Latino Spider Bites: Shifting vocabularies of otherness for Bianca in a recent Othello ballet

This paper begins by discussing the role of Bianca in Shakespeare’s Othello in the context of the cultural myths of Venice that circulated in Elizabethan England and the traits those myths assigned to the figure of the Venetian courtesan. It then goes on to examine the way, in a recent Othello ballet choreographed by Lars Lubovitch and performed in San Francisco, myths and assumptions related to other times, places and cultures combine in the casting and choreography of Bianca’s role to transcodify the role of Venetian courtesan into the lexicon of modern society and the figure of Bianca into a timely and politically significant one. Bianca’s role is developed in the ballet into a major female role, which was danced by Lorena Feijoo, a Cuban born and trained emigree who had been living in the United States since the early 90s. This casting choice for Bianca had very pronounced socio-ethnic-cultural implications at the time, especially when we consider it alongside those related to the casting choices for Othello (danced by an African American with a very strong background in Black dance culture) and Desdemona (performed by an Asian from mainland China trained in the most rigorous ballet tradition). The dancers in these three roles represented the three ethnic groups dominant in racial debates in the United States since the early 1990s. Within this socio-political context, this paper explores the role of Bianca, centering much of the discussion on her choreography which is predominantly within the genre of the tarantella, a dance with very strong gendered and anthropological implications linked to the south of Italy.