And you ghosts rise blue - an im/material opera in three acts
Presented by Indigo Cook in partial fulfillment of the thesis requirements for the degree of MFA in Dance: Embodied Interdisciplinary Praxis at Duke University.
Premiered 12 February 2025 at the von der Heyden Studio Theater
Written as an experimental pasticcio opera in three acts, And you ghosts rise blue weaves together movement, sound, and light to open a rift in the space-time continuum and call in voices past and future, real and unreal. The voices – sounding alongside a collaborative collective of dancers, musicians, poets, actors, and visual artists – form a ghostly chorus with whom we sing of the ephemeral, the infinite, and the im/possible.
And you ghosts rise blue was built alongside and in conversation with a host of embodied and disembodied voices – both material artistic collaborators and immaterial spectres of lineage, influence, and poetic inspiration.
Cast
Michela Arietti, dancer
Erich Barganier, musician
Sara Caldiero, poet and dancer (disembodied)
Natalia Cervantes, dancer
Mozhgan Chahian, musician
Josué Collado, musician
Indigo Cook, musician (disembodied)
Sasha Faison, dancer
Dani Mendez, visual artist (disembodied)
Lauren Neefe, poet and soundwriter (disembodied)
Julia Piper, dancer
Kalei Porter, dancer
Jordan Reynosa, actor (disembodied)
Severin Sargent-Catterton, dancer (disembodied)
Amare Swierc, actor and dancer
Nathaniel Woolley, actor and dancer (disembodied)
Collaborators
Natalia Cervantes, Reader artistic advisor
James Clotfelter, lighting designer
Uinta Cook, dramaturg
Ethan Eldred, production mentor
Iain Fletcher, Reading Room coordinator
Julia Piper, costume stylist
Thesis Advisory Committee
Jingqiu Guan, Michael Kliën, John Supko
“And you ghosts rise blue from alchemy from a forest of hunted beasts of twisted machines of a jujube tree of rotten flesh of a basket of oysters of eyes of a network of straps in the beautiful sisal of human skin I would have words vast enough to contain you and you earth taut earth drunk.”
- Aimé Césaire, Notebook of a Return to the Native Land





