an instant classic.
The Revival: Passing the Feather Forward
This April in New York, the enchanted feather has been passed to a new generation.
The Dance Theatre of Harlem has revived Holder’s landmark production, with his original designs restored and honored under the watchful care of his son, Léo Holder. It is both a homecoming and a celebration: 57 years of DTH’s trailblazing artistry, distilled into one bold, unforgettable season.
The Firebird performances ran April 16–19, accompanied by the live music of the Gateways Festival Orchestra, conducted by Jeri Lynne Johnson (April 16, 18, 19) and the legendary Tania León (April 17). To hear that score played live, in a theater, while Holder’s tropical world blooms across the stage, is to understand why some stories outlast everything.
The program extends beyond Firebird, featuring dynamic works by DTH Artistic Director Robert Garland, whose choreography weaves classical ballet together with a modern, rhythmic pulse, alongside pieces by William Forsythe and Jodie Gates. It is a full feast for the senses, a declaration that DTH remains as vital and visionary as ever.
This production, the ballet and the accompaniment by Gateways, was nothing short of fitting. Together, they created something rare and magnetic, the kind of alchemy that only happens when artistry is fully aligned. On the final night, the many notable folks came out. And they were right to.
To experience this production is to understand something profound about the power of cultural reclamation. Holder didn’t take a European story and simply dress it in Caribbean clothes. He found the universal heartbeat inside the tale: the longing, the magic, the bargain made between wildness and love, and he let it breathe in a landscape that was his own.
That is what the greatest storytellers do. They take what is ancient and make it ours.
And perhaps that is why listening to him talk about Firebird echoes the feeling of childhood, of sitting under a tree, in a circle, as the night settles in and someone begins to speak, and the world falls away, and you are nothing but wide eyes and an open heart.
English (US) ·