Title: Woman with a Pearl Drop Earring

Premiere: 1986, Minor Latham Playhouse, New York, New York, on the occasion of the retirement of Professor Jeanette Roosevelt. Subsequently performed in Ireland, Mexico, Greece, Japan, and throughout the midwest.

Performer: Jessica Fogel

Duration: 6 minutes

Music:  I Trill Tunes or Little Ruins, by David Borden. The music titles are anagrams of the name Nurit Tilles, pianist.

Costume:

Lighting Design: Mary Cole

Description: This is one of my most performed dances and solos, because it was very portable, easy to program within larger concerts, and popular with audiences. It is a distillation of materials from the group Vermeer works created 1984-86. The stage is preset with a pitcher filled with water, a bowl, turban, and pearl drop earring. Throughout the dance, the performer shifts between becoming objects and becoming the women in Vermeer’s paintings. Beginning upstage right with back to audience, the dancer first rises from a low stance to become a human pitcher, arms and hands forming handle and spout, and moves through space in this shape, tilting downward in a pitched attitude to pour imaginary water into the bowl. She then picks up the real pitcher and pours water into the bowl and then splashes it and falls backwards through the space, in a pattern emulating a spray of water. As she pauses upstage right, a large projection of a Vermeer stained glass window appears on the center of the backdrop. She takes a folded letter from her bodice, unfolds it, walks backward with it and dances joyously with it, pushing it with her hand in broad swoops through the air. She runs forward with the letter across her chest, arms open wide, ecstatic. She folds the letter up and places it back in her bodice, and next removes the elastic from her ponytail. She approaches the bowl of water downstage right, grasps her hair up by the tips and lifts it straight overhead, and then lowers her hair into the bowl. She flings her hair backward, spraying water droplets through the space. She tosses her hair right and left as she moves upstage left, and spins center stage with her loosened wet hair. She moves downstage left towards the turban and places it on her head, then moves to center stage and dons a pearl drop earring (which she had picked up surreptitiously while picking up the turban.) As the lights fade to black, she turns over her left shoulder to gaze at the audience, becoming the woman with the pearl earring. Three Vermeer paintings were the inspiration: Woman Reading a Letter by an Open Window; Woman with Water Pitcher; Girl with a Pearl Earring.

Fogel notes on talk given at premiere performance

Dance Magazine review Sally Sommer

Doris Diether review AADW December 1986 The Villager

Doris Diether review Fogel at Cunningham April 1987

Ann Arbor News review Rudnicki

Ann Arbor News review by Susan Nisbett 1990

Kalamazoo performance review

Perry Mansfield/Steamboat Springs review 1988

Kalamazoo preview

Preview article The Varsity 12/3/87 

Dance Magazine photo and calendar listing April 1987

Ann Arbor Observer listing and photo April 1987

Program October 1986