UNDERWORLDS
Concept: Sandra Laronde
Director: Mark Wilson
Story: Sandra Laronde
with Basil Johnston and Alex McKay
Choreography: Sandra Laronde
Music: Antonio Zepeda
Lighting Design: Steve Lucas
Underworlds follows the Anishnaabe (Ojibway) hero Cheeby-Aub-Oozoo whose mythic descent to the underworld bequeaths music and dream quests to the land of the living. Underworlds is based on the mythology born from Canada's soil.
Co-produced with the Toronto Consort as part of the inaugural Metamorphosis Festival.
REVIEWS OF UNDERWORLDS
"A vivid illustration of the transformative power of music and song."
– Toronto Star
"Underworlds has so much going for it: the story of Cheeby-Aub-Oozoo is intriguing and the narration by the beautiful Sandra Laronde is strong and stately. Marion Newman’s singing and frame drumming is consistently well-focused and well-executed with the solid traditional singers Eddy Robinson and Derrick Bressette...Zepeda truly occupies centre stage."
– Live Music Report
"The mythology of a people is the articulation of the dreamworld of that people. Without that dreamlife being active in all its forms - from the most extreme beauty to the most horrific and back - the culture of that people is dead."
– Tomson Highway