Persephone (2001) — Anna Lindemann

Persephone (2001) 57'

Ballet with music for five live instrumentalists

Ana Claire Davison | choreography
Students of the Peak Arts Academy | dancers

Premiere | 7, 8 & 9 June 2002, The Dairy Center for the Arts, Boulder, CO

Awards | A suite drawn from this ballet, Into the Underworld and Out Again, won the 2002 Murray S. Katz Young Composers' Competition, which included a performance of the work by Collage New Music at Paine Hall, Harvard University.
Into the Underworld and Out Again won an honorable mention in the 2002 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers' Competition.
Into the Underworld and Out Again won second place in the 2002 Music Teacher's National Association Young Composers' Competition High School Division.

The ballet relates the story of the abduction of the Greek goddess Persephone by Hades, ruler of the underworld. Overwhelmed by grief at her daughter's absence, Persephone's mother Demeter, goddess of the harvest, leaves the plants of the earth to wither and die. Zeus, king of the gods, confronts Hades to try and reconcile the situation. Once in the underworld, Zeus discovers that Persephone has eaten six seeds from the pomegranate, which prevents her from leaving the underworld. Despite Persephone's gastronomic gaffe, a compromise is achieved from which our seasons originated—Persephone is to spend six months of every year in the underworld for the six seeds she consumed, and the other half of the year, during the Spring and Summer months, she lives above ground with her mother.