Premier Wednesday, December 1, 2021 at 8pm.
The New York Choral Society presents Morning Light, a multidisciplinary digital performance of composer Kevin Siegfried’s new arrangement for a cappella chorus of the Shaker song Morning Light in collaboration with artist and choreographer David Thomson. Morning Light is a featured production of The New York Choral Society’s Our Voices series.
With text attributable to New York Shaker Lydia Annas, Morning Light reflects on the cycle of light to dark, calm to chaos and the belief that with faith we can weather any storm that life may bring. David Thomson collaborates with dancer Nehemoyia Young portraying Rebecca Cox Jackson, a Shaker Eldress and freeborn Black woman who was known for her “gifts of power”. The physical language of movement in Morning Light reflects ideas of spiritual engagement and abandon, echoing the physical manifestations of the original Shakers as the dancer is “moved by the spirit” in small and larger ways. Rebecca’s power as a speaker is reflected in Nehemoyia’s compelling gaze and gesture.
Read more about it in our press release here.
Read more about Rebecca Cox Jackson here.
Morning Light (2020)- Kevin Siegfried
Tho Life’s morn rose bright and cloudless
And the sun did brilliant appear,
There may be a fearful tempest,
Ere the noon of life draweth near.
Then stand firm as the rock of ages,
Tho the fiercest of winds may blow,
The light that illum’d thy early morning
Again will appear ere the evening close.
– Lydia Annas ca. 1870s