Elaborate production melds choir, dance in dream world

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Camerata Nova and Contemporary Dancers combine talents. (SAM BAARDMAN PHOTO)

BETWEEN the conception/ And the creation/ Between the emotion/ And the response/ Falls the Shadow . . .

Between the desire/ And the spasm/ Between the potency/ And the existence/ Between the essence/ And the descent/ Falls the Shadow . . .

Those lines are from one of the most famous poems of the 20th century, The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot.

They gave Winnipeg composer/conductor Andrew Balfour the title for an ambitious, boundary-pushing "sound-movement-light production" that takes place tonight and Sunday.

The elaborate "concert plus dance" spectacle, which sounds as if it will be ethereal and spine-tingling, explores "the magical state between waking and sleeping, the real and the dream world -- the state when one is conscious but open to the unconscious."

The transition into sleep can be a metaphor for the passage into madness or death, Balfour suggests in an interview.

Dreaming is also linked to creativity, and thinkers throughout the ages have wondered about the relationship between art and the dream state.

"Sometimes I think when we enter our dream worlds, there is a special artistic element there, whether we hear music or see colours or hear words," Balfour says. "If I hear music in my dreams, I wonder: Where does that come from -- inside of me or outside me?"

Falls the Shadow calls for Balfour's high-calibre 13-member vocal ensemble, Camerata Nova, to sing in the awe-inspiring domed rotunda of the Aboriginal Centre, the former Canadian Pacific Railway station on Higgins Avenue. The cavernous space will have seating for 400 audience members in several sections.

The singers will perform Gregorian chant, music by Renaissance composers Purcell, Tallis, Lotti and Lassus, and works by modern composers including Arvo Pärt and Gustav Holst.

The performance will also feature two new compositions by Balfour. He has set words from The Hollow Men, Dante's Inferno and Edgar Allan Poe's madness-themed The Raven to music.

Three percussionists, and some singers, will play an unusual range of instruments including hurdy-gurdy, didgeridoo, Uilleann pipes and brass bowls.

Another artistic layer will be added with a lighting design of "surreal shadows" by Dean Cowieson.

Through a new Manitoba Arts Council program called DepARTures, which funds interdisciplinary collaborations, the choir was awarded a $10,000 grant to commission Brent Lott, artistic director of Winnipeg's Contemporary Dancers, to create choreography for six dancers.

Inspired by Balfour's themes, Lott says, some of his movement images are of "drowning and being sucked under."

As well, "the image of shadows is reflected in the choreography. I also have been thinking of hell. I believe it was C.S. Lewis, in one of his different ways of defining Hell, who (described it) as a very populated place where no one can interact with each other."

The 90-minute production will flow seamlessly, rather than being divided into separate pieces. "It's going to be a very poetic evening," says the choreographer.

It was Lott who suggested using the former train station's grand rotunda, describing it as "a space that hugely reverberates."

"I've been envisioning something there for a long time," he says.

Although Balfour is aboriginal, the show's content is not aboriginal-themed, except for the references to the raven. The composer was struck by the huge size of the ravens around the Banff Centre, where he began to conceive Falls the Shadow during a residency about a year ago.

"They'll swoop down on you sometimes. . . . I love those birds. I can see why they've always been seen as an evil omen or a magical bird. In aboriginal culture, I like the idea of the raven symbolizing the Trickster, who is neither good nor evil, but teaches us lessons."

Balfour won't exactly be soaring around the venue himself. He's recovering from a broken ankle, caused by a slip on ice about six weeks ago. He can't stand for long periods and will have to conduct Camerata Nova while perched on a stool.

"It's ironic," he says. "We've got the concert with the most movement in our history, and I can't move at all. But I can still move my arms."

alison.mayes@freepress.mb.ca

CONCERT/DANCE PREVIEW

Falls the Shadow

Tonight and Sunday at 8 p.m.

Aboriginal Centre, 181 Higgins Ave.

Tickets $20 (students $8, seniors $18) at 989-6030 ext. 8, or at the door

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition March 14, 2009 C13