LUCY NEGRO, REDUX

* POET CAROLINE RANDALL WILLIAMS AWARDS & ACHIEVEMENTS • Winner: The Harlem Book Fair Phyllis Wheatley Award for Best Young Adult Fiction (2013) • Finalist: NAACP Image Award for Best Young Adult Fiction (2013) • Cave Canem Fellowship 2013-2014 * Caroline Randall Williams is the daughter of acclaimed writer Alice Randall: Alice Randall is the author of The Wind Done Gone, Pushkin and the Queen of Spades, Rebel Yell, and Ada's Rules. She is a Harvard educated African-American novelist who lives in Nashville and writes country songs. Randall has emerged as an innovative food activist committed to reforms that support healthy bodies and healthy communities. With her daughter Caroline Randall Williams she co-authored the acclaimed cookbook Soul Food Love and the young adult novel The Diary of B.B. Bright, Possible Princess winner of the Phillis Wheatley Award. *The Nashville Ballet will premier the ballet LUCY NEGRO, REDUX based on the book in February 2019 at the TENNESSEE PERFORMANCE ARTS CENTER for 3 performances, estimated audience for the weekend is 3k. *Lucy Negro, Redux the book is being designed in collaboration with the ballet. Part 1 of the book will be Williams' poetry. Part 2 will be the ballet Libretto and short explanation regarding the synthesis of poetry with ballet. Part 3 will be photos from rehearsals. A webpage exclusive to the book will premier a full filmed performance. * The books will include at least 5 black and white professional photos taken from the ballet's rehearsal and also of the actual libretto used by the ballet. *A world premiere ballet by Artistic Director Paul Vasterling, Lucy Negro Redux explores the mysterious love life of literary great William Shakespeare through the perspective of the illustrious “Dark Lady” for whom many of his famed sonnets were written. Based on the book by Nashville poet Caroline Randall Williams, the contemporary ballet explores themes of love, otherness, equality and beauty as the narrator embarks on a journey to discover her own power and worth. Featuring an original score by Grammy Award-winning artist and MacArthur “Genius” Grant recipient Rhiannon Giddens with spoken word performed by Williams, Lucy is an imaginative drama brimming with wit and relevancy. * NASHVILLE BALLET CEO AND DIRECTOR PAUL VASTERLING’S AWARDS & ACHIEVEMENTS • The Center for Ballet and the Arts (NYU) Fellow in Residence in 2017 • Fulbright Award Recipient in 2004 NASHVILLE BALLET AWARDS & ACHIEVEMENTS • Selected by the Kennedy Center to perform on the Ballet Across America opening gala in 2017 • Nashville Scene’s #1 Best Performing Arts Group in 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014 *The Nashville Ballet will also be promoting the book. * The ballet Lucy Negro Redux will feature MacArthur “Genius” Grant recipient Rhiannon Giddens first work commissioned for a ballet. *The ballet Lucy Negro Redux was created specifically for an African American female lead, a rarity that celebrates diversity in ballet. * Rhiannon Giddens and Caroline Randall Williams will join Nashville Ballet’s professional company onstage for all three premiere performances. *Minimum first print run of 5000 books.

Lucy Negro, Redux, uses the lens of Shakespeare's "Dark Lady" sonnets to explore the way questions about and desire for the black female body have evolved over time."Part lyrical narrative, part bluesy riff, part schoolyard chant and part holy incantation" — New York Times Lucy Negro, Redux, uses the lens of Shakespeare's "Dark Lady" sonnets to explore the way questions about and desire for the black female body have evolved over time, from Elizabethan England to the Jim Crow South to the present day. Equally interested in the sensual and the serious, the erotic and the academic, this collection experiments with form, dialect, persona, and voice. Ultimately a hybrid document, Lucy Negro Redux harnesses blues poetry, deconstructed sonnets, historical documents and lyric essays to tell the challenging, many-faceted story of the Dark Lady, her Shakespeare, and their real and imagined milieu. Inspired by the book, The Nashville Ballet will premiere “Lucy Negro Redux,” an original ballet conceived and choreographed by Artistic Director & CEO, Paul Vasterling, in February 2019 at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center. A collaboration of music, poetry and choreography, this contemporary ballet based on Caroline Randall Williams’ book of poetry of the same name is unique in process, content and format. The project uses dance and music to execute the author’s exploration of more than 160 of Shakespeare’s sonnets, and her arrival to a thesis that the “Dark Lady” and the “Fair Youth”—the subjects and inspiration of these sonnets—were undoubtedly a black woman and a young man lover. Ultimately, in experiencing Lucy through themes of love, otherness and equality, the narrator, and thus the audience, finds a powerful female voice.