Of Splendors and Horrors

Ballet 5:8 Artistic Director Julianna Slager's 2019 premiere Of Splendors and Horrors finds inspiration in C.S. Lewis’ The Weight of Glory

One part math. One part alien line. One part experiment. One part story. Of Splendors & Horrors is a playful look at how we impact one another’s lives each day - whether that be towards a splendorous or horrific end. The ballet was created to be danced with a mask in order to strip down storytelling to a pure physicality.

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses …to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”

- C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory.

Premiere: November, 2019
Choreography: Julianna Slager
Costumes: Lorianne Robertson