THE CHRYSALIS
PROJECT

a film series in collaboration with Oxford Alternative Orchestra and the

Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University, by Hannah von Wiehler (nee Schneider), produced by Four Eyes Prodcutions.

THE CHRYSALIS PROJECT

chrysalis (n.): within the chrysalis, the caterpillar undergoes a remarkable transformation, or
‘metamorphosis’ ,to transform into the butterfly that will emerge.

CHRYSALIS is a series of six videos exploring the idea that a particular kind of metamorphosis, transformation, and hope is only possible in a place of darkness. Each piece is a fusion of the media of dance, film, and classical music, featuring a piece of new choreography set to new compositions recorded by the Oxford Alternative Orchestra (OAO).

 The project features the musicians of OAO in the UK, and six award-winning choreographers in different locations around the world: Burkina Faso, South Korea, the United Kingdom, the United States, Russia, and New Zealand. Each choreographer explores unique interpretations of hope that have been illuminated, and even enhanced, by the darkness of the global pandemic we are all still experiencing. 

CHRYSALIS also features five new compositions from award-winning composers, commissioned for this project, as well a new arrangement of Vivaldi’s ‘Winter’.

 The films will be edited together with footage of the orchestra to create a cohesive piece of visual art designed for the screen which offers an insight into how orchestral and dance performance can be adapted in a time of social distancing.

CHRYSALIS also features five new compositions from award-winning composers, commissioned for this project, as well a new arrangement of Vivaldi’s ‘Winter’.

 The films will be edited together with footage of the orchestra to create a cohesive piece of visual art designed for the screen which offers an insight into how orchestral and dance performance can be adapted in a time of social distancing.

THE CHRYSALIS PROJECT VIDEOS

Centre for Ballet and the Arts at New York University By Hannah von Wiehler
(nee Schneider) Produced by Four Eyes Productions

Our Artistic Director

CHRYSALIS: Korea

CHRYSALIS: America

CHRYSALIS: New Zealand

CHRYSALIS: Burkina Faso

CHRYSALIS: BURKINA FASO

CHOREOGRAPHER: Aguibou Bougobali Sanou
COMPOSER: Antonio Vivaldi / Aguibou Bougobali Sanou

Aguibou Bougobali Sanou is a dancer, choreographer, musician, and storyteller. In 2016, he was a semi-finalist on “Africa’s Got Talent.”  He has created work with support from the Institut Francais de Paris, Facets Choreographer residency in India, and the U.S. State Department Fulbright Scholarship. Born in Burkina Faso and raised in Burkina Faso and Mali, Sanou’s work is a mix of West African Mandingo traditional dances, Brazilian capoeira, and theater expressions drawn from his experiences with European stage directors. He designed an African dance curriculum at Naugatuck Valley Community College 2018-2019 and created a dance program at the civil prison of Bobo-Dioulasso (Burkina Faso). He is currently an MFA student at UArts Philadelphia.

 

CHRYSALIS: United Kingdom

CHOREOGRAPHER: Ruth Brill

Ruth Brill is a Choreographer, Artistic Director and former dancer based in the UK. She trained at Tring Park School for the Performing Arts and English National Ballet School. She danced with English National Ballet (2007-2012) and Birmingham Royal Ballet (First Artist, 2012-2019). Ruth retired from performing in 2019 to pursue her freelance choreographic career.

Birmingham Royal Ballet commissioned Ruth to create four new choreographic works for the company – Rhapsody in Blue (2014), Matryoshka (2015), Arcadia (2017) and Peter and The Wolf (2019). 

Ruth has also created work for English National Ballet (2020), New English Ballet Theatre (2019/20), Grand Opera House Belfast (2019), Future Dreams at The London Palladium (2018), Birmingham Weekender Festival (2017, 2016) and The Rugby World Cup Welcoming Ceremony for England (2015). Ruth has a strong interest in outreach work and has delivered development programmes internationally.

Ruth is the Artistic Director of London Children’s Ballet. She re-staged Cathy Marston’s production of Ballet Shoes (2019) and is currently directing a brand new full length production of ‘Anne Of Green Gables’ (2020/21) for the company.

 Current/recent projects include the choreography and movement direction for a documentary about Dame Gillian Lynne and the dramaturgy for lockdown dance film ‘BODIES’, starring Brandon Lawrence. Ruth also led the recent performance protest in London’s Trafalgar Square to raise the plight of freelancers in the Arts during Covid’19.

COMPOSER: Carol Jones

Carol J Jones is a composer of contemporary classical music, writing orchestral, chamber and choral work. Using scientific methods, her work deconstructs the sounds of nature, from the inner rumbling of trees to firing neurons, to create complex, layered compositions. 

She has worked with ensembles and artists including the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra, Psappha, Heath Quartet, Joby Burgess, Fenella Humphreys, in venues across the UK including Westminster Abbey, Hoddinott Hall and St Magnus Cathedral. Her choral music has been performed by the BBC Singers, Deutscher Chor London, Worcester College Chapel Choir and Scholar Cantorum of Oxford. Her music has been performed at festivals including Dartington International Summer School, Cheltenham Music Festival Composer Academy, St Magnus International Music Festival, and has been broadcast on BBC One, BBC Radio 3 and BBC World Service.

CHRYSALIS: Russia

CHOREOGRAPHER: Xander Parish

Xander Parish OBE is a multi-award winning British dancer and choreographer who joined the Mariinsky Ballet in 2010, where he was promoted to Principal Dancer in 2017. He has danced roles such as Prince Siegfried in Swan Lake, Romeo in Romeo and Juliet, and the Nutcracker Prince, and has toured extensively with the Mariinsky Ballet, including performances in Canada, China, Latvia, Spain, Mexico, the UAE, the USA, and the UK. He has won the Taglioni Award for Best Young Male Dancer in 2014, and Britain’s National Dance Award for Outstanding Male Performance in 2015. He was awarded an OBE in 2019 for services to dance and to cultural relations between Britain and Russia.

COMPOSER: Tom Carr

Tom Carr is a British composer whose his compositions have been performed in venues such as Westminster Abbey, Tate Modern, and the Royal Albert Hall, as well as at Oxford’s Holywell Music Room and Jacqueline du Pre Music Hall. Tom studied music at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, where he was taught composition by Martyn Harry and Eugene Birman. Prior to university he took lessons under John Cooney at the Royal Academy of Music Junior Department. During his final year there he won the Gareth Walters Composition Prize for his orchestral piece ‘Tectonics’. In 2016 he joined the National Youth Orchestra as a composer.

CHRYSALIS: KOREA

CHOREOGRAPHER: Jinyeob Cha

Jinyeob Cha is a contemporary dancer, choreographer. Having been the director of choreography for the opening & closing ceremony of 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympic Games. Thus, she received the presidential prize for the achievement. She founded a creative art group ‘collective A’ in 2012 (Seoul, Korea), focuses of going beyond the existing forms of performances, breaking barriers of limited space, genre, format by expanding its exploration of various artistic disciplines. 

After completing her PG diploma and MA at London Contemporary Dance School, UK, she has worked with numerous companies and choreographers internationally including LDP Company of Korea, Hofesh Shechter Dance company(UK), Galili Dance company(Netherlands), and the English National Opera productions(UK), EN-KNAP(Slovenia) etc.

She has received “Today’s Young Artist Award” from the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism, as well as an award for “Best choreography” of Korea Musical Awards, “Best Performance Award” at the 2012 Korean Association of Dance Critics Awards, and the highest award of the year “Best Performance award” Korean Dance Critic’s Awards, 2017.

COMPOSER: Kristina Arakelyan

Kristina Arakelyan is an award-winning composer and pianist who is currently pursuing her doctorate at King’s College London, having studied at the Royal Academy of Music and the University of Oxford. She won first prize in the BBC Proms Inspire Young Composers’ Competition and the Overall Cup in the EPTA Composition Competition in 2010, the first prize in the NCEM composers’ competition in 2016, and the Royal Northern Sinfonia’s composers’ competition in 2019. Her work has been played on BBC Radio 3, and in prestigious locations such as London’s Royal Albert Hall, Wigmore Hall, Cambridge’s Caius College, and concert halls in Mexico, Spain, Belgium, Croatia, and Armenia. 

CHRYSALIS: NEW ZEALAND

CHOREOGRAPHER: Sarah Foster-Sproull

Sarah Foster-Sproull is a Choreographer in Residence at The Royal New Zealand Ballet, Fellow at the Centre for Ballet and The Arts at New York University and Session Choreographer for the New York Choreographic Institute affiliated with the New York City Ballet. Sarah has been the Creative New Zealand Choreographic Fellow and is currently a Senior Lecturer in Dance Studies at the University of Auckland Dance Studies. Sarah is the Artistic Director and choreographer of Auckland-based dance company Foster Group and was the 2019 Director of Choreography at New Zealand’s largest performance event The World of Wearable Art. She is a distinguished graduate of the New Zealand School of Dance and holds a Master in Dance Studies from the University of Auckland – Dance Studies.

COMPOSER: Aiyana Braun

Aiyana Braun is a composer, sound artist, and pianist whose work has been performed by the New York Philharmonic, Berkeley Symphony and Curtis Symphony Orchestra, among others. At the age of fifteen, her first orchestra composition premiered at the New York Philharmonic; another work, commissioned by Maya Angelou and Norman Lear, was performed at the Kimmel Center’s Verizon Hall. She has won awards from the BMI Foundation and American Composers Forum, as well as being featured on NPR’s From the Top and several episodes of PBS/WHYY’s On Stage at Curtis. She is a Fellow at the Center for the Ballet and the Arts in 2021, where she will be working on interdisciplinary collaborations between musicians, choreographers, and dancers. 

CHRYSALIS: AMERICAS

CHOREOGRAPHER: Stefanie Batten Bland

Jerome Robbins awardee Stefanie Batten Bland, is an interdisciplinary global artist who interrogates contemporary and historical culture in dance-theatre and film. Based in New York City, she founded Company SBB in France in 2008 and is a 2020 Baryshnikov Arts Center and Duke Performances commissioned artist. COVID credits: Online – EU Day for the European Union at the United Nations, distanced films for Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, ABT at Duke, and Works & Process at the Guggenheim. Recent Live credits: Featured artist FIAF Crossing The Line Festival, Gina Gibney Dance Company, Directorial Team “Life & Trust” Emursive Productions, Movement Director “Eve’s Song” Public Theater, Choreographer for American Ballet Theatre’s inaugural Women’s Movement Initiative, SBB is an assistant professor at Montclair State University for Theatre & Dance, received her MFA in interdisciplinary arts from Goddard College and lives in SoHo with her family, where she grew up as the daughter of artists.

COMPOSER: Erika Vega

Erika Vega is an award-winning composer currently studying a PhD at the University of Oxford. She has received prizes from the Eighth Annual Jurgenson Competition for Young Composers at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, the TACTUS 2017 Young Composers Forum in Belgium, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s 2017 National Composers Intensive and The Henfrey Prize for Composition 2019 at the University of Oxford, among others. She completed an artistic residency at Royaumont (2018-2019), writing music for dance, a collaborative relationship between composer and choreographer.

Artistic Director of the CHRYSALIS project

Initiator of the Chrysalis Project, conductor Hannah von Wiehler (nee Schneider) is passionate about finding new avenues for classical music to thrive in the 21st century. As such, she founded Oxford Alternative Orchestra (now Orchestra VOX), an ensemble dedicated to the intersection of classical music, social outreach, and innovative performance practices. The lockdown caused by COVID-19 prompted her to re-imagine what collaborations across borders and mediums could look like. Chrysalis was the result. In addition to her non-conventional work, von Wiehler regularly guest conducts in the UK, USA, Russian, and Ukraine, assists conductors like Somone Young and Barbara Hannigan. Her opera credits include engagements with Opera Holland Park, the People’s Opera, and The Grange Festival. She completed a doctorate at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, specialising in Soviet opera.

About Four Eyes Productions

Four Eyes Productions is an emerging independent film, theatre, and opera company led by producer Emilia Clark. With Four Eyes, Emilia is committed to creating innovative work that breaks new ground, while giving cast and crew an opportunity to develop their skills on productions that re-define ‘low-budget’ film- and theatre-making. She is particularly passionate about revitalising media which are less frequently explored, particularly by younger generations; having worked with Hannah on critically-acclaimed, sell-out productions of Birtwistle’s The Corridor and Mozart’s Don Giovanni, two projects which sought to make the medium of opera more accessible, she is excited to continue this with a melding of classical music, dance, and film on CHRYSALIS.