Agnes de Mille's Rodeo

A ballet I really enjoyed growing up as a Royal Winnipeg Ballet audience member was Agnes de Mille's Rodeo, to Aaron Copland's wonderful score. The Australian Ballet recently posted a great article about the genesis of this ballet, and the challenges de Mille faced getting her Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo dancers to pretend they were cowboys:
 “Raise your arms,” de Mille chimed in. “You have men’s arms, they have striking power.” Instead, as she later recalled, “up came the delicate wrists and the curled fingers of the 18^th-century dandy.”
Here's ABT getting it right:

Another de Mille ballet performed by the RWB in the 70s was Fall River Legend, about axe murderer Lizzie Borden, who was convicted of killing her parents in Massachusetts in the late 1800s. When I was 10, I was very proud to win a copy of de  Mille's book about the ballet, autographed by the author, in the RWB's subscriber prize draw. My fellow students in grade five were more impressed by the gruesome pictures than by the choreographer's autograph, though!

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