ELEGIES – Saturday 27 April, 7.30pm
Scottish Storytelling Centre, 43-45 High Street
Hamish Henderson (1919-2002), was a soldier-poet and scholar-folk revivalist. Elegies is his first-hand account from the North African desert military campaign for which he won the Somerset Maugham Award.
His dedication of the book: “for our own and the others” sets the story within our own common bonds, fragility and humanity, in the setting of the ‘deadlands’ of Cyrenaica (modern-day Libya). The Elegies also reveal the shared helplessness of those loved ones at home waiting, praying – and dancing.
This production is led by a duo of dancers and choreographers Helen Gould and George Adams who together with dancers Nicola Thomson, Edwin Wen and Aimee Williamson embody and represent the characters from the ten elegies set both in the desert and the dance hall by using ceilidh, jive, swing and lindy hop – the popular social dance culture of the 1940s.
Through their movement directorship Gould and Adams weave into the dance, the reading of the Elegies for the Dead in Cyrenaica by spoken word artists Morag Anderson and Stephen Watt; and specially composed and newly arranged trad music and song by Cera Impala.
Wendy Timmons and Iliyana Nedkova, Elegies co-curators and producers from Traditional Dance Forum of Scotland said: “Elegies is a dance poem of serious reflection – a lament for all lives lost not only in WWII but in our world of conflicts, oppression and inequality.
“We were delighted by the positive reaction we received when it was first performed on Remembrance Day last year, and very proud of everyone who has worked with us on this revised adaptation as part of this year’s Pomegranates Festival.”
Elegies was originally commissioned for the Scottish International Storytelling Festival 2023, then extended and revised for Pomegranates Festival 2024.
Trad Dance Session
There will be a post-performance lindy hop social dance session, led and accompanied by Pomegranates 2024 resident musicians from the Castle Rock Jazz Band, in the main atrium at the Scottish Storytellling Centre. All welcome. Tickets are Pay What You Can £5, £10 or £15 and available through the Scottish Storytelling Centre Box Office here