Old heads on young shoulders caught in struggle for survival
Theatrical context serves as a reminder of real-life risks across the globe
parts of the world, children – alone and untended in the wastelands referenced bleakly on Raw’s rubble-strewn, darkly-lit arena – are doing this and more to survive. At times, as you watch the unshowy, unselfconscious scrummages and larking about of the Raw ensemble, you could be persuaded that it’s actually a group of those street children, unwittingly beamed down on to the stage. The little unit’s selfassurance is tested, however, when two rootless adults – a middle-aged man (Mansoven) and an older woman (Kristina Neirynck) – come on the scene. Many adults in the audience are probably screaming “stranger danger!” in their heads, but once the children have established territorial rights they tolerate the interlopers, and even cling a little in hugs, but never “adopt” either adult as a parent. That relationship, along with everything else, is gone. Thomas Devos’s live music catches the children’s shifting moods and amplifies them, but what really drives this piece is the rhythm of a camaraderie, as if circumstance had fixed old heads on young shoulders. Katie Laing IF THE Wee Frees have long been thought of as a dour lot who shun music in their worship, the world premiere of Ballantyne in Stornoway this weekend should give the lie to that.
For what Hollywood composer Craig Armstrong, pictured, and his collaborator, Lewis musician and church elder Calum Martin, have created is a mind-blowing composition based around the beautifully harmonic tradition of Gaelic psalm singing.
Ballantyne is a deeply spiritual and profoundly moving piece of music, crafted around the story of the Ascension of Christ – I can’t imagine ever hearing anything like it again.
Commissioned by An Lanntair on the Isle of Lewis and made possible by their Bealach Creative Places award funding, the premiere was held in the Stornoway arts centre and was was out of this world.
This was a big piece of art, the kind that brought the massive religious paintings
Festival Dance