Day 5.188: Shakers, Tero, Lauren and Aleph

The dance performance that Exile #2 and I went to see on Saturday at Jacob's Pillow was a piece called Borrowed Light by Finnish choreographer, Tero Saarinen. It is a collaboration between Tero and seven other dancers from his company and singers from Boston Camerata who perform some Shaker songs on stage in amongst the dancers.

I've been interested in the Shakers since we started visiting the local sites where they lived.  Here we are close to the original Shaker site in the US - the birthplace of American Shakerism if you like.

As I wrote a year ago:

The Shakers - despite their nearly-extinct status - seem very 'now' to me, with their understanding of the equality of the sexes, sustainable living, and a theology of humble non-certainty.

The dance piece - 'inspired by' more than 'about' the Shakers - is a fusion of some of these ideas with aspects of Finnish folk dance and other things.  Only the music is really Shaker, but there are many references throughout the work to Shaker worship and life in movement as well as sound.

I recently read and very much enjoyed Mr Lincoln's Chair - a book about the Shakers by Anita Sanchez following a recommendation in a comment on this blog.  So that was in my mind as we watched and listened, but the more visceral reaction took me to a less obvious place.  As the lights went up giving us our first glimpse of the wonderful set, dancers and singers, the lead dancer stood with her back to us at the front of the stage and began to walk in deliberate silence slowly away from us and towards the other performers. We knew that there would be rhythmic stomping later, so this silent advance was all the more striking.

It immediately reminded me of a piece that Lauren Winner read for us during her session with Over The Rhine at the Wild Goose Festival a few weeks ago.

In it, she spoke about how the first letter in the first word of the first commandment that God spoke to Israel was Aleph - a letter with no sound - a pause or silent breath to still the world to hear from him.*

And that is how that moment on Saturday evening felt - we waited - hardly wanting to breathe - and watched as the silent moment passed and then we were ready to see and hear when the singing and dancing started.

Here are a few snippets of the stunning Borrowed Light:





* I'm not coming close to doing her piece justice.  You can hear an earlier, longer and maybe slightly less evocative version of Lauren's words about Aleph here.