ONAK canoes are lending their special oragami folding canoes for the show.
Water Girls serenade you from over the water with drums, Gallician bagpipes, baby cello and mandolin and sing an excerpt from a battle song staight from Georgia, transcribed by Levan Veshapize. The music has been transposed, never before been sung by women and a counter-tenor, to be sung in four parts for higher voice. One parts contains traditional Georgian yodelling and is said to have developed from children shouting into the forests to ward off the frightening darkness.
A movement of force into a positive trajectory of action - Utopia is a celebration of positives, of what we have, what we've lost, what is dear to us and what we must change to hold onto it. It's a uniting of beauty and harshness, tough gritty beats, brutal drumming, song and pipes. The canoes are the trajectory, moving forward and staying on for the duration. Utopia harks back to our heritage, thousands of years of tribal living, perhaps the quintessential missing fragments of the modern age.
Richard Scott - counter tenor, percussion
Jaqueline Berces - soprano, mandolin
Rebecca Horrox - soprano, electronics, baby cello
Cassandre Balosso-Bardin - Galician bagpipes
Robin Foster - drums
Presented at the River Wye Festival May 2018
Photography by Bohdan Cap
Water Girls -Utopia