Duration:
10 minutes, 26 seconds

Composer:
Alfred Schnittke

Music Title:
Hymn #2

Lighting Designer:
Aisling Sampson

Premiere Date:
June 1, 2000, Dancetheatre David Earle

Premiere Location:
Premiere Dance Theatre, Toronto

Cast:
Helen Jones, Grace Miyagawa, Suzette Sherman, Danielle Baskerville, Mike Moore

Summary Note

night/Summer was commissioned by Nenagh Leigh for Spring Rites 2000. This work was presented in memory of Craig Baldwin, a youth who drowned in Elora. In contrast to many of David Earle's works, night/Summer was photographic, ritualistic and minimal.

Program Note

Those who feel eternity are above all fear. They see in every night the place where daybreak will occur, and are assured. Summer requires fearlessness.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke, The Florentine Diary

Interview with David Earle, March 26, 2003

Shortly after I moved to Elora I heard about a young boy -- sixteen or seventeen years old -- who had drowned in the local health club whirlpool. His bizarre and untimely death at the peak of his beauty and physical power struck me as mythic. It was as if the Gods were playing another painful trick on humanity.

I started the piece with everyone backing away from a blinding light, which could represent death; Danielle Baskerville, as a fate figure, was backing away in the opposite direction.There were a series of tableaux for three woman, like the three Marys, holding Mike Moore in a variety of poses that related to diving and swimming. At the end, Michael and Danielle made their first contact and she partnered him in a dive from which he ended up in her protection -- and he was gone from the world, leaving the three women in mourning.

Although it was a small cast, the imagery demanded a large space; it's not necessarily the space you use that matters -- it's the space you are seen in.