“‘Othello’ without words,” by Anna Ballan

“‘Othello’ without words,” by Anna Ballan

Adapting Shakespeare’s plays for ballet provokes a question from the outset: what becomes of the most verbal of dramas when words disappear? Othello in particular seems inseparable from language—from rhetoric, persuasion, and poisonous insinuations that slowly work their way into the mind. One wonders how such a play could survive the translation into a wordless art. Lar Lubovitch’s Othello: A Dance in Three Acts, first staged by American Ballet…