New Life For A Classic Fairy Tale, With World Music & Improv Dance

By Shannon Hicks

The centuries-old tale of Hansel & Gretel will come to life next weekend during a stylish production of dance and new music at Fairfield University, thanks in part to work by a Sandy Hook resident.

The family-friendly presentation will explore the traditional story of a boy and girl lost in the woods through the other-worldly tones of original instruments performed by the group SaReel Project and the choreography of the noted dancers Otis Cook (Momix, Pilobolus, Julie Taymor) and Faith Pilger (Mark Morris, Pilobolus, The Metropolitan Opera Ballet).

The group will perform excerpts from the dance in a pair of appearances on Thursday and Friday, February 2 and 3, at Fairfield University’s Wein Theater. Both performances will begin at 7:30 pm.

SaReel, Mr Cook and Ms Pilger are offering the preview shows as a sneak peek into a full production of the exciting tale of empowerment and courage that will premier in New York City this summer.

Tickets are $12 and will be available on performance nights at the Wein Theater’s box office. The theater is within the Quick Center at Fairfield University, on North Benson Road.

SaReel is a quartet that performs alternative world music, says Darryl Gregory, who lives in Sandy Hook and is one of the group’s founders. Mr Gregory plays flutes, harmonica, kubing, and does percussion and vocals for the quartet. His collaborator and the group’s other co-founder is the Middletown resident Sasha Bogdanowitsch.

“We refer to ourselves as avant-world,” Mr Gregory said last week, seated comfortably in the music studio he has built within his Sandy Hook home. The studio is where Mr Gregory prefers to spend most of his free time. Mr Gregory and his family — wife Sophronia Scott and 17-month old son Tain — moved into town one year ago.

“We play world music. We also say alt-world music,” Mr Gregory said. “The operative word is world. We use world music and instruments.

“But there’s a danger in that,” he continued. “You won’t hear us playing Afro-Pop or Chinese songs, which some people show up expecting to hear. But you will hear bit of that, and plenty of other sounds, incorporated into our work.”

In order to create some of those exotic sounds, SaReel’s members perform on unusual instruments, including some they have created themselves — PVC pipes that are banged against each other or onto stones, or a table with different lengths of PVC pipes inserted across the table’s top. Members have even been known to play terra cotta flower pots, which are strung up as part of a large instrument on stage during the band’s shows.

“We’ll go to The Home Depot with a small mallet and a tuner, and will select pots based on what they sound like,” Mr Gregory said. “Sometimes we’ll have to modify them just a bit once we get home but yes, that’s how we get the flower pots that fill the hanging flower pot stand. We’re instrument builders. There is lot of stuff from The Home Depot in our collection.”

Instruments also include a collection of Chinese bowls, and even a band saw that creates, says Mr Gregory, a very “folky” sound.

“We don’t play many western instruments,” he said. “We play many things that fall between the cracks, too. The flower pots, for instance, aren’t perfectly tuned. We call them micro-tuned.”

In addition to Mr Gregory and Mr Bogdanowitsch (who also handles voice, kubing, percussion and folk harp), SaReel’s members are Peter Hadley (didgeridoo and percussion) and Justin Piccirillo (percussion). The group, which formed in 2001, has played “extensively” in New York City, says Mr Gregory, as well as on New Haven Green and at most colleges and universities in Connecticut including University of New Haven, Southern Connecticut State University and Western Connecticut State University. The band also did “a small tour” of the south, Mr Gregory said, including stops in Tennessee and Alabama before heading back north and getting back into the studio.

SaReel derived its name from two sources. Sa, Mr Gregory explained last week, is the first note in one of the Indian scales, and Reel is a dance.

“Actually, we also took part of my collaborator’s name, Sa, and part of my name, which sounds like Reel, and when they were put together it sounded exotic,” Mr Gregory confessed.

The show next weekend will be just one small part of a full production SaReel is still putting together, but it will be a full evening of entertainment. One part of the show will be the kind of dancing and musical performance that fills a standard SaReel performance, while another part of the evening will be the Grimm-oriented work, complete with dancing and new choreography. Those will be the excerpts of the project SaReel is conceiving with Ms Pilger and Mr Cook. The group —the musicians and the dancers — did “a very rough sketch” at the Alvin Ailey studio in New York City last month. The word continues to expand, however; next weekend’s program will be an extension of what was already performed.

“There are whole chunks [of Hansel & Gretel] that aren’t choreographed or have music written for it yet,” Mr Gregory said, “but we’re hoping to do the full production by this summer.

“We think positive,” he continued. “I think it’ll happen.”

A Juilliard alum, Faith Pilger is able to dance and improvise right along with the musicians of SaReel as they perform. She has been dancing with SaReel for about two years, and was instrumental in starting the Hansel & Gretel project.

“She got a huge grant from The Princess Grace Foundation to kind of spark this whole idea,” Mr Gregory said.

Mr Gregory, who grew up listening to and loving the music of Bruce Springsteen, still looks for music that “speaks from the heart, that is honest and real,” he told The Newtown Bee in December (when he was featured in the Snapshot column).

His love of music has carried into his occupation. Mr Gregory is a music teacher at Turn of River Middle School in Stamford. He also has a radio show that is broadcast from WVOF at Fairfield University, called Unsigned Underground, and has a podcast site at www.UnsignedUnderground.com.

SaReel performances are appropriate for all ages, but Mr Gregory cautions that they are full-length gigs.

“Kids love our concerts,” he said. “There are a few songs that they just love, they dance to, they have a great time. The shows are kid-friendly, but they’re also full length.” SaReel performances are generally two 45-minute sets.

With that said, however, the hope is that there will be a large turnout for the shows in Fairfield on Thursday and Friday nights.

“We’re very excited,” Mr Gregory said. “This is what we’ve been working toward, projects like this. We wanted to be doing more than just performing concerts.”

For more information about “Excerpts from Hansel & Gretel,” contact the theater at 203-254-4010.

For more information about SaReel Project, contact Sasha Bogdanowitsch at 860-346-4301 or sasha@SaReel.com.