Building on their progressively-successful dance productions of the past four years, Mr. Andrey Stanev and Nantucket Ballroom present The Picture of Dorian Gray, their most ambitious project to date, featuring well-known Nantucket residents and professional national ballroom dancing champions. This August’s show will also feature filmed scenes with veteran actor John Shea, of film, television, and stage, who is no stranger to Nantucket’s rich history of stage productions that were transferred from Nantucket to Broadway.
Oscar Wilde’s 1891 philosophical novel The Picture of Dorian Gray is a study of contradiction and obsession, self-indulgence and manipulation, and ultimately, consequences. As the naïve, young and handsome Dorian Gray becomes an ardent disciple of hedonistic Lord Henry Wotton, who counsels Dorian that beauty and sensual fulfillment are the only things worth pursuing in life, Dorian ultimately comes to question his own actions and who he actually is – the man he was or the man he has become.
In Nantucket Ballroom’s stunningly-adapted multimedia production, you will be a voyeur into Dorian’s world as he explores the universal questions of limits. What are the lines between pleasure and obsession, morality and depravity, and the consequences of frivolous, self-indulgent decisions. Is this the picture of one man or the essence of human nature?
The original music and choreography provides more than mesmerizing entertainment. It is provocative, thought-provoking, and timely. You will be talking about it the next day.
The Picture of Dorian Gray is performed in The Dreamland Theatre, 17 South Water Street on August 28 & 29, with a curtain time of 7:30 p.m. Doors open at 7 p.m. Tickets are available at nantucketdreamland.org