A Present-Day Morality for the Present Day

Abstract

In May 2019 an international cooperative of researchers, performers, and artists staged Vernon Lee’s (Violet Paget, 1856–1935) pacifist drama The Ballet of the Nations: A Present-Day Morality (1915) at her Villa Il Palmerino, Florence. The site-specific performance was adapted from Lee’s text by director Angeliki Papoulia and producer Federica Parretti, with a focus on the text’s resonances with the current resurgence of the nationalist far-right movements and anti-immigrant manifestos. This article considers the genesis of this production, the research informing its adaptation, and the subsequent performance of the piece.