TRANCE DANCE FORM, Sound Opera by Penn Kemp
Book forthcoming, DVD,
London: Pendas Productions, 2005
Performance time 90 minutes,
DVD $20.00.

Trance Dance Form, directed by acclaimed actor Anne Anglin, has been performed at Harbourfront and at Véhicule Gallery, Montreal, as well as Parry Sound’s Station Gallery. Sound Opera is a new form Penn Kemp has developed with Anglin in performance & recording over the last three decades, in a desire to lift poetry from page to stage. Sound Opera is based on text but it expands poetic possibilities to include voice, music & movement, to express narrative when emotions burst the seams of print.

Penn Kemp created her sound opera, Trance Dance Form, 30 years ago, when Toronto Island homes were threatened with eviction in the 70's. The opera was danced at Findorn by an aboriginal dancer accompanied by didjeridoo.

Performed on April 29 at our Station Gallery, it was a spectacular event for Parry Sound, Ontario.

This mystical magickal paean to Mother Nature cast a spell with Kemp's incantations, Brenda Muller's responsive cello and voice, and Wave Weir's fluid illustrative dance. As celebrant/audience, we were part of the raising of a cone of power, carried along a journey into the timeless infinitely deep world-between-the-world.

A sonorous sonata, the opera is in four parts: the first movement "mattermatter" invokes the many-guised Nature Goddess with the "many one many" chant echoed in cello and dance. I felt swept along in the numinous oneness of Gaia's Hypothesis: We are all One as the trio of performers plied their consummate skills.

The presto second movement, "moonphase" pays homage to the moon, ecstatic dissociation, magical women and Otherness. A friend of Night and Dark, I saw the moon dance on waves, ripple into a thousand silver splinters.
Cybele, the Moon Goddess, was present.

Slow and dark, the third, "familiars", jazzily describes hallucination, the pull between "a solid man (callous landlord) and a kite string (the speaker)". Threatened by eviction, the poet is in danger of losing all her familiars – as Wicca refers to one's kindred spirits, usually black cats.

Discordant experiences floated into consciousness and were purged through the sashaying cello, vocal, dance movements.

Finally, "bonepoems", at Findorn played as a dance of the hunt, explodes into dissonance and renewal, familiars transformed into memento mori, life as transcient and renewed: "long bone lives", the mournful vowels a perfect chant to express life's vicissitudes, reconciliations, passage.

Throughout Trance Dance Form, Kemp's leitmotif syllabic vocals: "trance," "many one many," "mattermattermatter," "changing changing," "blue" and "bone" interact with Muller's plucked and bowed notes and Wave's supplicating/slapping arms & stomping/sliding feet & sinuous/writhing torso to enthrall the celebrants. I hated being the timeskeeper/vibeswatcher host; I wanted to lose myself completely in this magickal performance into infinity. Wow, so mote it be!

 Born in wartime NYC, Katerina Fretwell became a Canadian citizen in 1970, earned a B.A. in Sociology in 1966, a Masters of Social Work in 1968, and almost all of an Honours English B.A. as a young mother. Since then, she has been a social worker, journalist, reviewer, poet, artist, and recently, musician. Her poetry and art reside in Canada, Denmark, Japan and the United States.