“Indefinable moments of beauty, wit, and fire. It’s as if Degas and Magritte showed up in each other’s dreams to playfully toss around images of the twisted and the sublime.”
-Chicago Tribune
ABOUT
Initially conceived as a response to a child’s fascination with a helium balloon – an object full of fragility, beauty, and tension – Surrelium offers visual metaphors for the ways we experience confinement and release, enchantment and transformation. The work has 6 distinct sections, and together they offer a “transformed, alternate reality with optical illusions, complex composition, and delicate yet powerful movement that seems to take place in another stratosphere.” (Chicago Sun Times).
Credits
PREMIERE: 2003, Vittum Theater 2005, PAC/Edge, 2006, Athenaeum Theatre
CO-CREATORS: Julia Rhoads and *Krenly Guzman
ADDITIONAL MOVEMENT: Generated by the ensemble
DEVISED IN COLLABORATION WITH AN ENSEMBLE OF SIX PERFORMERS: Kim Goldman, Krenly Guzman, Elizabeth Lentz, Kathleen Matuszewich, Jorge Quintero-Troestch, Julia Rhoads, Joanna Rosenthal, Jon Sherman
ORIGINAL MUSIC: Kevin O’Donnell
ADDITIONAL MUSIC: Biosphere, Bruce Gilbert, Red Snapper, and Michael Hoppe, Martin Tillman & Tim Wheater
SET DESIGN: Joseph Ravens, Cat Chow
LIGHTING DESIGN: Jason Tugman, Margaret Nelson (opening quartet)
COSTUME DESIGN: Atalee Judy, Lara Miller
* The last section, When Everything Else Stops, was commissioned by Mordine & Company Dance Theatre as part of a mentoring project and choreographed by Julia Rhoads.
