While days are getting warmer and the delicious mangoes coming back, our time on the island is unfortunately running out.
In the last weeks, we've been busy preparing the last big production of the year entitled “Dancing in the Clouds” and inspired by “Bailar en las nubes”, a children’s book written by Vanina Starkoff. The book tells the story of a girl whose dream is to dance with the clouds and the different emotions she goes through when her village starts expanding due to the arrival of new neighbours.
The whole story is very metaphorical and it has some interesting layers for further thoughts, so we’ve decided to adapt it to the Montserratian reality. One of the changes we did was that the neighbours who arrive to the village are coming from the other Caribbean islands and each one has a special quality/talent. In reality this happened after the volcanic crisis, as most of the neighbour islands sent a lot of people to repopulate Montserrat. Despite coming from very similar culture and social contexts, some of those people haven’t been completely included in the Montserratian community and some xenophobic issues and prejudices towards certain nationalities still exist.
On the other hand, as I mentioned before, Montserrat shares a lot of characteristics with a village and the close relationship between neighbours is definitely one of the good aspects of the community, so that will be also explored on this production.
Having those two topics in mind, I led some activities with the junior choir in which we explored the origins of the student’s families – as I suspected, a lot of them are coming from other Caribbean islands and still keep some of the costumes, dialect, traditional dishes, etc - followed by a discussion about their interactions/relationship with their neighbours.
As time is limited and expectations are high, this production will involve only the two young divisions of the choir and we’re envisioning being a more performative show, including some dance moments choreographed by Brandelle Knights, a teacher from the secondary school with whom we’ve been collaborating. The set of the story will also be presented in a very original way, with video mapping and projections, making use of local elements so that people visualise the story as if it's happening in Montserrat.
Above is the poster for the show, this time created by me. Tomorrow is meant to be another of those days going around the whole island to make sure the poster gets displayed in all the key spots.
I believe the coming weeks will definitely be a race against time to make sure all the songs are properly learned by the groups and all the other components of the show - set design, outfits, marketing, video projections, stage movements, etc etc - get ready on time. Wish us luck!!