Shadow on the Prairie

Shadow on the Prairie

Shadow on the Prairie. Ballet in one scene by Gweneth Lloyd (choreography) and Robert Fleming (music). The score was commissioned by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and composed in 1951. The ballet was premiered 30 Oct 1952 in Winnipeg. The production toured extensively in 1954 in Canada and the USA. The story concerns a Scottish couple on the prairies and depicts the wife's growing fear and loneliness during a long winter. Excerpts from the ballet were filmed in 1953 by the NFB. Fleming's music, neoclassical and containing some folk elements, was arranged in 1953 into a concert suite which in 1954 was rescored for larger orchestra and premiered 9 Feb 1955 by the TSO under Sir Ernest MacMillan. A study score of the ballet suite was published by the Canadian Music Centre, and a recording (1955, RCI 129) of the orchestral version was made by MacMillan and the TSO. The original score was lost in a Winnipeg fire in 1953 but a holograph transparency is held at the NL of C.