COMPANY BIO:Nicola Hawkins Dance Company (NHDC) performed throughout New England and New York to public and critical acclaim from 1993 - 2005.NHDC's dances are accompanied by virtually all-live music including opera companies, country music bands, gamelan orchestras, early music ensembles, chamber orchestras, and a variety of soloists; additionally, the company has collaborated with some of Boston's most noted composers, musicians and filmmakers.NHDC has garnered praise for its artistic sensibility and invention in presenting dance works that are wide-ranging in theme and choreographic vocabulary. Concerts have become particularly notable for artful use of many media, unusual sets and original costumes.Performance venues include Boston's Symphony Hall, with vocalist/composer Bobby McFerrin, and New York's St. Marks Church-in-the-Bowery. Collaborations with filmmakers have been presented at venues worldwide including New York's LincolnCenter for the Performing Arts and the American Dance Festival. DeAnna was a principal dancer with Nicola Hawkins Dance Company from 2002 - 2005.
PRAYERS FOR THE PLANET
"Prayers for the Planet", is a multi media project created collaboratively with batik artist Mary Edna Fraser, composer Evan Ziporyn and the Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble. "Prayers for the Planet" is a call for peace, not as a state of stillness or passivity, but as a positive, resonating dynamic condition that requires effort and attention. Qualities found in our natural landscapes provide inspiration for the rhythms and textures that evoke peace as an organic process.
Inspired by an aerial perspective of the earth, Mary Edna Fraser's art transcribes narrative landscapes onto silk fabric using dyes in the ancient medium of batik. Hawkins has integrated Fraser's batik designs into her choreography, making them an integral element of the dance, performed by core company members DeAnna Pellecchia, Carey McKinley, Jessica Reed and Ingrid Schatz. Along with video projections of Fraser's designs, the batik fabric transforms from vessel, to shelter, to sacred dress and finally to wings for flight. Composer Evan Ziporyn, through a commission from the Fromm Foundation, has created "Thread", an accompanying score which includes flute, clarinet, viola and cello and is performed live by Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble. "Prayers for the Planet" premiered on June 8th, 2005 at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, in conjunction with the World Batik Conference. The performance was funded by the Fromm Foundation at Harvard University, the Lyceum Lecture Fund and the Northeast Global Education Center at Salem State College.
TOUSSAINT BEFORE THE SPIRITS
DeAnna joined Nicola Hawkins Dance Company in 2002 to work on the one act dance opera, "Toussaint Before the Spirits", based on excerpts from Madison Smartt Bell's award-winning novels All Souls Rising and Master of the Crossroads. This collaborative opera choreographed by Nicola Hawkins and composed by Elena Ruehr, tells the story of Toussaint L'Ouverture, leader and hero of Haiti's revolution towards independence, who was captured in a ruse by Napoleon's army and condemned to die without trial in a cold prison in the French Alps. "Toussaint Before the Spirits" premiered in 2003 as part of Opera Unlimited, a major festival of new contemporary opera co-produced by Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) and Boston Academy of Music (BAM).
"The world premiere of Ruehr's ‘Toussaint Before the Spirits’ had the audience on its feet, cheering, whistling, and applauding for the work, the composer, and the astounding performance…” -Richard Dyer, The Boston Globe
Toussaint Before the Spirits Nicola Hawkins Dance Company
Music by Elena Ruhr Libretto by Madison Smartt Bell, Elizabeth Spires and Elena Ruhr Direction, Dramatization, Staging and Choreography by Nicola Hawkins
Singers Toussaint: Stephen Salters Spirits: Alison Buchanan Moyse (adopted nephew of Toussaint): Ramone Diggs
Dancers The Ancestral Dead: Chandra Cantor, DeAnna Pellecchia, Jessica Reed, Ingrid Schatz Hougan (Male Priest): Akili Jamal Haynes Mambo (Female Priestess): Isaura Oliveira
