July 31 (Bloomberg) — Eighteen feet long and more than 200 pounds, Maurice Le Grand is a big eater who has a butler to keep her happy with frozen bunnies.

The python has joined circus impresario Jim Rose’s latest traveling show which also features that former bad-boy wrestler Jake “The Snake” Roberts.

Roberts, a model for the down-and-out character Mickey Rourke played in the movie “The Wrestler,” featured a python in his ring routine for 25 years.

None, though, was as big as Maurice, purchased in Belgium for $63,000.

I spoke to Rose, who is 52 and based in Seattle, to get the lowdown on his show, called Jim Rose Circus vs. Jake “the Snake” Roberts. (A summer tour has been halted because Rose was injured during a performance; it is expected to resume in September.)

Femme Fatale

Hilferty: How can you tell Maurice is a girl?

Rose: Not sure. But the girls get bigger than the males.

Hilferty: She’s certainly a looker, pearly white with a gorgeous light-yellow pattern running down the scales. How dangerous?

Rose: Extremely if handled by those who don’t know how. So we’ve hired a snake butler.

Hilferty: A regular prima donna, no?

Rose: If you’re going to treat the snake with dignity — I mean that thing is pickier than Mariah Carey — it needs a full- time handler. We’ve provided her with a movable ecosystem of imported earth and trees from her natural habitat. Sinn Bodhi, formerly Kizarny of World Wrestling Entertainment, is the butler and part of the act.

Hilferty: What exactly does the butler do?

Rose: He mostly goes into the compound and throws in these frozen rabbits that then thaw. This is always a prearranged meal, whereas in the wild, Maurice would have to stalk, capture and devour. If we were to use live rabbits, it would trigger a hunting instinct for warm blood, and Maurice would become more surly.

Shaped Teeth

Hilferty: So Maurice is more “domesticated” than your run-of-the-mill viper?

Rose: You can never trust the snake — ever — so never think you are a friend with one. But you can work out an agreement with the snake to not bite you as often.

Hilferty: How’s that going?

Rose: We thought we had an agreement, but when Sinn went in to bring it out on stage one day, it got him right around the wrist. Your natural reaction is to rip it back, but you can’t because of the way their teeth are shaped. So you basically have to take the bite until it decides to let go. Sinn knew that, but it was a horrific bite.

Hilferty: So how does the show go?

Rose: Keep in mind that wrestling started as a staged fistfight that took place in front of a circus tent, and it would create a huge crowd. And then that crowd would be enticed to come into the circus and buy a ticket.

We’re doing it that way. There is no ring — it’s all hard bumps on hard floors.

Big Fight

Hilferty: And then?

Rose: Jake has to smash his finger with a can of soup; Sinn has to stick his hand in a raccoon trap. Then the testicular challenges follow.

Hilferty: I shudder, but go on.

Rose: Sinn has a glass plate placed near his genital area that’s smashed with a sledgehammer; Jake has a concrete block in between his legs that’s smashed. Then we staple money on Sinn’s head with a staple gun. Soon, Jake and Sinn get into a big fight.

Hilferty: So where does the python come in?

Rose: Jake does his signature move in which he grabs his opponent’s face, bends over, gets his head under his arm, and falls back crushing the guy’s head into the table. Then he throws the albino onto Sinn, sticks a hook through Sinn’s tongue, and drags him off stage. It’s pretty epic, actually.

Hilferty: In spite of the staged violence, is Maurice becoming more human during this tour?

Rose: It’s still a snake, brother. You definitely don’t want to mess with it when it’s shedding. You’ve touched raw skin before. That’s basically how they feel after they shed. They’re extremely violent during that period.

July 6 (Bloomberg) — The 12 intimate stories comprising “Les Ephemeres” include one by the epic drama’s celebrated French director Ariane Mnouchkine. Which story, she’s not divulging — she prefers injecting a bit of mystery into the show.

“Les Ephemeres” begins a two-week run tomorrow night at New York’s Park Avenue Armory as part of the Lincoln Center Festival.

Mnouchkine (pronounced muh-NOOSH-keen) is also not one to pull rank atTheatre du Soleil, the avant-garde theater company she founded 45 years ago in Paris.

“I consider this my most collaborative work,” said the bespectacled, 70-year-old doyenne. Unlike the mythic, historical and political canvases of previous shows such as “Les Atrides,” “1789” or “Le Dernier Caravanserail,” “Les Ephemeres” (the title, she said, refers to the mayfly, whose lifespan is no more than a day or two) deals with prosaic events in our brief lives, from debt to divorce.

“The stories are the actors’ own,” Mnouchkine said. “The little sets are totally their creation, even the costumes. Everything. Nothing was pre-decided.

‘‘At the beginning, I just asked the question ‘What would our last three months be like if we knew we were going to die?’ and we went on totally blind for a while,’’ she continued, ‘‘but let things come up out of our hearts, throats, mouths and tears.’’

Joint Operation

Her collaborative technique stands in contrast to the more common one of an all-powerful director.

‘‘I let things happen and I give space and time for the actors to express what they feel and fear,’’ she said. ‘‘I don’t touch anything that comes out wonderful.’’ The rest she meticulously edits, rearranges and discards.

The improvisations, based on memories and experiences supplied by members of her troupe, were painstakingly refined during eight months of workshops. Out of hundreds of experiences, a dozen stories emerged and were seamlessly interwoven through 29 scenes, presented in two parts and performed by 30 actors.

Life may be fleeting, but ‘‘Les Ephemeres’’ clocks in at almost seven hours.

Feast of Styles

‘‘I can’t seem to make it shorter,’’ Mnouchkine says of her famously long shows. In addition to tales, they invariably offer a feast of visual, musical and linguistic styles that draw on Eastern as well as Western story-telling traditions.

‘‘We have so many things to tell, and also complex things,’’ she said. ‘‘Time is necessary. If it’s too short, you have to lie.’’

Truth is what Mnouchkine’s after. She said that she has no use for what she calls ‘‘intellectual theater,’’ preferring to work on gut instinct: ‘‘I trust my emotions. If I have goose pimples on my arms, it’s good. If I haven’t, it’s boring, so I don’t want it.”

Part of what keeps Mnouchkine’s work from being boring is its cinematic quality — not surprising for the woman who devised the original scenario for the 1964 Jean-Paul Belmondo film, “That Man From Rio.”

“Les Ephemeres” presents a series of vignettes, played out on circular, mobile mini-stages containing kitchen, living room, bedroom and other domestic sets that move about and reassemble in various configurations.

Many Influences

Mnouchkine cites American and Japanese cinema as major influences. A passion for silent film is evident in “Les Ephemeres,” which contains almost no dialogue. The silences are filled by composer Jean-Jacques Lemetre, Mnouchkine’s long-time collaborator.

“His music is more than important, it’s essential” she said. “We couldn’t do what we are doing without Jean-Jacques.” Lemetre composed over 40 hours of music before rehearsals began. The lyrical score employs both prerecorded elements and the composer, live, playing a variety of instruments.

As a premiere approaches, Mnouchkine and her troupe often live in very close quarters at La Cartoucherie, the former munitions factory in Paris’s 12th arrondissement. The result is evident in the performance.

“We couldn’t work like that if didn’t have a strong belief in the quest of theater,” Mnouchkine said. “Making theater is not like making tee shirts for sale. It’s a place where people use their imaginations, where the actors and the public should become stronger, more intelligent, more human, and gather strength to fight their demons.”

“Les Ephemeres” runs July 7-19 at the Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Ave. Information: +1-212-721-6500; http://www.lincolncenter.org.

June 1 (Bloomberg) — During a final rehearsal of his new ballet, “On the Dnieper,” Alexei Ratmansky took center stage amidst the set’s cherry blossoms and wooden fences. The choreographer carefully watched his lithe principal dancers — Marcelo Gomes, Veronika Part and Paloma Herrera — become entangled in an emotionally convoluted yet elegant pas de trois.

The centerpiece of American Ballet Theatre’s weeklong “All-Prokofiev Celebration,” the newly choreographed ballet (by ABT’s newly appointed Artist in Residence) will have its world premiere tonight at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House.

Ratmansky’s method is highly collaborative.

“I’ll ask the dancer, ‘What would you do as this character in this situation? How would you finish this lift? What is more comfortable?’” He smiles. “Sometimes I have no more steps in my head, so I ask them for more.” In the case of “On the Dnieper,” he says, “Marcelo is very inspiring.”

Prokofiev’s score was commissioned by the Paris Opera Ballet and received its premiere there in 1932. It tells the story of a soldier named Sergei (Gomes) who returns to his small Ukrainian village after World War I. He soon discovers that he’s less in love with his fiancee, Natalia (Part) than with the other local beauty, Olga (Herrera). She’s otherwise engaged, too, and complications ensue.

‘Wonderful Tunes’

“There are some wonderful tunes and melodies with nice, syncopated rhythms that call for dance,” said Ratmansky, 40, wearing a tight black shirt and sporting a diamond earring. “And it’s interesting to hear ideas Prokofiev would later use in ‘Romeo & Juliet’ and ‘Cinderella.’”

Music is always the trigger for Ratmansky, who was born in St. Petersburg and studied the classics before becoming a dance student at the Bolshoi Ballet School in Moscow. “When I realized that movement would bring something more complex and interesting to my experience of music,” he said, “I thought choreography was something that would interest me.”

The Bolshoi rejected him for its dance company in 1986, but hired him in 2004 as artistic director (a post he recently left), after having been a principal dancer with the Ukrainian National Ballet, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and the Royal Danish Ballet.

ABT principal Nina Ananiashvili gave him his first major ballet commission in 1998, “Dreams of Japan.” Since then, he’s created some 40 works for companies worldwide, including “The Bright Stream” and “Concerto DSCH.”

More From Less

“It’s hard for me to watch the pieces I did at the beginning because I feel they are not complex enough, not shaped,” he said. “I’m learning to develop the structure and themes, as a composer takes a theme and varies it. Using less material and getting more out of it — that’s what I’m doing with dance.”

Ratmansky sees his style, known for vibrancy and emotional punch, as the sum of all his influences, from classical to Diaghilev-era experiments, Balanchine to Forsythe.

“I like using all the classical academic steps because some of them are quite spectacular and not used a lot nowadays,” Ratmansky said. “And I like the idea of being international. I’m considered very Western in Russia, and the opposite here. Maybe I do it on purpose.”

A busy dance-maker, his “Little Humped Back Horse” had a premiere at theMaryinsky in March. In the new, 40-minute piece for Ballet Theatre — which shares the program with Kudelka’s “Desir” and Balanchine’s “Prodigal Son” — Ratmansky’s gift for storytelling and characterization are on full display.

“This is a story of confrontation and broken hearts,” he said. “There are some emotional moments in the score, but much of the music has no big peaks or downs. It can still be quite abstract. Because I use some mime, some expressive dancing, and then pure dance sections, it’s a delicate balance. I never know what the audience’s impression will be.”

How does Ratmansky account for his current success?

“Luck,” he humbly declared, “and a combination of the Russian school, inexperience, and my Western experience.”

Local jazz great Ronald “Boo” Hinkson

The St. Lucia Jazz Festival is held on one of the Caribbean’s most lush and mountainous islands. This year’s lineup included such talents as Amy Winehouse, Chaka Khan and Patti LaBelle. Journalist Robert Hilferty reports from the tropical paradise.

 
**

For the past 18 years of the St. Lucia Jazz Festival, which takes place at the beginning of May, it’s never rained. When I arrived this year it was pouring so hard that the first concert had to be canceled.

By the second day, the weather improved, and everyone was excited about seeingAmy Winehouse do her thing. Revelers from St. Lucia, nearby islands, the U.K. and U.S. packed Pigeon Island National Park–which is not really an island but a hilly lawn dotted with tropical trees, to see the bad girl of the U.K.

The tattooed diva came out in her signature retro-beehive doo and a tight dress exposing her gaunt legs. The controversial Grammy winner did everything we wanted her to do under the full moon: took off her shoes, did a shimmy, drank a pint of Guinesss in one fell swoop, flirted with her two black backup dancers, twanged her woes. But by her third song, the storms returned, and the rest of her set was bedraggled with a Woodstock muddiness. Those without umbrellas were drenched, and the lights went off onstage. But the show went on, the lights came back on, and later, Winehouse suddenly left the stage without alerting her band. A good chunk of the audience was not pleased.

The rains stopped as the dramatic Winehouse was followed up by the Paris-based, Guadeloupe-raised group Kassav who took the stage and performed in the energetic “zouk” style as what remained of the sizable audience stomped in the mud.

The good news is that the skies mostly cleared up for the rest of the festival which featured new figures, like the sexy, London-based Estelle, and well-established figures like Chaka Khan (who belted “I’m Every Women” on Mother’s Day), Bebe Winans, Patti LaBelle, and Jeffrey Osborne.

As you can surmise, St. Lucia offers more a “jazz-influenced” festival than strictly a “jazz” as it features an overwhelming number of R & B personalities, very popular in the Caribbean. The festival also has a soft spot for legendary old timers from the ‘70s such as KC & The Sunshine Band (“Shake Your Booty”), Chicago, and Michael McDonald from Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers. These guys don’t fade away—they’re surprisingly vibrant as ever.

The festival’s first nine years featured what we would call more serious jazz hardliners, and in the past have showcased such impressive personalities as Anita Baker, Isaac Hayes, Nancy Wilson, Herbie Hancock, Wynton Marsalis, and McCoy Tyner. Dionne Warwick even graced these shores. But as the audiences for sophisticated jazz dwindles, the festival by economic necessity had to open up to the more popular R &B, and also feature some world music personalities.

So I found myself particularly enjoying local jazz figures such as Ronald “Boo” Hinkson, a red-hot guitarist who mixes serious jazz and Calypso. And there’s St. Lucian saxophonists Barbara Ann Cadet (who is featured on the most recent edition of the island’s phone book) and Luther Francois, who both rock. All these offer the kind of inventive improvisation my ear yearns for that the R & B artists, no matter how dynamic and charismatic, don’t offer.

When you’re not listening to the music–which is showcased not only at the sprawling Pigeon park with its many food and drink stands, but other venues throughout the island, such as Derek Walcott Square (named after the island’s Nobel Prize-winning author) and the Gaiety Theater (where the more serious jazz artists perform), you can take wonderful excursions to the southern end of the island. By boat or by windy road, you can take in a gorgeous landscape whose magnificence is capped by the Gros Piton and Petit Piton, twin extinct volcanoes (after which a local beer is named) that enchant.

****

Robert Hilferty is a critic for Bloomberg news, and writes for Gramophone, The Advocate, and other publications and websites.

Derek Walcott Square

April 30 (Bloomberg) — After British explorer Percy Fawcett disappeared in the Amazon jungle in 1925, a number of copycat “Fawcett freaks” also vanished while searching for him.

David Grann survived to write “The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon.” It’s a gripping story that has already been optioned by Brad Pitt’s production company.

The strapping Fawcett had a fierce desire to dive into uncharted territory. Intoxicated with tales of El Dorado and envious of Hiram Bingham’s discovery of Machu Picchu, Fawcett was convinced he would find in the Amazon a sophisticated, ancient, hidden civilization, which he called “Z.”

Fawcett ventured deep into the state of Mato Grosso, on foot and by boat, to terra incognita near the Xingu River. He had a talent for befriending Indians, whom he didn’t consider savages and whose jungle survival tactics he absorbed. Sometimes Indians acted as guides along the way.

While he never returned from the 1925 expedition, his fearlessness inspired Conan Doyle’s “The Lost World.” Grann was hooked when he came upon a reference to Fawcett while doing research on another project, and became determined to trace the Briton’s last journey.

Pudgy, bespectacled and balding, the 42-year-old Grann, who writes for the New Yorker, looks as if he’d be more at home in a library than swinging a machete in a rainforest.

“I’m the least likely explorer,” he admitted recently in his small, untidy office in the Conde Nast building on Manhattan’s Times Square. “Indiana Jones” adventures are among the many books spilling off his shelves.

Kissing Bug

“The thing about Fawcett is that his life took the form of these adventure stories he read as a boy,” Grann said. “In the course of the research, I read quest and adventure novels, and wanted the book to mimic some of that form.”

Grann didn’t realize at first that he would be mimicking Fawcett himself, negotiating anacondas and cyanide-squirting millipedes, not to mention the kissing bug whose lip-bite can have fatal consequences 20 years later. The impulse took hold of him when he tracked down Fawcett’s granddaughter in Wales.

“She led me to the back room where there was a box full of disintegrating books, Fawcett’s secret diaries and logbooks,” Grann said of this unpublished trove. “They had all these clues, including where exactly he went in the jungle, because he always told rivals misleading information. He didn’t want them to beat him to his discovery.” With so much information about Fawcett’s plans, Grann decided he was going to do something “foolish” and took leave of his wife and young child to find Z.

Panic Sets In

Unlike Fawcett, Grann had access to immunity shots and a satellite phone. Deforestation also made part of the trip a breeze. Nonetheless, he became separated from his guide for several hours — more than enough time for panic to set in.

“I tried to find him and got lost, and had no food or water,” said Grann. “It gave me similar insight into what Fawcett experienced.”

When they were reunited, his guide led him to a village where he met the archaeologist who shared his obsession with Fawcett: Michael Heckenberger.

“He has been working for the past decade in the area where Fawcett thought he would find Z,” said Grann, “and has found evidence of 20 pre-Columbian settlements in the very same region. These settlements had roads and causeways built in right angles, bridges, and populations between 2,500 and 5,000 people, making them about the size of many medieval cities. So it’s much more than a fable.”

Manipulations of Earthscape

This has triggered an archaeological revolution in the Amazon and Heckenberger’s findings are opening a new chapter of human history. These ruins are not made of stone, like those of the Incas; rather they are sophisticated yet perishable manipulations of earthscape. Fawcett’s remains, though, were never found, though he is believed to have vanished in this area.

After spending five weeks in the Brazilian wilderness in 2005, Grann returned relatively unscathed. “I got parasites and got a little sick, but lost a few pounds and was happy about that,” he said.

Morro do Pico

March 18 (Bloomberg) — Following a trail leading to one of Brazil’s most beautiful beaches, I was wonder-struck by a craggy, thumb-shaped rock towering 1,060 feet (323 meters) above the shimmering sea. This geological showoff was a signal of more natural splendors ahead.

Morro do Pico (Peak’s Hill) is one of many glorious sites on the island of Fernando de Noronha, a former penal colony that once housed gypsies, murderers and political prisoners. Today it’s an eco-paradise teeming with marine life and pristine, uncrowded beaches.

Fernando de Noronha is only an hour’s flight from Recife, a city on the country’s northeastern coast that’s cluttered with high-rises and known for murky waters and shark attacks. But the island seems light years away with its sparkling sand, turquoise waters and friendly dolphins and turtles.

The island, once visited by Charles Darwin, is the largest of 21 in a volcanic archipelago named after a Portuguese aristocrat who never set foot on its shores.

After arriving, I wasted no time sampling the beach closest to my “pousada,” one of about 120 modest inns scattered on the island. My one-star inn (Pousada da Morena) cost $230 a night, but the nicest bungalows at fancier places like Ze Maria and Maravilha can top $1,000 during high season in January, which is Brazil’s summer.

No Beachfront Hotels

Dois Irmaos (Two Brothers)

While walking to Praia da Conceicao (Beach of Conception), I first spotted Morro do Pico, the soaring rock that can be seen from almost anywhere on the island. After almost being flattened by two boys racing on horseback — a surrealistic scene right out of a Bunuel film — I eventually found my way to an immaculate beach where I bathed in equatorial warmth as the sun set.

The pristine environment is no accident.

The area was designated Brazil’s first National Marine Park in 1988 and was named a Unesco World Heritage site in 2001. You won’t find any beachfront Sheratons or Marriotts here. Visitors, whose numbers are limited, are charged an environmental protection tax of about $22 a day. And you can get slapped with a $200 fine for littering.

The next day I woke up with an urge to cavort with sea turtles. While my friend Jorge pursued his scuba passion, I headed to Baia do Sueste (Bay of the Southeast), where I rented snorkeling gear and a guide for about $50. In no time I was swimming within arm’s reach of a dozen or so of these wondrous creatures, who weren’t disturbed in the least by my presence.

Stingrays, Turtles

Stingrays were also abundant. A few times I found myself inside a kaleidoscopic swirl of blue and orange fish, making me feel like an underwater Doctor Dolittle.

I then strolled to the adjacent Praia do Leao under the beating sun. Though named after a lion, the beach is best known for its turtles. In fact, no one is allowed on it after 6 p.m. between December and June because green turtles come ashore and galumph their way up the strand to dump eggs, a painstaking two-hour process. (Fifty days later, adorable hatchlings emerge from their sandy cribs and make a beeline to the sea — if a nasty bird doesn’t snack on them first.)

Jorge’s scuba dive was also a success. Armed with an underwater camera, he saw fascinating rock formations and coral in the Buraco do Inferno (Hell Hole), a diving site that features more than 200 types of fish, including peacock flounder, goliath grouper and harmless reef and nurse sharks uninterested in noshing on your limbs.

Grinning Dolphins

Dolphins, though, are the island’s star attraction. There’s even a bay named after them: Baia dos Golfinhos.

To get an up-close view, I recommend a boat trip. Mine left from Santo Antonio harbor at the island’s northern tip, traveling south along the coast as far as the Ponta da Sapata, a massive rocky wall punched with a curious hole the shape of Brazil.

After passing the Baia dos Golfinhos, we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by playful dolphins. The most mischievous ones raced ahead of our boat in packs of five or six, periodically peeling off while seeming to flash a grin.

Soon we were treated to a magnificent view of Dois Irmaos (Two Brothers), twin peaks of volcanic rock rising out of the water whose peculiar beauty is enhanced by centuries of guano droppings. I saw surfers riding huge waves on the Cacimba do Padre beach and decided to participate in my own water sport - - Plana Sub, a popular activity where you’re dragged by the boat while holding onto a plastic board, alternately skimming and submerging. Just like a dolphin.

Mabuya Lizards

Baia do Sancho

One dolphin-sighting tip: Avoid the crack-of-dawn outing to the Mirante dos Golfinhos lookout point. You’re too high and too far away to see much of anything. However, it is a good starting point for a hike to the most stunning beach on the island, Baia do Sancho. En route you’ll see Mabuya lizards and exotic birds, as well as an indigenous rodent that looks like a rabbit-squirrel mix.

Getting to the beach is tricky. You must descend two rusty ladders positioned in narrow crevices in the cliff before negotiating a steep stony staircase. It’s worth the effort. Surrounded by stunning cliffs and swaying palm trees, the bay is glorious. The sand is silky white and the azure water is crystal clear. Best of all, the beach was almost empty.

While the perimeter of the island is gorgeous, the interior isn’t. Most roads, aside from the main highway, are unpaved and turn to mud after a heavy rain. And since no accommodations are close to the beach, you must rent a dune buggy for $125 a day or ride pricey taxis, which cost a minimum of $10.

Drinking, Dancing

The small village of Vila dos Remedios, the island’s town center, has a few good restaurants and cafes, plus one bank. At the outdoor Bar do Cachorro you can enjoy a caipirinha (the national cocktail of cachaca, sugar and lime) and dance to “forro,” regional folk music that features an accordion, triangle and zabumba drum.

All while dreaming of your next encounter with turtles, dolphins and empty beaches.