Raven Field
Raven Field is the celebrated ballet of Vorst Vacheq. The work was commissioned by Ivana Bortsi and staged initially at Misericordia. The work received rave reviews from the crème de la crème of the Borcan aristocrats. The ballet was staged subsequently in Levkarest where a somewhat wider audience swooned before the artist genius of Vacheq. An agreement was then struck for the work to be staged by in Port-a-Lucine by Ballet National du Dementlieu. Before it could open gross financial improprities at the national ballet led to its shuttering for two years. It would take a further decade before Raven Field was to at last reach the stage in Dementlieu. Many regret that it ever did.
The death of Vacheq had freed the hand of ballet's artistic director, one Claude Lemieux, and he seized the opportunity to make significant "improvements" in the work. The Dementlieuse public gave the result a rather tepid reception. This public, however, was entirely upstaged by the Borcan aristocrats who had travelled to Dementlieu for the opening. They walked out en masse in the middle of the second act and proceeded to accuse Dementlieu of deliberately desecrating a Borcan national teasure. Improbablly, the Borcan ambassador, who had stayed to the ballet's bitter end, was attacked and robbed by ruffians on his way home. More improbably still, he claimed that the ruffians had been led by Claude Lemieux, demanded that the artistic director be executed for attacking an allied state, hinted that certain member of the Council of Brilliance had orchestrated the entire affair, and demanded an apology from Lord-Governor Marcel Guignol.
Publicly, nothing was said by the Lord-Governor and his council. Privately, arrangement were to repay in kind the Borcans for insults. Claude Lemieux
were quickly made to secure for rave reviews Claude Lemieux
Sympathy for vacheq was drowned in This was far too much and the Dementlieuse aristocracy rallied
side of their
The Borcan over-reaction
, it’s fate, learned I have, I think.” stammered my new Master of Ceremonies. -"By the dying darkness of the dawn, how delicious, do tell." I said with feigned indifference. The elf continued with little more composure, “After its command performance, that is to say its commanded performance, I mean its shambles of a command, commanded performance, it somehow took a horribly wrong turn and got itself into the Bog Lands, where - I can’t say or imagine how - the members have become, well, mounds of plant matter in want of firm roots." -Dryly I remarked, "How unfortunate." Then asked sternly, "Are you certain?" -He screwed up his scant courage and dared look me in the eye socket as he replied: "It is them lord, for the things, or at least the most lucid of them, were performing, albeit silently, Vacheq Raven Field with the same improvisations that had so utterly incensed, so rightly, utterly incensed, your august person.” -Whereupon I permitted myself the thought of the thinnest of smiles and said flatly: "Inform the ambassador of their location but not of their condition."
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