DANCING IN THE DARK
/Portraying Roderick and Madeline Usher in “The Fall of the House of Usher”
This October, Ballet Fantastique brings to life five of Edgar Allan Poe’s most haunting, brilliant and disturbing works in Nevermore: Stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Today we take a closer look at one of these stories, “Fall of the House of Usher”.
“Fall of the House of Usher” is a timeless tale of mystery and macabre. This haunting story, first published in 1845, delves into the eerie world of the Usher siblings, Roderick and Madeline, and is one of Poe’s most renowned works. Read on to discover the process of how two of our Principal dancers, Hannah Bontrager and Gustavo Ramirez, embody the strange and spine-chilling characters of Madeline and Roderick Usher to bring these characters to life on stage.
Cari Koepplin & Gustavo Ramirez in Ballet Fantastique’s 2019 nevermore; photo by greg burns
Q&A
For those who might not be familiar with House of Usher, tell us a little bit more about your characters and how these characters have been brought to life from the pages of Poe to the stage.
Hannah (Madeline): In Poe’s original story, Madeline Usher is only a vision that passes through a room, faints, and then is buried alive—so she does not have a huge role or much agency. One of the first things we wanted to do as a female creative team is find a voice for the women in Poe’s stories. I feel like we do this a lot in our ballet—Madeline Usher is one of my favorite examples. I love the role of Madeline in Ballet Fantastique’s version because we were able to give her character a voice. I imagine her feeling a sense of deep sadness about the fact there has been so much loss in the house. In the House of Usher, the story is that someone dies every year…and I imagine [Madeline] has this sense of grief-stricken innocence. She is still young, beautiful, and she has the hope and dream of living the rest of her life, but also she is surrounded by loss.
Gustavo (Roderick): I am portraying Roderick Usher, from one of Poe’s most famous stories, “The Fall of the House of Usher”. Roderick has mental problems and hallucinations, and he has a hard time knowing what is reality and what is not. The crazy part of the story is he ends up putting his twin sister into a coffin and buries her alive.
Roderick and Madeline Usher are not your usual characters seen in a ballet. There are times when you need to be “ugly” to portray the psychological aspects of your characters. How have you approached embodying these characters? What are some of the thoughts and emotions you have going on in your head while dancing these roles?
Hannah (Madeline): It is so fun to be released as a ballerina from the need to be “beautiful” onstage. I want to communicate to my audience these moments where I have different flashes of different feelings. I am alternating between feeling surrounded by the sadness in my house and the sense of decay that's growing, and then balancing my acceptance of my brother's worsening mental condition with the horror of being buried alive, and wondering and realizing that he did it and how this happened…it’s this arc, and it's really emotionally draining. It has been challenging as an artist to take the character “off” at the end of the piece.
Gustavo (Roderick): It is funny, because when you say “ugly” that is exactly how it feels! Usually when you're dancing in a ballet you're trying to be pulled up and become this prince, but in this piece I am thinking the total opposite. I think of being hunched over and really grounded. In my brain, I imagine how someone like that would move and try to portray that by moving my head suddenly and putting my head places that I would never normally do. I took a lot of inspiration from the Joker. The first time we did the show back in 2019, The Joker had just come out and I remember going to the premiere of that movie and thinking my character had many similarities with how the Joker was feeling. There are a couple of scenes where he is dancing around and I took a lot of inspiration from these scenes.
Gustavo, you danced Roderick back in 2019 when Nevermore originally premiered. What is it like coming back to this role a few years later? Do you feel like you have approached this role differently since originally performing it?
Artists of Ballet Fantastique in BFan’s 2019 Nevermore; Stephanie Urso Photography
Gustavo (Roderick): I am trying not to approach the role differently. When I watch myself in the 2019 version, as ugly as it felt dancing it, I feel like it’s one of my best works. I am very proud of how I performed the role in 2019 and now rewatching it during rehearsals, I do not want to change my approach. I am trying to improve a few of the more technical parts, but otherwise, I want to keep pursuing how I performed it originally and keep the emotions fresh.
Hannah, this will be your first time performing the role of Madeline Usher. What has this experience been like for you? When performing a role set on another dancer how do you find your own way of approaching the role?
Hannah (Madeline): It’s amazing to be getting to do this part because I was actually cast as Madeline back in 2019 before I found out I was pregnant with my son, Finn. Since some of the lifts are so dangerous and involve being lifted from your abdominals, and with the complications in my second trimester, I wasn’t able to perform it the first time. It’s meaningful to be performing it finally! It’s exciting and a little intimidating to know a dear friend of mine’s past performance [BFan’s Cari Koepplin; Madeline in 2019]—and see how beautifully and powerfully she embodied the character. Allowing myself to find my own interpretation has been important to me. Big shoes!
What has been the most challenging aspect of portraying your respective characters?
Hannah (Madeline): There are two difficult parts of portraying my character that are both in the running for the most challenging I have ever had the privilege to dance. One of them is how fast the narrative arc shifts. Because it is not a full length ballet, but a short story, the journey is pretty fast for how dramatic it is. From being happy in a parlor dance that reminds me of the “good old days”, to then dramatically worsening fainting spells/being unwell which happens almost immediately. Also, the death faint that convinces everyone that I finally die is challenging…the choreography is not an obvious stage death. It’s a faint where I am still being held up, so it’s technically and emotionally challenging, unexpected. And I can honestly say that this is my first time in a coffin…
Cari Koepplin in Ballet Fantastique’s 2019 nevermore; photo by greg burns
Gustavo (Roderick): This character is very hard because you have to be in the right mindset to be insane for 25 minutes. It is definitely hard to jump in from being a normal human to then be hunching over and looking around. That’s the most challenging part, getting in and out of character. It can be exhausting.
What do you hope audiences take away from your performance in “The Fall of the House of Usher”?
Hannah (Madeline): One of the themes in the “Fall of the House of Usher” is that no matter how great you are—the mighty fall, and that relationships are everything. Our relationships with our family and the people that we make part of our family are so important. I think that it is an important message—even though like in so many of Poe’s tales this story is wild and kind of unrealistic—is that there is still so much humanity in the characters and what they are feelling. During a time when our world has been through so much grief and loss, it’s important for us to have artistic ways to process these emotions as a world, a culture, and as human beings. By portraying those feelings and unleashing that raw emotion, we can connect through the power of live performance.
Gustavo (Roderick): That we all have a little bit of craziness in us and we can channel those crazy feelings sometimes.
Don’t miss Hannah and Gustavo bring Madeline and Roderick Usher to life with chilling and incredible artistry in Ballet Fantastique’s original Nevermore: Stories of Edgar Allan Poe, Oct. 19-22 a the Hult Center for Performing Arts, featuring dark classics from Rachmaninoff, Satie, and Chopin, performed live by Sergei Teleshev, Dale Bradley, and Elizabeth Dorman of the San Francisco Symphony.