The character as passed down from the Diaghilev Ballets Russes original is not only painted in outlandish blackface makeup, he is, as Wendy Perron puts it, "mean and aggressive [and] prodigiously stupid." In the '90s, the Oakland and then San Francisco Ballets decided to make the character's face blue ("the Avatar solution"), and both Perron […]
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 03:12PM on July 16, 2020