(credit: Davida Cohen)

Unexpected harmony: “Braiding Time, Memory, and Water” blends nature and art along the Chattahoochee River

PERFORMANCE REVIEW:
Braiding Time, Memory, and Water
October 19, 2024
Powers Island, Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area
Atlanta, GA – USA
Bent Frequency; FLUX Projects; Core Dance; Georgia State University Percussion Ensemble; Jonathon Keats, conceptual artist; Felipe Pérez Santiago, composer
Braiding Time, Memory, and Water

Howard Wershil | 29 OCT 2024

Perhaps, as a child, you would be taken on outings to parks or other nature locations. You might have seen various trees and flowers, a lake, or a river, walked over gravel or grass or crunchy leaves, considering the differences in texture and sound each had to offer. The sun may have been shining brightly, illuminating your surroundings, and your many possibilities of awe and discovery. The more nature locations you visited, the more familiar became that vast variety of nature experiences you could enjoy.

Now, imagine that, as part of your nature experience, you were invited to a station where you could fashion your own musical instruments out of natural materials. As you leave the station with your own special creation, you hear sounds in the distance and see strange, unfamiliar motion. Musicians! Dancers! Sound! Movement! You move closer. You find yourself by a calm inlet. You move even closer and observe. At some point, the musicians choose a few instruments and begin a journey through brush and foliage, dancers following, to arrive at a bridge extending over calm waters, where the music and dance continue. And after a while, they journey again, across a dirt path, to an open area facing a spacious river. The music and dance continue, but they want you to join in as well! You wonder how, but you have with you the instrument you created earlier at the station. Along with others, you blend your voice with the performers you observe and participate in the ebb and flow between performers and observers that so aptly reflects the ebb and flow of the expansive river before you.

As a child, you wonder, “Is this all part of the nature experience? Will I find more of this at all the parks I visit? And if not at the parks… then, where?”


Advertisement
  • AD SP06 Michelle Cann
  • AD TPL 01 Jerusalem Quartet
  • AD SPI07 King's Singers

Of course, you don’t have to be a child to enjoy the appearance of artistic activity in a natural setting. With Braiding Time, Memory, and Water, Bent Frequency, Flux Projects, Core Dance, and the Georgia State University Percussion Ensemble weave nature’s presence with sound and movement, and create something remarkable.

According to creator Sue Schroeder, founder of CORE Dance, Braiding Time, Memory and Water “is a site-specific, environmental (earth) artistic creation… alongside and in collaboration with conceptual artist Jonathon Keats and composer Felipe Pérez Santiago. The performance… responds to the geography, history, and environmental concerns of two locations along the Chattahoochee River as it meanders through the Atlanta metropolitan area: Powers Island, one of the most serene sections of the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area, and Zonalite Park, a 13-acre nature sanctuary along the Southfork of Peachtree Creek, a tributary of the Chattahoochee River.” (Note that the performance in Zonalite Park is scheduled to take place in April 2025.)

Movement artists: Jonathon Keats, Barbora Látalová, Alexia Jones, Katarzyna Pastuszak. (credit: Davida Cohen)

Movement artists: Jonathon Keats, Barbora Látalová, Alexia Jones, Katarzyna Pastuszak. (credit: Davida Cohen)

The Powers Island event we observed today divides into three sections, at three separate locations along the Chattahoochee River and its inlets. Upon our arrival at the site, we had the great pleasure of seeing the musicians and dancers transition from the location of the first section to the bridge upon which the second section unfolded. The music of that section, performed on high-pitched, almost celestial-sounding instruments and non-pitched, bombastic-sounding instruments, alternated (as one might expect) between soft, repetitive, reverential episodes of lustrous, multi-layered pulsing melodies on glockenspiels, prominent triangles, and antique cymbals; and loud, raucous, energetic explosions of bass drum, snare drum, woodblocks, cymbals, and other tools of sonic exuberance, including the wood and metal of the bridge itself.

As the music continued, the dancers bent and twisted across the bridge, through and around the musicians, expressing movement that at times invoked worship of the natural materials of the bridge itself, and at times invoked the rush and freneticism of nature itself, both alternating in a joyful disregard of the similar alternation being expressed by the musicians… a joyful duel between partners of both the placid and the torrential, but wildly, woefully out of sync. Possibly a nod to nature’s own unpredictable capriciousness?


Advertisement
  • JCSO 01 Magnificent marimba
  • AD ABO 02
  • ECMSA 24-25 AD 600x250

After a while, both musicians and dancers transitioned again to an open area facing the Chattahoochee River directly. Here, the dancers’ artistic expressions seemed substantially calmer and more respectful, as if humbled by the splendor nature provides. At times, the dancers intoned quietly and simply as their feet enjoyed the comfort of the water. The music was also different, calmer, and softer, with the tapping of stones and other objects placed on a selection table adding to the texture of the celestial percussion, along with the occasional twirling of several corrugated open-ended plastic tubes (whirly tube, corrugaphone, or bloogle resonator) exuding a rise and fall of the harmonic series per force of spin. A delightful addition to this third-section event was the composer conducting the audience using instruments either handed out to them or created by them before the event began. The celebratory alternation of professionals and amateurs seemed to declare the acceptance of us all as part of nature’s infinite patterns.

Bent Frequency and GSU Percussion musicians wield colorful whirly tubes. (credit: Davida Cohen)

Bent Frequency and GSU Percussion musicians wield colorful whirly tubes. (credit: Davida Cohen)

All in all, this was an exceptional experience. It was exhilarating to see Stuart Gerber of Bent Frequency and the Georgia State University Percussion Ensemble utilize their instruments and available natural materials to realize the score so effectively and to see the members of Core Dance utilize their bodies and motions so harmoniously and oppositional with nature itself. My only disappointment is my own lack of opportunity to discover more about how the dancer, composer, and conceptual artist each contributed to the shaping of the event, not to mention the contributions of the musicians and dancers themselves. Perhaps the experience is better served by maintaining an element of surprise. Let the background information come later.

Some of the audience members attending were clearly there by choice. But a number of onlookers who joined the collection seemed to be random attendees, perhaps unaware that an event would be taking place. It was interesting to see the reactions of the surprise attendees, sometimes tickled, sometimes confused, sometimes responding with a nervous chuckle, but never disdainful, never disparaging. It was also meaningful to see the reactions of the children present, always curious, always fascinated, always delighted, so very accepting of the newly familiar outdoor experience.


Advertisement
  • AS SCH04 Festival of 9 Lessons and Carols
  • Ad TAO 02 Magic Flute

And really, isn’t familiarity a key ingredient to a better understanding of the magnificent world we all inhabit? Gaining familiarity with the broadest range of fresh, positive experiences throughout one’s childhood surely won’t guarantee acceptance or approval of all experiences available in life, nor should it. But a lack of such experiences as a growing being may encourage negative responses in adulthood, as that individual encounters new concepts and challenges. Perhaps an early variety of uplifting experiences creates a better human being who can consider more just and useful choices of life direction and societal values as a practicing adult. I applaud such organizations that strive to provide such valuable experiences to the general public at large.

For those of you who would like to enjoy a re-creation of this event, I encourage you to mark your calendars and attend its encore on April 26 and 27, 2025, at Zonolite Park, a 13-acre nature sanctuary along the Southfork of Peachtree Creek, a tributary of the Chattahoochee River. It’s going to be an event worth seeing… for the child or adult that resides in us all.

For more information about the event and its participants, please feel free to visit the following links:

EXTERNAL LINKS:

About the author:
Howard Wershil is an Atlanta-based contemporary music composer interested in a wide variety of genres from classical to cinematic to new age to pop and rock and roll. You can find his music on Soundcloud and Bandcamp (howardwershil.bandcamp.com), and follow him on Facebook under Howard Wershil, Composer.

Read more by Howard Wershil.
This entry was posted in Chamber & Recital, Education & Community and tagged , , , , on by .

RECENT POSTS