Seven Mountains

Premiere: August 1992
Choreography: Bill James
Music: Ron Allen, Peter Chin, Graeme Kirkland and Bill James
Visual Design: Cylla von Tiedmann in collaboration with Garine Torossian, Lydia Pawelak and Barbara Astman
Lighting Design: David Morrison
Costumers Heather MacCrimmon

Performers:
Peter Chin, Fiona Drinnan, Joanna Powell, Gary Tai, Eddie Kastrau, Wilson Blakely, Michael Trent, Judy Miller, Theodore Gentry, Tija Coules, Keith Cole, Yvonne Ng, Karen Rennie, Richard Lafond, Charlie Earl

About

Seven Mountains is a large-scale, site-specific work of 2 hours in length with a cast of 10 dancer/singers and 2 instrumentalists. An additional 20 cameo celebrities appeared on successive evenings in the "New York City, 1939" party scene. Seven Mountains was designed in a chronological order around the life of the writer and monk, Thomas Merton, and moved between narative text-based scenes to abstract movement and singing. Merton's poems and letters provide all of the text employed through the work. In the original production audiences were moved from scene to scene through a labrynthine 45,000 square foot industrial space, carrying their folding camping stools that were used as seating.