Lightning at our feet

In writing rich with wonder and fierce with longing, Emily Dickinson created a new American landscape of the interior, describing a world that finds exhilarating new life in Lightning at our feet, a new song cycle by composer Michael Gordon and Ridge Theater (Decasia, 2001). Bob McGrath directs and Daniel Zippi provides dramaturgy in this evocative, multimedia production steeped in the spirit of one of America’s most visionary artists.

Using voice, amplified strings, piano, electronics, and percussion, four women — Jennifer Charles, Leah Coloff, Courtney Orlando, and Bora Yoon — reveal the poet’s humanity in hard-driving songs about immortality and love. As haunting video projections by Bill Morrison and Laurie Olinder flicker in the background like half-retrieved memories, Gordon’s hypnotic songs roll on, nudging us ever closer to the essence of Dickinson’s incomparable poems.