Passion 2015

Passion – a contemporary journey to the cross is a unique performance created and directed by accomplished dance artist and theologian Claire Henderson Davis, which fuses dance, poetry and music into a moving and compelling work.

Using poet Malcolm Guite’s sonnets on the Stations of the Cross as the basis for a contemporary re-telling of Jesus’ last hours, this fascinating piece will bring multi-disciplinary performance into sacred spaces. But there will be no cross or first century dress. This is a thoroughly modern re-imagining in which the bodies of the dancers tell the story, become the cross, play each character in the narrative, and in which the feminine and sexual love become symbols of the divine. The audience move with the action, becoming the crowd in this promenade performance.

The piece was developed with the support of Ely Cathedral and performed there on the evening of Palm Sunday 2014. The response was so overwhelming that it will be performed there again on the evening of Good Friday 2015, and will go on tour to other Cathedrals in Britain during Lent 2015, and to St Mary’s Cathedral, Edinburgh for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August 2015.

The Very Revd Mark Bonney, Dean of Ely, writes:

“Passion” is a creative combination of Malcolm Guite’s beautifully crafted Sonnets and some highly expressive and evocative dance. We were taken on a journey that was illuminating and challenging, that engaged our emotions as well as our intellect and which threw new light on a familiar story.

The piece is performed by Malcolm Guite (poet/ narrator), Claire Henderson Davis and Fraser Paterson (dancers), Jan Payne (oboist), and Dan Forshaw (saxophonist), with a group of non-professional women, some recruited locally at each venue, playing the Women of Jerusalem. 

Confirmed performance dates are: 21 February Lichfield Cathedral; 28 February London St John’s Church, Waterloo (the only non-Cathedral date); 7 March Coventry Cathedral; 12 March Chester Cathedral; 03 April (Good Friday) Ely Cathedral; 11-13 August Edinburgh St Mary’s Cathedral. Following each performance of Passion, Claire will return at a later date to offer a half-day workshop (four hours), giving participants a chance to enter for themselves this contemporary vision of relationship with God.

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Malcolm Guite - Stations Of The Cross.