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Le Grand Jete will be a stunning homage to the glamour and magic of the golden age of musicals.

With a wistful and charming story, unforgettable music, and timelessly loveable characters, Le Grand Jete takes you on a balletic and daring journey as four unlikely partners create a new stage musical from the ground up. Against all odds, they each battle their inner demons, external forces, and at times, each other in order to save themselves from career, financial and romantic ruin.

 

Inspired by the legendary music of Cole Porter, Nat King Cole and Irving Berlin, and stylistically influenced by the charming grace and nuance of films like An American in Paris and The Red Shoes, Le Grand Jete is a musical that promises to dazzle and warm the heart!

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SYNOPSIS

Set in post­war 1949, Le Grand Jete is a tale of four artists who have found themselves knocked down within their respective professions. At the peak of her ballet career, Audrey Harrington is injured dancing the title role of Cinderella, and is forced to return home to start over. Luckily her longtime dearest friend, Gilbert Sullivan is there, back from the war recuperating from injuries both physical and emotional. Unbeknownst to Audrey, he is also taking care of his dying father, artist/inventor Henry Sullivan of the famed Sullivan Gramophone Company. When Gilbert stumbles into a once grand theater in a run down part of town and serendipitously encounters the now infamous interracial, blacklisted ex­-Vaudeville stars, Millie Hallifax and her husband, Sage Lemaitre, an idea springs forth to reinvigorate all four of their passions. The four must wrestle not only their own insecurities, but battle with the growing industrial commerce of the 1950s to bring to life their version of Cinderella: The Musical.

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Main Characters

Audrey Harrington's feet are firmly planted on the ground, usually in fifth position. Disciplined and steadfast, some might call her uptight, but those who have the privilege of getting close to her know she has a romantic heart, a loyalty that knows no bounds and on occasion, is pretty damn funny.

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Creator/Director Alice L Walker's Statement 

Le Grand Jete is the culmination of my entire life's focus on stage craft; firstly as a professional ballet dancer growing up in the jazzy city of Chicago, and then in working on stage in Los Angeles as a choreographer, musical theater director and then artistic director for my theater company, Thursday Night Theater Club. Specifically Le Grand Jete was born after I choreographed and directed Cinderella: A Rock & Romance Ballet. Using Prokofiev's music which was written during the 1940s and heavily influenced by the popular jazz music of the time, I was inspired to somehow combine the syncopation and spontaneity of his music with the movement of the dancers, who I chose because they all were also trained actors. I could create a real moving play onstage with a heightened reality, a comedy rarely seen in ballets, and a meisner-esque quality in the relationships between characters.

As I was sadly retiring from being a touring ballerina myself and leaning into acting and directing, I found a story that I could plant inside of one of my favorite eras in film making; the Golden Age of Cinema and the movie musical. In truth, Audrey is me- finding her way from one artistic home to another more intimidating, more exposing, and more collaborative endeavor. Like her, I found myself performing in musicals and then directing them and writing them. I had to learn to sing. Yes. Me- who was made fun of by every member of my huge family all along the way... but nevertheless, I did. And so will Audrey. The magic of the 1940s and 1950s musicals for me, is in the escapism of it all. These films are a living dream, and so creatively you have artistic license to go anywhere- in and out of someones mind, into another person's nightmare and then back to reality all within a song, or a scene, or a mixture of both. My favorite musicals are in truth a film with songs and dance numbers like White Christmas or An American In Paris, which of course rely heavily on story being the reason someone just up and starts singing and dancing. Done right, even today's audiences are transported into a dreamstate where all disbelief is suspended and anything wonderous is possible. I suppose ballet allowed me to tap into that, and that is the feeling I'm yearning to share, even if just for a couple of hours.

-Alice L. Walker, Creator & Director

Alice L Walker

Writer, Director

A Chicago native, Alice began her career as a ballet dancer, performing with Joffrey Ballet, Ballet Chicago, Ballet Austin and Ontario Ballet Theater of Canada, to name a few. She joined the Chicago theater scene studying at Piven Theater Workshop then in L.A. at Playhouse West with Robert Carnegie and with famed coaches Larry Moss, Art Wolff, Giles Foreman and  Robyn Cohen. Her tv credits include ABC’s Secrets of A Small Town, Fresh Off The Boat, and The Office spinoff, The Trainer, and the upcoming series, Composers directed by Bernard Rose, as well as working in commercials for companies like Ford and Leinenkugal’s Beer.   Her select film credits include Riddance opposite Jim Parrack (Best Actress award PWFF), Abruptio (coming 2021), opposite Jordan Peele and Robert Englund, A Numbers Game opposite Ken Howard and Steven Bauer and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari with Doug Jones, directed by David Lee Fisher. Also a writer and producer, Alice’s original screenplay musical, Le Grand Jete was made an Official Selection of The Beverly Hills Film Festival, was a semi -finalist in the London International Screenplay Festival, and won Best Screenplay at Chicago Indie Film Festival. She’s produced music videos for Snoop Dogg, choreographed national commercials for Dairy Queen and choreographed and directed ballets like Cinderella: A Rock and Romance Ballet at El Portal Theater in LA. She directed over 25 musicals while teaching acting and dance at The Youth Academy of Dramatic Arts in Los Angeles. Her first love being theater, she has always found her home there performing in Beauty & The Beast, The Sound of Music, Shrek The Musical, A Chorus Line, Arthur Miller’s A View From The Bridge, and The Elephant Man at El Portal Theater for her award winning Los Angeles based theater company, Thursday Night Theater Club. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

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Jon Altham

Executive Producer, Music Supervisor

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The Music

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