Stilled Bones

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‘Stilled Bones’ is based on North Wales’s seventh century abbess and martyr, Saint Winnifred, (Gwenfrewi in Welsh), told through contemporary storytelling blending Celtic song, Japanese butoh dance, Cuban percussion and electro acoustic composition. The title refers to the longstanding religious tradition of digging up and removing a Saint’s bones within contested landscapes in order to recover their symbolic significance and, often, to state territorial claims. Developed by local dancers Rachel Sweeney and Melisa Pasut in collaboration with Cuban singer and percussionist Guillermo Luis Horta Betancourt and musician Andre Leslie Hooker, the piece retells Saint Winnifred’s ancient and often contradictory story, interpreting ancient Celtic texts regarding her life and death and exploring fictional and factual texts that contest to the ancient struggles between human and spiritual practices, between religious power structures and historical writing, and between body-place relationships and their influence on the Welsh landscape.