Dance of the Aurora

The sight of either aurora, Borealis or Australis, is a privileged vision, seen only in the earth's extreme climates.

Here, lyrical dancers interpret the play of light, that while explainable scientifically, are more intriguingly explained by lore from Algonquin and Inuit traditions. Lore that suggests the beautifully undulating lights are ancestors dancing around the creator's ceremonial fire.

At it's most basic, this is a painting of the Aurora dancing over a frozen windswept snowscape. Heavily snow laden pine trees stand in mute attendance. Such sub-zero wintry nights make their own silent symphony. With no living thing stirring, the cold snap of the air itself makes music just outside the audible range. Only the odd zing makes it through the frigid threshold. Majestically, magically the glow of the Aurora Borealis undulates through the inky velvet blackness of the night sky, lending an impossibly colourful blue mantle. And like the silent symphony, it's colour exists only in the periphery. It's there, but not there.

It speaks of the ancestors bridging to the other world with messages of reluctance, peace, and tranquility in a language of movement and spiritual connection. Messages felt rather than heard.

Ceaselessly, it's glow dances and shifts endlessly through time and space, whether anyone other than the trees attends to it or not. It neither includes me or excludes. The dance will continue with or without participation, or even existence.

It is a quietly mesmerizing spectacle of incredible lyrical beauty. A soundlessly orchestral still movement of pure light within the dark. It is a paradoxical spectacle. In it's very impossibly cold stillness it contains graceful movement that lends warmth to the night sky and to the heart of those fortunate enough to see and be captured by it.