This week’s Something Gay is about as gay as it gets, with news of yet another rendition of Brokeback Mountain! First there was a novella, then a movie, next a play, after that an opera, and now, finally, a ballet version. Coming to Guggenheim New York next January, this ballet will be added to the perhaps never-ending ranks of Brokeback Mountain performances. It will be a one-act piece by Works & Progress featuring choreography by Pontus Lidberg and music by David Conte. As the opener of the 5th Underground Uptown Dance Festival, it will debut for a huge audience, with last year's turnout for the Festival being more than 45,000 people.
For anyone somehow unaware of this classic, Brokeback Mountain begins in 1963 and follows two country boys, Ennis and Jack, on their complicated and at times tumultuous love story. The novella by Annie Proulx was first published in the New Yorker in 1997 and won the National Award for Fiction in 1998. A year later, an expanded version was published within a collection of Proulx’s short stories entitled Close Range: Wyoming Stories. On her inspiration for the story, Proulx has commented, “The West in general is homophobic and Wyoming spectacularly so. Over the years, I’ve had a lot of gay friends and I had some gay friends in Wyoming too.” She meant to not only dispel common stereotypes about the lives of cowboys, but represent the queer community in a space they have been excluded from.
The movie adaptation directed by Ang Lee, from which most people know the story, came out in 2005 starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger. The movie was incredibly successful, winning several Oscars including Best Screenplay and Best Director. The movie made $178 million worldwide on a $14 million budget and about 3 months of filming. It was later selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. The film has, of course, had its controversies, with one instance in 2006 where the film was removed from theaters in Sandy, Utah by Megaplex Theater founder Larry H. Miller because it “had no resemblance of a traditional family” which he deemed dangerous. Focus Features, the production company and theatrical distributor for the movie, responded by not doing business with him anymore.
This ballet rendition consists of five dancers with eight accompanying musicians, the only characters being the lovers, their wives, and one supporting role which has yet to be stated. The musical composition has been a passion project of 20 years for David Conte, who has written original scores for the performance. The project faced a very long clearance process, but once there was finally approval to move forward with Conte’s compositions, Lidberg was commissioned to develop choreography in summer 2026.
I am sick of queer love stories where one of them dies or gets married in a straight relationship at the end, as I’m sure is a shared feeling. I am also sick of retelling old stories over and over again instead of writing new and engaging narratives. I wish filmmakers knew how to quit the remakes. This being said, a Brokeback Mountain ballet could bring something to the story. The pas de deux of the tent scene might be legendary, the combination of flannels and pointe shoes iconic even. At the very least, this story is being told in a new medium, which might give it completely new life and reach different people. Aficionados and passive fans alike are excited because Ennis’s character is a man of very few words in the novella and film, making the transition to ballet an easy and well suited one. His and Jack’s relationship is strained for communication throughout the story, so the physical nature of ballet as a medium conveys the themes of longing and heightened emotions well.