“Here’s Jean Erdman, the choreographer and dancer, dancing the role of Biddy the Hen in The Coach With the Six Insides, her 1962 musical comic stage adaptation of Finnegans Wake.”
“Erdman, who died in May 2020, at the age of 104, was the wife of the mythologist Joseph Campbell, co-author of The Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake. A great dancer and choreographer, she began in 1938 as the soloist of the Martha Graham company. After forming her own company in 1944, she collaborated with John Cage, Merce Cunningham and Maya Deren. As a choreographer, she created total theatre, mixing spoken words, music, dance and visual art. The Jean Erdman company continues today, and its website has filmed recreations of her dances.”
The metaphors exposed, the connections made, the merging, the joining, the medium waves, the nightmare of history of our Pale Blue Dot, from which we all try to awaken - and we all try to World Wide Wake.
"A story’s the way to tell it. He was a man with a thousand stories. This was one of his favorites. In Japan for an international conference on religion, Campbell overheard another American delegate, a social philosopher from New York, say to a Shinto priest, “We’ve been now to a good many ceremonies and have seen quite a few of your shrines. But I don’t get your ideology. I don’t get your theology.” The Japanese paused as though in deep thought and then slowly shook his head. “I think we don’t have ideology,” he said. “We don’t have theology. We dance.”
And so did Joseph Campbell—to the music of the spheres."
From: https://peterchrisp.blogspot.com/2021/12/the-coach-with-six-insides.html
“Here’s Jean Erdman, the choreographer and dancer, dancing the role of Biddy the Hen in The Coach With the Six Insides, her 1962 musical comic stage adaptation of Finnegans Wake.”
“Erdman, who died in May 2020, at the age of 104, was the wife of the mythologist Joseph Campbell, co-author of The Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake. A great dancer and choreographer, she began in 1938 as the soloist of the Martha Graham company. After forming her own company in 1944, she collaborated with John Cage, Merce Cunningham and Maya Deren. As a choreographer, she created total theatre, mixing spoken words, music, dance and visual art. The Jean Erdman company continues today, and its website has filmed recreations of her dances.”
More here: https://peterchrisp.blogspot.com/2021/12/the-coach-with-six-insides.html
James Joyce Experience, Dublin Day, Dublin Night.
The metaphors exposed, the connections made, the merging, the joining, the medium waves, the nightmare of history of our Pale Blue Dot, from which we all try to awaken - and we all try to World Wide Wake.
"A story’s the way to tell it. He was a man with a thousand stories. This was one of his favorites. In Japan for an international conference on religion, Campbell overheard another American delegate, a social philosopher from New York, say to a Shinto priest, “We’ve been now to a good many ceremonies and have seen quite a few of your shrines. But I don’t get your ideology. I don’t get your theology.” The Japanese paused as though in deep thought and then slowly shook his head. “I think we don’t have ideology,” he said. “We don’t have theology. We dance.”
And so did Joseph Campbell—to the music of the spheres."
—BILL MOYERS, 1988, The Power of Myth