Public Program: Ballet des Porcelaines

In 1739 at a château outside of Paris, a group of French aristocrats staged a short ballet known as the Ballet des Porcelaines, or The Teapot Prince. It tells the story of a European prince who searches for his lover on an exotic island ruled by a Chinese sorcerer. The sorcerer turns trespassers into porcelain. After the sorcerer transforms the prince, the princess comes to his rescue, and together they succeed in defeating the sorcerer. On the one hand a standard Orientalist fairy tale, the ballet is also an allegory for the intense European desire to know and possess the secrets of porcelain manufacture—and ultimately to assert their superiority over the Other. 

From 2020 to 2022, choreographer Phil Chan and art historian Meredith Martin worked with an all-Asian American creative team to reimagine this fragmented Baroque work. Asking whether Orientalist artworks might still hold meaning and beauty for audiences today without propagating racist worldviews, Chan and Martin inverted the tale, transforming the sorcerer into a porcelain-sick European (inspired by Augustus the Strong of Saxony, 1670–1733) and the prince and princess into Chinese nobles fighting for each other. As Chan has written, “Instead of the ballet becoming an allegory for the technological and cultural conquest of China, it becomes an expression of people of Asian descent yearning to be viewed as more than just cute figurines, ornamental drones devoid of personality or nuance. A story about breaking free from stereotypes. About moving to a place where we can see each other with complexity.” 

Choreographer: Phil Chan
Producer: Meredith S. Martin (Professor of Art History at New York University)
Director of the Oakland Ballet: Graham Lustig
Dancers: Oakland Ballet Company
Musicians: USC Early Music Program

Performance runtime: Approximately 20 minutes
Introduced by the choreographer and producer; followed by Q+A with the ensemble

Presented in conjunction with “the eight directions of the wind: Edmund de Waal at The Huntington.”  

Top image: Daniel Appelbaum and Georgina Pazcoguin perform a 21st century reimagining of Ballet des Porcelaines at Palazzo Grassi, Pinault Collection, Venice. Photo by Andrea Avezzù (c) Palazzo Grassi, Pinault Collection.