SUMMARY:
Billy the Kid remains one of the most famous characters populating the romantic imagination of the American Western Expansion. He is one of the quintessential American antiheroes, attractive and mysterious while morally ambiguous. Derived from the life of Henry McCarty (alias William H. Bonney), the legend of Billy the Kid encompasses a larger mythos, entering the imaginative world of any American boy, coming of age, who fantasizes about the life of a heroic cowboy and identifies at some level with solitary feelings. Billy’s specific archetypal relationship with Pat Garrett manifests a type of unrepentant Prodigal Son. Billy’s rebellion stems from a cry of irrecoverable disenfranchisement, according to legend induced from the trauma surrounding his mother’s untimely death and the murder of trusted father figures, along with a general forced demand to grow up too fast. While the sympathetic Pat Garrett steps in to be a stable father figure, Billy continues to choose rebellion and unrepentant violence, forcing Garrett to stop him using any means necessary, tragically ending his life. Like most tragedies, Billy comes to destruction through isolation and yet the responsibility feels imputed on the surrounding society who failed him, giving him too little too late. The ballet’s appeal firmly rests in the richness of its score and its ability to conjure the romantic atmosphere of the West as it was imagined. Indeed, the pathos of the score covers the expansiveness of the setting’s wide-open spaces reflecting the energy of the heart to similarly expand through unrestrained freedom.

On October 16, 1938, the ballet Billy the Kid (score by Aaron Copeland) premiered in Chicago with Eugene Loring’s choreography.

I created this excerpt, Waltz from Billy the Kid, setting it on dancers from The Ballet Theatre of Maryland for a mixed repertoire show celebrating Americana.