Paint Your Wagon: "Gold Rush" Ballet

MUSIC and LYRICS by ALAN JAY LERNER AND FREDERICK LOEWE. ADDITIONAL MUSIC by TRUDE RITTMANN

Agnes de Mille’s dances for Paint Your Wagon are known to be some of her most poetic and affecting works in her musical theater repertoire. De Mille revised the dances for Paint Your Wagon into a cohesive piece called Gold Rush, which was televised in 1957. Gold Rush follows the storyline of a group of gold miners who come to a western town, where they are greeted by the dance hall hostess and her saloon girls. Amidst the loneliness that follows a nomadic life and the frustration of their work, a love story begins between one of the miners and a local saloon girl. It is a fated love that inevitablely ends with the arrival of autumn. The narrative and choreography reaches its peak with a stirring, passionate and melancholic pas de deux “Another Autumn.”

COVER PHOTO: Paint Your Wagon/Gold Rush. “Another Autumn” pas de deux. New York Theatre Ballet. Elena Zahlmann and Steven Melendez. Photo Credit: Richard Termine/Courtesy of NYTB. VIDEO CLIP: Gold Rush. “Another Autumn” pas de deux. Seven Lively Arts. CBS. 1958. Gemze de Lappe (“the girl”) and James Mitchell (“ the young miner”).