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

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