BalletX honors unsung
HEROES The Company-InResidence depicts first mail service by air between New Zealand and Hawaii
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By Kimberly Nicoletti
aptain Edwin Musick was one of the world’s most famous pilots in the 1930s, setting 10 world flight records and landing on the cover of Time magazine. On Jan. 2, 1938, he embarked on an inaugural flight to deliver mail from New Zealand, via Samoa, to Hawaii. It was the first time the then-remote country of New Zealand received airmail service from the United States. Tragically, Musick’s plane crashed on the way home. BalletX’s Sunset, o639 Hours interprets the story, complete with celebration, loss and paradise, in its 80-minute performance. Choreographer Matthew Neenan partnered with award-winning New Zealand composer and musician Rosie Langabeer to tell a tale that people could relate to, and one that connected the U.S. and New Zealand, but
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it was quite an undertaking. To begin propellers. True to his style, he built the with, there aren’t many stories that remaining choreography upon those connect the two countries. When gestural and somewhat mechanical they found the movements. story of Captain Langabeer Musick, the composed the challenge lay in soundtrack, telling the tale which features through dance. sound effects, “It’s not a jazz music typical story for from the 1938 a ballet, but we nightclub era, thought, ‘no one and traditional else is going island music, to do this but including us,’” Neenan Samoan songs. said. “What’s The sound so important effects include about this story field recordings is he was such of native New a pioneer and Zealand birds, risk taker. He plane engines, was the first dancers’ —Rosie Langabeer, Composer pilot to go recorded overseas to the voices reading islands and New fictional letters Zealand. He’s just one of those true American transported by air, and an actual recording pioneers. He’s an unsung hero — one of those of Musick giving a speech about landing in heroes we need to celebrate. World War II New Zealand. Some sound effects employ happened right after his flight, so his life and invented instruments by renowned sound legacy was overlooked and forgotten.” mechanic Neil Feather — a bowling ball The first part Neenan choreographed was dangling from a long piano string with small the airplane section, in which ten dancers motors that sound like a plane flying far form a moving airplane and emulate rotating away, and a free spinning disk with magnets
“We’re telling the story of machines, nature, humans and feelings, so sometimes the dancers are the plane, sometimes they are the ocean waves and sometimes they are the human people at the cabaret having a good time.”
BalletX performs Sunset, o639 Hours. Photo by Erin Baiano.
