The Why Collective Presents Workshop of ‘She Breathes Fire’

By Afton Wooten

Stacy Busch and Neal Long’s new opera “She Breathes Fire” will be presented as a work-in-progress on Nov. 2 at HERE Arts Center.

“She Breathes Fire” re-examines the “Hero’s Journey” through a feminist lens. Once completed, the opera will be a three-part cycle with movement. The work is set in set in the fantasy world of Shey which is occupied by Saeya, a race of gender-expansive women who are the birthers of the Earth and hold magical powers.

In this showing, the cast features nine vocalists and movers, including Mirai Sinde, Emara Neymour Jackson, Abagael Cheng, Uila Marx, Marie Lloyd Paspe, Sam McReynolds, Alexis Borth, Lukas Papenfusscline, and Sydney Anderson. Mila Henry and Neal Long serve as co-music directors, Oscar Trujillo choreographs. In this iteration, there is no separation between vocalist and dancer. The movers and singers leave their usual “primary artistic discipline” at the door, and enter the world of “She Breathes Fire” as one body.

“I created a fantasy world of my own imagination that explores the heroine’s journey throughout many ages, characters and landscapes,” says Busch in a press release. “I have focused on the study of my own voice and have created many vocal works over the past 10 years. I am drawn to create this work at this time because it represents a culmination of my vocal work thus far, it presents my most ambitious compositional skills in voice and electronics and explores concepts that are most pressing to me as a queer woman.”

 

 

Categories

IndieOpera