Of a River with Shaw Pong Liu and Rodney Veal

Of a River was a site-specific performance collaboration between Victoria Theatre Association and Blue Sky Project artists, musician Shaw Pong Liu and choreographer Rodney Veal

The thirty-minute performance took the audiences on a journey exploring time, space, and the precious resource, water, in the magnificent multi-tiered world of glass and marble that is the Schuster Center’s Wintergarden.

Of a River drew from several sources of inspiration, including Dayton’s Mad River, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and this poem by the Portugese writer Jose Samago:

PROTOPOEM

Out of the tangled skein of memory, out of the darkness of its inextricable knots,

I tug at what appears to be a loose end.

Slowly, I pull it free, afraid it might fall to pieces in my fingers.

It’s a long thread, green and blue, and smells of slime, warm

and soft as living mud.

It’s a river.

It drenches my now wet hands.

The water flows over my outspread palms,

and suddenly I’m not sure if the water is flowing out of me or washing over me.

I continue to tug at the thread, which is not just memory now,

but the actual body of the river itself.

Boats sail over my skin, and I am the boats and the sky above them,

and the tall poplars that slide serenely across the luminous film of my eyes.

Fish swim in my blood and hesitate between staying too near the surface

and plumbing the depths, just like the vague summonses issued by memory.

I feel the strength of my arms and the pole that prolongs them.

It pushes down into the river and into me like a slow, steady heartbeat.

Now the sky is nearer and has changed colour.

It’s all green and full of singing because the songs of birds

are springing awake on every branch.

And when the boat stops in a large clearing,

my naked body gleams in the sun, among the still brighter light

igniting the surface waters.

There, memory’s confused recollections and the suddenly revealed

face of the future fuse into one truth.

A nameless bird appears out of nowhere and perches

silently on the stiff prow of the boat.

I wait motionlessly for the whole river to be bathed in blue

and for the birds on the branches to explain to me why

the poplars are so tall and their leaves so full of murmurings.

Then, with the body of the boat and the river safely back

in the human dimension, I continue on toward the golden pool surrounded

by the raised swords of the bullrushes.

There I will bury my pole two feet down in the living rock.

A great primordial silence will fall when hands join with hands.

And then I will know everything.

– Jose Saramago

(11/16/1922 – 6/18/2010)

Musicians:

• Wenbi Hirakawa, violin

• Tremon Kizer, trombone

• Shaw Pong Liu, violin

• Kristen Mancini, violin

• Femi Ogebule, clarinet

• David Speed, saxophone

Dancers:

• Alise Craig

• Timothy Barker

• Jasmine Marlow

• Lindsay Caddle LaPointe

• Rodney Veal

Silk Wranglers:

• De’Narrow Brown

• Arielle Bucio

• Angela Bucio

• Andrew Bucio

• Ivy Garrigan

• Rachael Jancauskas

• Sydney Joslin-Knapp

• Mollie Martin

• Georgia Prudden

• David Rodriguez

• Alexa von Bargen

Sound Technician:

• Erin Wimsatt

Production Crew:

• Melody Snyder

• Ivy Garrigan

• Alexa von Bargen

Images courtesy of Betsie Molinsky