CORPUS MEDUSA

Presentation

We know Medusa only as a monster—Perseus's trophy, a petrifying gaze frozen in violence, a warning against women who claim power. But what if her monstrosity is not her nature, but what violence made of her? CORPUS MEDUSA explores the woman behind the myth, centering the cycles of harm that transform victim into villain. An abstract narrative ballet that centers the psychological and emotional landscape of Medusa herself, unfolding through the fragmented logic of memory—like a woman recalling her life in the moments before death. At the story’s heart lies a devastating contradiction: Medusa desires desperately to be seen fully, yet her curse ensures no one can meet her gaze. Through metaphor and metamorphosis, the work traces her transformation—not just the moment of her beheading, but the life that precedes it, Poseidon’s assault, Athena’s curse and the inflicting violence of every character. Perseus, born of rape, becomes perpetrator. Athena questionably enforces the very patriarchal systems that constrain all women. Each exists in moral ambiguity, shaped by wounds that manifest as power.

In an era defined by violence (Gisèle Pelicot) and moral complexity, Medusa is an anti-hero—a protagonist who refuses easy categorization, who lives between binaries of victim and villain, mortal and immortal, sea and land, powerless and powerful. This ballet represents a new era of storytelling that honors classical form while insisting it evolve: abstract and confrontational, embodying cyclical violence like the ouroboros consuming its tail, set to a reimagined Scheherazade that finds feminist resonance in Rimsky-Korsakov's score. Moving through Medusa's interior world—her memories, her rage, her becoming—we better understand what we’ve been taught to fear. What does it mean when trauma becomes both weapon and condemnation? Medusa is a protagonist allowed to be angry, monstrous, and righteous—a woman whose unmet gaze reflects the unbearable truths we cannot look away from.

Artistic Team

Choreographer Brett brings a cross-cultural perspective rooted in her Japanese heritage, American upbringing, and nearly 10 years in France with Ballet du Rhin — a background that blends culture, tradition, language, and perspective in ways that mirror Medusa herself: a figure suspended between opposing worlds, victim and villain, mortal and immortal, once beautiful now monstrous. It is perhaps Brett's lifelong curiosity for the in-between, and the paradoxical nature of things, that drew her so naturally to Medusa. Dramaturg Laura serves as key creative partner, researching and curating textual sources — essays, poems, philosophy, survivor narratives — organized by thematic cluster. She creates the voiceover script that functions as a modern Greek chorus, ensuring dialogue between ancient and contemporary voices. Composer Anna Appleby reimagines Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade. The act of reimagining becomes an act of metamorphosis itself — twisting and distorting the original score to mirror Medusa's violent unmaking. There is something compelling about Scheherazade, a woman spinning stories to survive, meeting Medusa, whose story has always been told by others. By upcycling both the score and the myth, weaving in fragments of text, breath, waves, and silence, the manipulation of sound becomes the retelling — peeling apart familiar forms and making them strange again, monstrous, alive, and relevant. Although the set and costume designer has not yet been confirmed, they will work in tandem with the symbolic imagery Brett has mapped out. Zeroing in on the "metaphor" in metamorphosis, props, set, and costume will move in harmony with the movement. Dancers from both producing companies act as key interpreters, illustrating how perspective can create natural illusions — of the mind, and of the viewer.

Co-producing Partners