My ballet Sycorax’s Tempest reimagines William Shakespeare’s The Tempest through the eyes of Sycorax—a figure Shakespeare likely crafted from the haunting legacy of a real Black woman made pregnant and abandoned nine months later on an island by Sir Francis Drake in the late 1500s. The work draws on the concepts of Sylvia Wynter. In this ballet, Sycorax is no longer positioned in the story as an unseen dead character. Rather, Sycorax becomes the embodiment of the island’s sovereign soul, rising from the refuge of the sea to shape the fate of her child, Caliban, and free the island from those who have claimed it. As the land breathes and shifts through Sycorax and the Island spirits, harmony, and forgiveness (I am because we are) are invoked by them. This puts in motion Prospero’s reconciliation with his past and a future where Caliban and the island can grow unbound.
Next steps for this ballet are the creation of three trios with Royal Ballet Upper School students in January 2026. This section of the ballet will be performed as excerpts integrated into a performance-talk, which I am giving at the Royal Ballet as part of their centenary celebrations on March 22nd, 2026.
Act i – Storm Tides
Act i opens with a storm brewing. This is not at Prospero’s command, but conjured by Sycorax and the women whose bodies remain in the ocean. Women who leapt from slave ships to claim sovereignty over their own bodies gather in watery memory, summoning a storm. The ballet begins in waves—movement rising, breaking, and returning—recasting the tempest as an act of collective power and ancestral resistance.
Act i: Storm Tides was created with dancers at Texas Christian University during Spring 2024.
Original music by Danny Clarke (using the synthesized data from Massachusetts White Pines. Forest culled by Europeans to make slaveships, particularly ship masts)
Act ii – Arrival
Act ii opens with Sycorax recovering from the tempest she conjured—a storm that has shipwrecked Prospero’s countrymen as they journeyed home. Enveloped in sea refuge, she is revived by the women who are spirits 9and inhabitance) of the island. With measured intent, Sycorax ensures the tempest castaways reach shore. Her plan is to orchestrate their reconciliation with Prospero so that they will leave and the island will rid itself of restraint. Scattered and exposed, the castaways reveal their truest selves. The island listens. Sycorax knows the time nears to weave the final spell—the ritual of forgiveness that will return Prospero and countrymen to Milan, restoring harmony to the island and freeing Sycorax’s child, Caliban.
Act ii: Arrival, was created with dancers at the University of Utah during Spring 2025.
Original music by Danny Clarke
