Hildegard: Visions was developed in its early stages during a Residency at Snape Maltings. The Residency programme supports artists and researchers who are in need of development time, are creatively curious, and have exciting, adventurous ideas to explore.
During this week-long R&D, Nwando and her collaborators created Extreme Unction : a piece for 8 loudspeakers, 3 singers, 2 bodies and water.
(Extreme Unction backing track - Nwando Ebizie feat. Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian, Lore Lixenberg and Yfat Soul Zisso)
You arrive at the venue. You are directed to the door where this ritual will take place. You are met at the threshold by a woman - the Guardian at the Crossroads. She is wearing an excessively 80s wedding dress. She invites you in with warmth and potential. She sprays the air around with you a citrussy, cleansing spray. You feel the fine mist of water drop around you.
Around her are large bowls of steaming water filled with scents of cedar wood, chamomile, spearmint and frankincense.
You can wash your hands in the bowls. You can refresh your face.
She advises you that you can sit on chairs, lie (on comfortable beanbags) or stand anywhere. This space is here for you.
You feel you are entering a space both sacred and profane. Both of this world and an alternate reality.
Your eyes take a while to adjust.
So first of all, you notice the perfumed air. You have your own associations with the scents drifting around you. Maybe memories surface.
As your eyes adjust you see a shaft of light breaking through the darkness. This lights figures on the stage - three singers. Each dressed in beautiful outfits that you feel somehow suits each of their characters. Each has an individually crafted crown.
You notice that there is the gentle sound of dripping water all around you.
There are loudspeakers surrounding you - creating the sensation that you are bathed in sound.
The sound drifts around the space, as if chasing itself.
It gives the sensation that you are in a hamam - a marble room with a dome where water is dripping. The room has an odd reverb, making you feel like you are not where you are. The water sounds close, almost like it could be touching the back of your neck and sliding down your spine.
Sometimes it sounds like it is water dripping onto hard stone, sometimes a gentle stream falling into a copper bowl.
Eventually you notice a final woman in the shadows – let’s call her The Celebrant. She is dancing with the shadows, she is dancing with the light.
The singers begin to breathe deeply, breathing in the atmosphere.
They dance with the shadows, they dance with the light.
You begin to hear them sing. Softly at first, barely understandable words. Unfamiliar chants. The snatches of song you hear - the words do not matter - what you feel is that they are deeply personal to the singers. Songs that somehow connect with them. Voices that feel intrinsic to them as human beings.
The Celebrant and the Guardian weave their way through the space, coming together on the stage.
They lay out their bowls and jugs of water. The Celebrant bends over her bowl, allows her hair to fall into the steaming water. She undulates her body, swaying from side to side.
The Guardian takes a piece of cloth and carefully washes it, wringing it out again and again into her bowl.
Their movements are precise and soft. Full of meaning but ultimately practical. The sounds they make connect to the sounds of the hamam around you.
You feel that they are preparing for the rites to come.
You feel yourself drifting into a softer state of being. Here but not here. There but not there.
The singer's voices melt into recognisable fragments of Hildegard’s music - ‘Favus Distilans’. Melisma chases melisma, weaving through the air. One singer moves over to a table and places a new crown on her head. She taps the crown intermittently, sending beautifully distorted versions of her voice out into the air.
The singers fall silent. The sound changes - a rhythmic metallic ringing. As if the copper bowl used in the hamam is being played. The Guardian and The Celebrant take their places on small logs and begin to move. By now, maybe you are halfway to dreaming. But you recognise their movements - they are washing, scrubbing their bodies, flinging water onto themselves. Familiar and yet more lyrical. Incredibly frenzied.
The singers begin to cry. Softly, sobbing. Until they wail. The gentle sounds of the hamam build into a waterfall, a whirlpool. The sound moves around you, making you feel dizzy.
The lights fade. There is movement, sound, water and darkness.
And then again, silence.
The shaft of light returns.
You hear last drifts of Hildegard.
End.
Workshop artists: Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian / Lore Lixenberg / Tom Richards / Yfat Soul Zisso / Guardian Wennifer / Steph Singer
