Early Departures
My program note states: "Early Departures looks at the complexity of relationships during a time of plague." I can see now that it captures my own survivor's guilt during the darkest days of the AIDS pandemic.
Premiered Toronto, February 25,1992
Created with and first performed by Bill Coleman, Christopher House, Michael Sean Marye and Graham McKelvie
Music
John Rea, Kubla Khan: Dirge-refrains
Lighting
Roelof Peter Snippe
Costumes
Denis Joffre
Rehearsal direction
Rosemary James
''Early Departures, presented in New York in 1993, dealt with AIDS in the powerful fusion of abstraction and narrative that became a signature (for House)."
NYTimes
"With his almost clinical grief, House has captured the peculiar blend of frenzy and exhaustion that comes of watching too many loved ones die."
Boston Globe
"... the power of the work is its strangeness, not its familiarity...Rarely has dance suggested a sense of male bonding so mysteriously or so effectively. This is not a woman's world. Yet what makes the piece so fascinating is that it has an aura of exclusiveness but is still so affecting, sharing universal emotions with the viewer."
New York Times
Photo ofJarrett Siddall, Nathan Todd, Yuichiro Inoue, and Pulga Muchochoma by Guntar Kravis / Photos of Christopher House, Graham McKelvie, Michael Sean Marye and Bill Coleman by Cylla von Tiedemann