Collaboration Love

It may only be February, but the buzz word of the year so far seems to be collaboration. Think Alison Krauss and Robert Plant winning their Grammy, Obama reaching across the partisan aisles to fill his cabinet, and yes, your very own Lighthouse teaming up with Ballet Nouveau for the production Love: A Joint Venture. I had the pleasure of catching the show on opening night, with the added advantage of having attended an inspiring panel with the choreographers, poets, and dancers just the week before (watch your e-news, folks, there’s good stuff in there…)  A quick synopsis: three poets and three choreographers were given the theme of love and told to run with it.  The poets sent the choreographers poems, the choreographers, well, choreographed the poems.  Please, if you have the chance to see this show (running through this weekend, get tickets here, and be sure to mention Lighthouse for a 2-for-1 discount), by all means go. I’m no dancer. Nor am I a poet by any stretch of the imagination, but to see these two artistic forms for which I have the utmost respect and admiration combined into a single cohesive show was really quite stunning.  For what is collaboration if not pulling the best of both worlds into a new, often better world?  In this case, beautiful movements were put to beautiful words, and the dancers’ characters came to life for me in a way that ballet never has before.  I was truly touched.  Now, where’s the rock band looking to collaborate with a struggling short story writer? Anyone?