Sometimes A Great Notion… Emerald Bay Premieres (p. 40)

One of the signs of a great idea is when it takes on a life of its own. Northwest Ballet Theater Artistic Director John Bishop and Western Washington University English Professor Christopher Wise had such an idea a couple of years ago.

“The idea of Emerald Bay came about after Christopher and I began researching Bellingham historical data and found out about what happened to the Chinese immigrants here in 1885, when locals ousted them from the area,” Bishop said. “We decided to create a ballet that would use that history as a backdrop and would have a similar formula to Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story.”