The Force That Through The Green Fuse Drives The Flower
The Force That Through The Green Fuse Drives The Flower
2009
About
This work was commissioned by Simon Fraser University for 25 senior dance students and created in September and October of 2009. The score, by Kirk Elliot, was originally commissioned by New Music as part of a festival called New Music, New Dance which paired composers and choreographers. The title is from a Dylan Thomas poem of the same name. The work presented an opportunity to move large masses of people on stage and explore resonant spatial forms. The work also explores the subject of transformation, identifying the dancer as transformer, a conduit for energy passing through and between bodies. The student dancers were inspiring to work within their openness and astonishing vitality.
The People
Choreographer: Karen Jamieson
Composer: Kirk Elliot
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
By Dylan Thomas, 1914-1953
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.
The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.
The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.
And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.