Lillooet July 20, 2022
Dear Creative Reader,
Here is a dance production awaiting the right persons to bring it to stage. I am confident that the storyboard is transcendent and thus may be adapted quite freely, not only in the musical selections and costumes but in the dance choreography. It is a story that exists outside of the constraints of time, place or cultural reference. That is to say, it is archetypal.
Birds were chosen as the vehicles to illustrate the tale because to me, they can so perfectly express freedom, bondage, anger, fear, aggression and peace in a mercurial fashion, lending nuance to the choreography. They also lend the possibility of a simple stage set. Act One would have a painted backdrop of a river valley as seen from a height. The stage floor would be set to resemble rocks and an eagle’s nest of wood. Acts Two and Three would have a painted backdrop of a far away high ridge, as seen from the riverbank. The stage floor would be set to resemble sand water, some driftwood, smooth stones and a ground nest of cottonwood branches.
If anyone who dances, choreographs or produces is inspired by this idea, reach out via my contact info. If you have a vivid imagination, read the text first and then listen to the podcasts. You will see the dancers in your own way. Here is how it came about:
When I was in my early thirties, I had the good fortune to observe an exceptional dance troupe. My wife at the time and mother of my eldest son, was one of the dancers. She was then and is yet today, an exquisite dancer. It was a Chinese dance troupe led by a magnificently talented, disciplined and wise woman. The dancers also benefited from coaching and mentoring by some of the most technically and artistically accomplished professional dancers from China.
They practised several times a week and I was so enthralled that I stayed inside to watch each and every session. Eventually, the teacher secured for me a massive old oak desk to write on, read at and watch the dancers from. Her troupe performed all over the Lower Mainland, Vancouver and even toured China. I studied aikido with the teacher's husband and also helped him and his father lay a special floor for a new dance studio.
I was allowed to work the spotlights at some of the performances and I learned the choreography for various dances. I was further honoured by having my name engraved on a plaque at the opening ceremonies of the new studio. The opening party was the last time I ever saw those great folks. The only other plaque that bears my name is to be found on a commemoration of the first one hundred employees of the Keg'N’Cleaver Restaurant chain.
I had always consider music to be a food group but I soon learned that dance adds an extra dimension by conveying the emotional payload in a graphic manner. I remember visiting Crete once and watching men in a taverna going up one by one to express their joys and woes on an empty dance floor when the bouzouki pulled hard enough on their heart strings. I was in a sorry condition at that time and wished in vain for the courage to give vent to all that I had suppressed.
Those wonderful dancers, whom I came to know personally, I often recall. There was one male dancer in particular who had the uncanny ability to absolutely capture the spirit, power and physical attributes of an eagle in flight. My words could never do justice to that young man's skills. With the simplest of costumes, which merely suggested feathers, wings and such, he became an eagle before your very eyes and flowed across the wooden floor without the need for feet or wings. You could have put him on ice skates and there would have been no improvement in his performance.
While continually rebuilding my life from my own ashes in a phoenix loop, I kept visualizing that dancer when I was listening to some of my favourite musical pieces. Over time, an idea came to me. I decided to write my own three act dance drama. It would feature an eagle dancer in the lead role and through him, tell a tale of my own devising.
I set to work and came up with a piece called Truth Is the Price Of Freedom. I naively asked a few Vancouver dance academies if they wanted to perform it. I even presented an impromptu, one man, run-through performance in the living room of the Chief of the Burrard Indian Band on Dollarton Highway in North Vancouver; much to the amusement of himself and his pretty blonde wife. At the end, he informed me that he wasn't much interested and would stick to his families traditional wolf clan dances.
Rather than being discouraged, I simply got busy with life and raising a family. The outline for my dance drama sat in a little green folder on my desk for years. Recently, I had the idea that it would be possible to present the piece without employing anything more than a listener's imagination and ears. So, what follows is a presentation of the dance drama in three acts for a radio audience or for podcast listeners. Your own emotions will provide the nuances of the dancer's movements and will be helped in this regards by the music itself. Find your own moral to this story. Identify with any, all or none of the characters, as you wish. Envision them as real birds or as human dancers arrayed any way your imagination serves up. I will now describe to you what I saw when I created it.
TRUTH IS THE PRICE OF FREEDOM
Act One: Cast Adrift
Very dim lights are going down. An old woman next to you is fiddling with the wrapper of a chocolate bar and her husband is having a coughing spasm. As the I-phones are turned off like so many reluctant fireflies and it becomes quite dark, we see a very bright full moon sailing high and cold above a mountain ridge of purple-grey stone, studded with twisted trees and shrubs.
Far below, in the silvery, purple light, lies a long, beautiful river snaking sinuously on a course parallel to our ridge. From time to time, shreds of clouds obscure the moon and when they pass, the orb's intensity seems to augment a silent tension.
A spotlight appears and centres on an eagle's aerie made of large twigs and sticks. There are three eagles inside the nest. A very large male, a large female and a young male fledgling. The dancers are attired in costumes of red, black, white and blue. The female's costume has flowing silk sleeve edges rather than feathers and the males have seven actual feathers attached along each arm.
As we watch, the large male is pecking and harassing the younger one. Every time the tormentor faces away, the female comforts the young male. This is repeated twice and then we see the youngster gesture for food. The female tears a strip of flesh off of a carcass and proffers it to the young one. The big male snatches the food away and after devouring it, begins to peck at the female, viciously.
The young male interjects himself between the parent birds. The two males stare each other down and posture threateningly with their shoulders and wings. The spotlight dims and the music fades out to dark silence. After a brief pause, a spotlight appears on right-centre stage and the music simultaneously begins.
The moon has been replaced by a sun rising over the far away ridge. In the dawn’s apricot glow we see the young male flying solo around the stage. He is practising several definite manoeuvres and with visibly growing joy, he begins to range farther and farther away from the nest as the lights dim again to black.
Act Two: Building On Sand
Very dim lights slowly become brighter. We come to see a soft, sandy patch of ground along a riverbank. There are willows and cottonwood trees and as the light increases, we see a far mountain ridge in the distance with an eagle's aerie silhouetted behind a setting moon. There is a female river bird alight a piece of driftwood. She wears a deep purple costume and has flowing silk sleeves like the female eagle wore in the first act.
The young male eagle from the first act enters the stage and circles ever nearer the solitary river bird. She seems to notice but disregards the male as he tries to impress her with his aerial acrobatics. Presently, he swoops to the river and delivers up a fish which he drops near the lady bird. She turns away. He tears off a piece and tenderly places it near her, backs away and waits for her to eat.
After much hesitation, she eats a piece and they begin a courtship flight. She is, by turns, rejecting, flirtatious, aggressive, passive, passionate and indifferent. Lights dim to black and when they come up again, we see the female bird back near the driftwood in a partially constructed, oversized nest. The young male eagle is flitting around bringing more nest materials. Every time he places a new stick, the female pecks a feather off his wings.
Entering from the left stage, five purple birds costumed like the female, descend upon the nest and begin to scatter the materials. The eagle tries to replace the branches and as he grows visibly weaker, these five birds join the female in pecking and pulling at the young eagle's feathers.
The lights dim again and when they come up again, we see an egg in the ruined nest. The female river bird sits near it while the others are scattering the pieces of nest. The young eagle is watching, exhausted from a short distance away. The egg begins to quake and the five river birds become very excited. After much tumult, they take flight down river. The young eagle slowly repairs the nest and goes inside it to rest as the lights go dark.
Act Three: Remembering
As the lights come up again, we see that the egg has hatched. A male river/eaglet sits with its mother as its father returns from the river with a fish. The river/eaglet is costumed like its mother, in purple from the waist down and adorned like its father from the waist up. We see the five river birds flit across the stage and tear at the nest. Then they see the young male eagle returning to the nest and depart down river.
The young eagle has become entangled in a piece of fishnet while securing his fish. He drops the fish near the female and begins again to repair the strewn pieces of their nest. He works as his young male offspring watches him. After making the nest repairs with strings pulled from the netting which still entangles one leg, the young male eagle begins to tear off a piece of fish.
The female pecks him viciously and snatches it away. She gives the scrap to the river/eaglet and turns to look in the distance, where the other river birds have flown. The river/eaglet takes the piece of fish fish and gives it to his father. The river/eaglet picks up the loose feathers from the bottom of the nest and drops them near its father. Suddenly, from centre-right stage, a new male eagle appears. The spotlight follows this new male eagle as he performs the same manoeuvres which we saw in the First Act.
When he flies off stage, the young male eagle rises and stretches, looking intently in the direction where the other eagle has flown. Then he tears the remaining bits of fishnet off his leg and begins to circle the nest, slowly performing those same manoeuvres, as his river/eaglet watches intently.
Presently, the female calls out to the five river birds who all swoop back onstage and crowd around the mother and river/eaglet until they are all crammed into the nest and busily devouring the rest of the fish. The young male eagle makes a few close passes to the nest and then in ever widening circles, flies off toward the distant ridge. The river/eaglet perches on the edge of the damaged nest and begins to mimic his father's dance. Lights and music fade out.
FIN
Interested parties can listen to the MP3 version of this Dance Drama by visiting these links:
A two part, Three Act Dance Drama adapted for podcast.
Featuring the songs:
Jeux des Vagues & Dialogue du Vent et de la Mer—C. Debussy
Amor Gitano & Concierto de Aranjuez—Jose Feliciano
Scatterlings—Juluka
Comfortably Numb—Pink Floyd
Amores Hallares & Wind On The Mountain—Trad.