Work-in-Progress #3
Poem by Timothy Donnelly
Music by David Skeist
Stage Direction by James Rutherford
Choreography by Laura Butler Rivera
Performed by:
Raife Baker, Dianna Cortez, Liz Eckert, Courtney Ellis, Jon Froehlich, Anne Gridley, Jonathan Harris,
Natalie Hegg, Lizzie King-Hall, Merrin Lazyan, Lance Philadelphia, Casey Robinson, Jordan Rutter,
Stephan Schmidt, Anthony Simone, Sarah Skeist, and Liesel Yaeger
A staged, musical immersion into celebrated poet Timothy Donnelly’s exquisite long poem HYMN TO LIFE. By turns tickling and devastating, the piece serves as an elegy for biodiversity and an indictment of human myopia as it ruminates on the precarity of life. Since 2015, composer David Skeist, choreographer Laura Butler Rivera and director James Rutherford have been adapting the poem’s 60 stanzas for a mixed, multi-disciplinary ensemble. This work-in-progress showing at FiveMyles will combine a live concert of stanzas 24-41 with pre-recorded material, choreographic elements, and a staged reading of the full poem.
A third work-in-progress showing of Hymn To Life performed at FiveMyles in Brooklyn, January 19 & 20, 2019