Fifteen Wild Decembers

The Anchorage Daily News informs about new performances of the Alaska Dance Theatre:

Alaska Dance Theatre hosts three world premieres at "Mobius," the company's annual repertory showcase. (...) . The dance concert also boasts two Anchorage premieres. "Furious Angels" mixes Vietnamese classical dance with American modern dance, and "15 Wild Decembers" is based on the life and poetry of Emily Bronte. (Sarah Henning and Mike Dunham)

Well, although some connection between Fifteen Wild Decembers (and not only the obvious one through Emily Brontë's poem Remembrance) and Emily Brontë exists, the dance piece is not directly based on Emily's poetry or life.

This other previous article covering a previous performance (February 6) of the dance play by the same company clarifies things:

ADT's dancers finished the concert with Pamela Walden Renno's "Fifteen Wild Decembers," set to Geoff Smith's minimalist music. Seven dancers dressed in long, white skirts filled the space with swinging movements that rose and fell on gentle feet and soft arms. (Anne Herman)

Geoff Smith published in 1995 the album "Fifteen Wild Decembers",

In 1995, Sony Classical issued an album from an immense talent in the person of Geoff Smith. His razor-sharp, minimalist-styled, approach to piano is, in every way, dark, hypnotic, and in the ranks of masters like Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and other brilliant pianists. On his Sony Classical debut, 15 wild decembers, Geoff Smith joined forces with his wife, noted soprano, Nicola Walker Smith, in a themed ensemble of music that swirls around the written works of tragic 19-century poets such as Emily Bronte, Percy Shelley, and John Keats.

15 wild decembers puts together 8 extraordinary tracks with 5 vocal and 3 piano instrumentals. On the vocal tracks, the lyrics have been mined from literary figures, as stated before. But what makes them take on new life is the trained voice of Nicola Walker Smith. She opens the album with “The Last of England,” a tender song of the incoming winter as a metaphor for the onset of hopelessness. It is an emotional beauty of a song that draws its lyrical strength from the sad words of “A Dirge” by Percey Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). It is followed by “Six Wings of Bliss,” which is crafted around fragments from Emily Bronte (1818-1848) works. (...) (Matt Rowe in MusicTap)

And in 1996 as we can read here, Pamela Walden created the choreography with the same name:

Walden, Pam (1996). Fifteen Wild Decembers - modern dance piece for seven female dancers. American College Dance Festival Association, national festival at Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington, D.C., May, 1996.

The picture belongs to the 1996 performances. Credits: Keiko Guest.

Categories: Dance, Emily Brontë, Music