My Cultural Week-End Continued

So... last week-end was a biggie!  Not just Misterman (again AMAZING), not just On A Clear Day (again NOT amazing), but I also saw "Reapers".
.

Reapers is a Martha Clark dance take on the life of the Shakers - a Utopian religious sec that experience Joy and God's love through every day work, dance and music (yay!) albeit with gender separation and celibacy (boo!).  As much as anything, it reminded me (quite purposefully sometimes) of the whirling dervishes of Greek Orthodoxy.
.
The dance used the dancers voices (most quite lovely) for music, and only their stamping for rhythm, and yet turned out a fully formed story of joy, Worship and questioning in 70 minutes.  It was wonderful (although it did NOT want to make me a Shaker).  The dance told not just the general story of the shakers, but the specific story of the founder, Ann Lee.
.
I love the simple happiness of the movement - and the occasional, tentative steps some of the "brothers" would make towards the "sisters" and vice verse.  The spiritual and physical joy when two young people connected showed just how much the Shakers got right in celebrating the world, and just what they missed in celebration by abstaining from physical love.
.
It was stunning.