Mount Hope World Singers & BIODANCE present Stories From the Living Tree, featuring animation by Christine A. Banna and transition music by Greg Woodsbie.
Fringe Festival recording 9/13/23
Stories From the Living Tree September Fringe Program
Stories From the Living Tree May MAG Program
Stories From the Living Tree is an immersive experience of song, dance, sound, and animation, centered around an ancient tree. This tree, a source of great wisdom, extends through its roots and canopy to all corners of the earth, and beyond the earth into the spiritual realm and across time. The performers will gather at the tree to share stories of universal experience and a reverent connection to nature. These stories will be told through the singing voice, in a multitude of languages and from a variety of cultural perspectives, through the solo and collective movement of the dancers’ bodies, through ambient and transitional sound, through the abstracted visual projection of plants and other life forms, and also through the movement of our ASL interpreters’ hands.
There is a narrative, figurative structure to our song selection, following the form and shape of a tree. We hope the audience will, on a subtle level, feel some movement upward from the earth, through the trunk and branches of the tree, and ultimately leave the event with a sense of expansive interconnectedness.
This project is made possible with funds from the Statewide Community Regrants Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of The Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and administered by the Genesee Valley Council on the Arts.
Supported by the Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Arts & Culture Initiative administered by the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo.
Supported by the Rochester Area Community Foundation.
Supported by the Greater Rochester Choral Consortium.
Christine A. Banna's Stories From the Living Tree Page
poster by Missy Pfohl Smith, image by Christine A. Banna
poster by D. Norsen design
photos by Keith Bullis and Clara Riedlinger