Tom Ford is a modern Renaissance man with a host of artistic endeavors under his belt.  Some know him as the designer who turned Gucci around, but we think his debut as a filmmaker was much more significant.  In 2009, he directed A Single Man based on the 1964 novel of the same name by Christopher Isherwood  (Cabaret). Set in Southern California during 1962, shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis, it depicts one day in the life of George, a middle-aged Englishman who is a professor at a Los Angeles university. The university is a possible allusion to CSULA, where Isherwood taught for some time, and it is also believed to be informed by a crisis in his 30 year relationship with Don Bachardy. Edmund White described it as “the first truly liberated gay novel in English

Ford’s movie was both a critical and commercial success, and its star, Colin Firth, was nominated for some very prestigious awards, including an Oscar and a Golden Globe.

Now, very surprisingly, it has been adapted again.  This time into a ballet or dance work. Created by Jonathan Watkins  (Founder of Ballet Queer)  and produced by the Royal Ballet and Factory International and it premiered at the Manchester International Festival with former Royal Ballet principal Ed Watson, returning from retirement to play George. It also co-stars Jonathan Goddard as George’s  lover Jim. 

As gay men who are hardly balletomanes, we are very surprised that there are so very few ballets that have queer  ‘plots’.  Back in 1946 there was Kenneth MacMillan’s Cain and Abel, and then in 2020 there was  “Touché” by Christopher Rudd (American Ballet Theatre). This ballet for two men explores the journey of a gay man’s self-acceptance, from uncertainty to finding peace within his identity. It wasnt however urtil the arrival of (Sir) Matthew Bourne in the early 1990s who then single handed changed the landscape with his all male Swan Lake, The Car Man, Play Without Words, Dorian Gray and most recently The Midnight Bell.

Watkin’s new ‘ballet’ therefore in itself is of great importance even though critics like the one from the New York Times were not too indulgent with adjectives in his review (!)  it is still however a signifucant milesone/breakthough so worth trying to beg steal or borrow to get a ticket