Dance at TAS: The Little Mermaid Makes a Big Splash

The much-anticipated Upper School dance production of “The Little Mermaid” transported packed audiences from the Guy Lott Jr. Auditorium to the world of Hans Christian Andersen’s famous fairytale.

The production opens on a utopian underwater kingdom, where dancers brightly costumed as oysters, starfish, jellyfish, seaweed, and rainbow fish frolic with joyful abandon. Young princess Pearl, The Little Mermaid, enjoys her life under the sea and her relationship with her loving family, but longs for something more. Despite her family’s warnings and their expectations for her future, Pearl’s curiosity leads her to the shore to see how humans live.

In the midst of a terrible storm, she falls in love with Eric, a young prince, when she saves him from drowning and delivers him, unconscious, to the shore. Willing to pay any price to follow her heart, she consults the Seawitch who offers to give her legs and a human form in exchange for her voice so she may pursue her beloved.  Through movement and song, the Seawitch warns that if Eric should marry someone other than Pearl, she will perish from a broken heart and turn into sea foam. Pearl takes this chance, and washes to shore without her tail. Meanwhile, Eric is on shore, falling in love with a village girl, Delilah. At the end of a romantic walk with Delilah, Eric finds Pearl washed ashore and befriends her in her human form.

As Eric introduces Pearl to life on land, he also introduces Pearl to Delilah and announces that they will be wed.  This dooms Pearl’s quest for love on land in human form, and despite her sisters’ attempts to save her, including sacrificing their own hair to the Seawitch, Pearl chooses Eric’s life and love over her own, leading to her tragic end.

In The Little Mermaid, the TAS Dance Department skillfully depicts good and evil, love and loss through movement, stagecraft and delightful costuming. On a stage extended into the audience, the drama unfolds on land and sea in equal measure with the tragic consequences of Pearl’s melancholy yearning for a life she can’t have as a lesson to us all. While they represent the dark side of the good/bad equation, the Seawitch and her minions of Seasnakes are at times as mirthful as they can be menacing.

Ranging from nearly 50 dancers on stage at once, supported by 15 tech crew, to Pearl’s mournful sessions with her mother and three sisters, this fall’s production of The Little Mermaid made waves as one of the most exciting productions of the year. Blending classic storytelling with the unique talents of our Upper School dancer, they displayed beauty, grace and elegant movement for a fabulous family-friendly event.