Design for Stage Set, John Steuart Curry

Exhibition Label:
"John Steuart Curry: Agrarian Allegories," Aug-2006, Kate Meyer
The American Ballet Theater inaugurated their 1941-1942 season by commissioning Curry to create sets and costumes for a new ballet originally titled Pagan Poem, based on Carl Sandburg’s 1918 poem, “Prairie.” Curry envisioned the world of “Prairie” inhabited by personifications of the elements, crops, and animals of the region. The Prairie Girl would be the ballet’s female lead, the set a massive sunrise, and two larger-scale figures, The Pioneer Father and The Pioneer Mother, would oversee the Midwestern tableaux from the background. These designs were not in keeping with choreographer Eugene Loring’s more understated intentions for the ballet, and only some of Curry’s color choices influenced the set and costumes.

Curry’s designs for “Prairie” were eventually realized in 2001, with the production of composer Eugene Friesen’s ballet Carl Sandburg’s “Prairie”. Lawrence’s own Prairie Wind Dancers wore costumes that were based on Curry’s sketches and were created by Rob Faust and Ione Unruh, with choreography by Candi Baker.

Archive Label 1999:
These set and costume designs provide a glimpse into a less familiar aspect of John Steuart Curry's art. About 1934, Winthrop Palmer, author of Theatrical Dancing in America, commissioned Curry to design the set and costumes for a ballet about the prairie. Although never realized, the ballet's characters provided perhaps the most literal embodiments of Curry's familiar theme of humans and nature; the cast included personifications of Grass and Storm Cloud, as well as The Pioneer Mother, The Prairie Father, and The Prairie Girl. In Grass, Midwesterners are literally associated with their land, a curious hybrid of half human, half plant. Compared with Curry's famous brooding visage of John Brown, these personifications of the heartland are lighthearted and whimsical.