Last night I went to the 31st Annual Winter Solstice Celebration at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. The Cathedral is just a couple of blocks from our apartment (I took you on a little tour earlier this year, remember?), and it’s quite magnificent, especially at this time of year. I’ve been listening to the concert on NPR for decades, off and on, and it just occurred to me that I could walk over and hear it live. It’s everything – music, dance, light, theater – in an awe-inspiring setting.

Three times I became so overwhelmed with energy and joy and awe I thought I was going to throw up. I had to press my tongue hard against the roof of my mouth, and hold myself, to stay intact. My brain lost words and my edges disappeared. I don’t mean to sound all weird and strange, but that’s what happened. It happens to me now and then. I am prone to fits of joy and awe.

The concert opened with Paul Winter standing in a small cubby above the enormous pipe organ at the rear of the cathedral; a spotlight helped us all know to turn around.

here's the giant organ end of the cathedral

If you’re unfamiliar with Paul Winter, he plays soprano sax and he’s quite amazing. You know most cathedrals are shaped like a cross – this one is, and at the cross intersection an enormous stage had been set up. There was seating on both sides of the stage (we couldn’t even see the audience on the other side), so the performers had to play to their fronts and backs. When Paul Winter stood on stage alone, it felt like he was dancing – you know how you dance with your husband in the living room now and then, how you just kind of move a little bit, back and forth and around? It was beautiful.

The Force of Nature Dance Theater contributed a couple of dances and really, both times I thought I’d die, or throw up from overwhelm and joy. They were amazing. The came to the stage from the rear of the cathedral, dancing up the center aisle. In the first performance they wore costumes that were traditional African (but probably elaborated):

force of nature dancers, joying their way toward the stage

maybe if i show them twice you'll have a sense of them

the drummers led the way

the way those dancers moved – they became less like individual human beings and more like energy beings, I can’t figure out how to say it. They were amazing. Many of their moves were traditional African, but then seriously ramped up. OH it was amazing. I really wish you’d been there.

The third thing that made me lose it was an Armenian singer named Arto Tunçboyacıyan. I tried to find a video of him singing as he sang last night, because it was just not of this world. The setting helped; he stood on the second level of some rigging on the side of the stage, and he was lit by an orange spotlight. His song sounded variously like howling, and pleas, and wails, and words I never heard and didn’t understand but I knew what he was saying. I couldn’t find any performance that was similar; last night he was nearly shouting the song, it had a full-diaphragm force. This one is pretty close. PLEASE LISTEN TO IT, you have to hear this voice.

And here are others if you like him (with a rapper; sweet, on an Armenian tv program; on the BBC world music award program; here’s his website page with mp3 file downloads. I’m getting them all.) I’ll never have an experience like last night’s again, hearing that voice in the dark, so powerful, in that setting, unexpected.

Click through to listen: Arto Tunçboyaciyan

Since the point of the program was the solstice, there was a good bit of performance focusing on the reemergence of light after all the dark, on the promise of dawn and hope. I was surprised to see this coming up the aisle toward the stage, near the end of the show:

the giant earth being rolled in

That blue-green figure at the bottom is Paul Winter on the distant stage; the blue ball was a beautifully representational earth. It came up the aisle, then it was moved onto the stage and connected to rigging, then slowly lifted up far above the stage. There were spotlights on it, and it hung there, slowly rotating for the remainder of the show. I went back and forth between awe, feeling like it was kind of corny, then back to awe.

Since solstice has been celebrated much longer than our religions, by people with a different understanding of it than ours, the old stuff was in the show too – the chaos and clatter and noise in the darkness. They’d created a solstice tree, hung with cymbals and noisemakers of all kinds, which they struck in the dark:

the solstice tree: the spiral solstice tree of sounds is an analog to the traditional tree of lights. inspired by mythic traditions of the tree of life and the world tree. the myriad bells, gongs, and chimes symbolize the diversity of beings in the life family.

That’s the Force of Nature dancers around the tree; I took that shot very quickly as I was leaving.

If you ever get the opportunity to attend this concert, take it. If you ever get the opportunity to attend a performance by the Force of Nature Dance Theater, do whatever you have to do to make that happen. And if you ever have a chance to hear Arto Tunçboyacıyan sing in person, you have to.

[and now, to indulge my crabby side. The guy sitting next to me last night was incredibly annoying - let me count the ways: 1) he'd occasionally bob back and forth - extremely - as if he were at the Wailing Wall. I thought maybe he was having a fit or something. 2) he had a cold and throughout the 3-hour long performance, he continuously rattled his bag of Halls Cherry Cough Drops, noisily unwrapping them and then clattering them against his teeth. He didn't suck the smelly things, he just clattered them around his mouth, against his teeth. 3) he was tall and looked like Ichabod Crane, and he brought binoculars. in order to use them, he had to stretch his arms out to the side and then grab them, as if he were preparing to play the piano or something. then he'd lean forward and his elbows were sticking straight out to the sides. in my face. 4) he constantly spoke to the performers. 5) he seemed to think we should all clap (loudly) with the drums, throughout the performance. i think he assumed that if he just kept doing it, we'd all finally join in. we didn't. 6) he believed he needed to tell me how to appreciate the performance. "You do know that he's behind us now, don't you?"  ISN'T IT A WONDER HE'S ALIVE TODAY??

And there was a big gang of middle-aged people in the row behind us, in from NJ or one of the other boroughs -- one of the ones with a very thick accent, one where they believe talking loud makes it better. And they couldn't let bits of performance dawn gradually, as soon as one of them spotted something they had to tell everyone: look, there's a tree coming in. Again, it's a wonder they survived me last night.]

Next Tuesday is the solstice – as it always does, the earth turns and shifts and the darkness ends. Note to self: remember that.