winter 2007 - Concord Academy

CONCORD ACADEMY MAGAZINE WINTER 2007Dido and Aeneasby Henry PurcellApril 18, 2007 8:00 p.m.April 19–20 7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.April 22 8:00 p.m.Concord Academy Dance and Performance StudioDirection & Choreography* Richard ColtonMusic Orchestration Keith DanielHilary Walther Cumming ’87ConductorKeith Daniel*in collaboration with CA Dance CompanyCOLLABORATORSCostume DesignDaniel MichaelsonKirian Langseth-SchmidtSet and Light Design Caleb WertenbakerPeriod Dance Consultant Judith ChaffeeMusic by the CA OrchestraDANCERSDido Jody Graf ’07Aeneas Zack Winokur ‘07Belinda Emma McCormick-Goodhart ’08Sorceress Clara Dennis ’08Enchantresses Monica Grandy ’07Elizabeth Hoffman ’09Isabella Joslin ’09Jen Lamy ’09Zoë Mueller ’08Sailor Khalif Diouf ’07Spirit Brian Mahoney-Pierce ’07SINGERSDido Freddie Tunnard ’07Aeneas David Hook ’08Belinda Addy Cahill ’07Second Woman Louisa Denison ’07Sorceress Fannie Watkinson ’08Daphne Kim ’10Enchantresses Emma Friedman-Cohen ’07Carly Anderson ’08Katie Astrauskas ’09Sailor Paul Quimby ’08Spirits Julia Hanlon ’10Bronwyn Murray-Bozeman ’10Blair West ’1036their garments, and begin to pursue desperateAeneas, seething and boiling all around him.Eventually, after an intense pursuit, they subsumehim in a pyramid of token desire. Collapsed, anarm or leg sometimes emerges, anonymous, anda crowd of Didos in the white costumes Michael -son has provided watch, shifting on their feet inthe corner like Cretan maidens. The music ends,and the dancers seem unsure if they should continue.Colton keeps watching. The edge of artisticexpectation he places upon them exacts a finalproduct that emerges from the center of bloodshakinguncertainty and discomfort, from whichsprings the most exciting and unsure moments.Dido and Aeneas is a radical opera bearing innatepeculiarities, which make it ripe for fruitfulappropriation by modern artists. But do theyappropriate or submit? “What is most interestingto me as choreographer,” Colton said, “is theradical structure of the opera.” Its cubistic qualityintrigues and motivates him. It comprisesvignettes that Colton compares to a film’s jumpcutswhich, though jerky, together form a cohesivetragic picture, a complex of emotion andidea like a Sevres serving plate that has beenshattered, pieced together, and regarded by cold,fervent eyes. “Dido is a cubistic figure, reminiscentof Picasso’s “Weeping Woman”: she isstrong and angular, but falling apart into a millionfragments at the same time,” Colton said.Daniel also noticed this quality and is excited bythe “short songs, which we couldn’t even callarias. They will interest the audience much morethan the more typical lengthy baroque arias,” hesaid. To Colton, these short phrases cut out sentiment.“The phrases are crystalline, breathlike,and keep it from disintegrating into sentimentalopera,” he said.The entire opera has the quality of a collage: oneideology is plastered upon another, one era, onesociety, one moral—those of Purcell’s time and ofConcord Academy’s today. The gods of Vergilbecame Purcell’s sorceresses, which to Colton arefigures of “pop hilarity.” The dancers hope toexpose the thin residues of Puritanism, the lingeringpagan grains of society past and present;ultimately, the portent of Jesus that Vergil is saidto have conveyed will be regarded by the artisticeye of Colton and his dancers, shrouded by strictChristianity and its remnant, the dogmatic andmoral systems that guide our lives today.The view will be kaleidoscopic, and the core ofhuman relationships into which the opera delvesilluminated by Dido’s own inconsistence. She,who founded a city greater than any, would killherself for love. Submission and enslavement,desire and duty, mercurial reconsiderationsremade in moments—these are the beauty andrichness of Dido and Aeneas.Caleb Wertenbaker