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Ramón 27

 in The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg

Filling Station, November 1937

Filling Station is a one act American ballet choreographed by Lew Christensen.  The libretto was apparently based on a newspaper report and the idea for the production grew from there.  Virgil Thomson wrote the music.  Mac is our hero, who meets a group of characters during his shift at the station.  The highlight of the performance is a series of grand jetés performed with flashlights.  Interestingly, for something so originally American, it does contain two themes that seem to preoccupy my neighbours to the south: guns and petroleum.

 Paul Cadmus of PaJaMa fame, and good friend of George Platt Lynes, designed the costumes.  The third photo below shows a reproduction of Cadmus's design for Mac's outfit in the Whitney Museum, New York.  The costume renderings in ink below are by Cadmus.  I stumbled across the larger nude image years ago, and have now found out that it is of Jacques D'Amboise, who danced in a TV version of the production in the early 50s.  The second smaller image is attributed to Platt Lynes, and is of D'Amboise in 1940 as quite a young man. You can find D'Amboise dancing on YouTube.  His outfit in this version is of course proper overalls.  It was American television in the 1950s, after all.

 Lew Christensen in costume for the original production in 1937

Summer

Apologies for abandoning you, but my summer workload has occupied me.  And the weekend opportunities to get on my bike and get away into Tommy Thompson Park were frankly more pressing to me than being inside.  Summer in Canada is brief.  I will return shortly.

The lighthouse at Vicki Keith Point, springtime