Big Boi's Ballet Big : Is It A Big Hit?

the politics of dancing

Big Boi's Ballet Big: Is It A Big Hit?

Who's got the purp? Why, the Atlanta Ballet! Big, the company's collaboration with Outkast's Big Boi, debuted Thursday. "For me [Big Boi's music] sounds like Shostakovich, Stravinsky a little ... just today's Stravinsky," says chorographer Lauri Stallings. No doubt!

Audience members will be pulled on stage. Dancers will weave their way through the audience. Big Boi and a live band will perform some of his greatest hip-hop collaborations.

But the greatest collaborating may be the pairing created by Stallings and Big Boi when Giuseppe Verdi's "La Traviata" is intertwined with "Morris Brown," a cut from OutKast's "Idlewild" soundtrack.

Those contrasts — "physical but sublime, beautiful but ugly, loud but soft," in Stallings' words — are exactly the feelings this fusion ballet is intended to evoke, both artists said.

"Its very moving, sophisticated, elegant but at the same time it will tear your back off," Big Boi said.

The show, which is getting good buzz despite the static traffic accident present in the footage above, ends with Big Boi's new single "Sir Lucious Leftfoot Saves the Day." I think we can stop calling Andre 3000 the crazy one.

BIG ballet "Kryptonite" at the Atlanta Ballet [YouTube]
Hip-hop meets ballet in Big Boi's 'big' debut [CNN]

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12:15 PM on Wed Apr 16 2008
By Anthony Miccio
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5 comments

Comments

by Tenno at 12:25 PM on 04/16/08
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I think MTV made a movie about this...
by silkyjumbo at 12:37 PM on 04/16/08
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i saw it and it was amazing. i'm not sure any camera work can capture how cool the staging was.

i will say, however, that it was odd sitting next to ballet season ticket holders while the performers rapped about moving that green and slingin' that snow.
by Clevertrousers at 03:34 PM on 04/16/08
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You know that the real reason there was a riot at the original staging of Stravinsky's "Rites of Spring" was because of an acute lack of stripper poles. Sacre Bleu!
by Reidicus at 08:32 PM on 04/21/08
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I was there too. I love OutKast, and I'm an Atlanta Ballet season ticket holder. I thought the whole thing worked really well. Entertaining, fun to watch and with a few good visual hooks to keep the storyline going. I'm with the poster above on how difficult the whole thing would be to capture on camera--the above footage definitely doesn't cut it.
by MrStarhead at 10:08 PM on 04/27/08
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I went, and it was absolutely batshit insane. In a good way. You haven't lived until you've seen Big Boi perform "Bombs over Baghdad" with 14 ballerinas in hoop skirts behind him lip-synching the background vocals, and a 40-foot by 50-foot screen projection of a map slowly burning.