Awake the White and Wint'ry Queen

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Scott's Notes
What follows below are my original brainstorming ideas when I was cooking up the concepts for this show. Perhaps it might serve to clarify what I have in mind.

Awake The White and Wintr’y Queen
A Winter Solstice Show

What is it?
Primarily a concert of original music accompanied by interpretive dance performances, spoken word, storytelling, film projection and bodypaint. Accompanied by an in-house exhibition of bodypaint fine-art photography.

Show times and dates
Show duration is expected to be an hour and a half and include about 10-12 songs/performances/acts. The show must be scheduled between Thanksgiving and Christmas to leverage the interest of the holiday theme. I expect as much as 70% of the attendance for the show will come from people looking to get into the “holiday spirit” by seeing a show. This show will offer a welcome alternative to the two traditional standbys - “A Christmas Carol”, and “The Nutcracker”. Also, a performance venue with an adjacent gallery (or space to hang art) is desired.

Themes
Old world christmas, blending medieval and renaissance modalities. Ritual Theater. This show will attempt to evoke a sense of the sacred in the stillness of the deep winter dark on the longest night of the year. A feeling of presence and resonance with the ancient powers of the earth and sky as the wheel of time turns once again to mark the passing of another year, welcoming the promise of new life hidden unseen beneath the snows. The mood of the music will be rhythmic, primal and stirring, inspiring colors of tarnished gold, velvet burgundy and forrest green to play through the mind’s eye. The melodies will shade into the emotions of longing and melancholy, later to be resolved, triumphal and golden. There is no “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” or “I saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” in this show. There is also no baby Jesus. Both commercial and religious fare has been set aside to allow for the presentation of a deeper, older experience, predating either of those alternatives. I hope that this show will leave people feeling an inner sense of quietude and and connection, as well as being moved, excited and inspired by the driving grooves and the pageantry. I hope they will depart feeling that magic is still alive in the world.

Creative License
The roles of all the participants in the show are designed to be intentionally loose and flexible, allowing for a lot of improvisation and creative development by each performer. There will be relatively little memorization, blocking, scoring, and scripting, outside of a basic structure.

Music
The concept for the music is to have a strong rhythmic foundation and a low, sonorous drone over which a singer and a selection of instrumentalists will improvise around a few chosen melodic themes. Some selections will feature vocals and solo instruments over an ambient swell of tones (space music). A good model for the style for this would be the music of Dead Can Dance or Loreena McKennitt. Music will be both live and prerecorded (by Scott). All compositions will be original, with some melodies based on 15th-16th century historical sources. Songs will have a pronounced “jam” component and can easily be extended if the groove is feelng right. Live band configuration: There will likely be 4-6 hand drummers, a keyboard (playing the drone), violin, flute, and guitar, as well as vocalists. I also hope to have a harpist for a couple of special sections.

Film Projection
Interspersed amidst the live action will be two or three short (2-3 minutes in duration) movies, front projected on a scrim or curtain on center stage. The films will feature original prerecorded music and spoken word poetry (Joe Wrobel) and act as an “intermission” allowing for sets to be moved behind it in preparation for the next act. The content of the films will be abstract, slow-motion contours of bodypainted bodies moving sinuously in slow, dance-like movements. Shot close and tight (so as to focus on the curves and forms of the body, rather than the identity of the dancer per se). Art films. Moving paintings, set to music and poetry.

Products
We will pre-sell concert DVD’s. We can also have CD’s of the music available. Matted prints of the bodypainting photography and autographed posters are another possibility.