Ghost and Dream Dancing

I was very moved by Dee Brown’s indigenous history of the American West, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, and there came to my mind an imaginary ballet portraying the Ghost Dance, the tragic and terrifying withdrawal from reality which was the Sioux nation’s last refuge in the face of the white invasion of their world. The music begins with an invocation (the ritual smoking of dream grass). Each subsequent section of the work flows out of the previous one: the first ghost dance; the harrowing and renewing of the land; the appearance of the ancestors in a second ghost dance – of celebration; and the return from the dream state. Anthony Gilbert