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Revels Around the Country

• Boulder, Colorado (Rocky Mountain Revels) - 303-447-1919
  This year highlights solstice celebrations from Medieval days, including medieval motets, recorders and crumhorns, morris dancing, childrens' games and a mummers play: St. George and the Dragon. We sing of Wassail, which means "be whole". Wassailers traveled from home to home, greeting the household and animals and singing with a wassail cup their hosts were expected to fill. Morris dancers bring fertility and the coming of the growing season with their leaps and clashes. Carols echo through the hall as the audience and chorus together celebrate the season. A boar's head is borne with great ceremony into our dining hall. The Abbots Bromley, an ancient ritual dance of the hunt, drifts across the stage with an air of the mystical. Children sing of the wren, the magical bringer of luck to the New Year. And over it all reigns the Lord of Misrule.
  
  3 Performances: December 13-15, 2002
  University Theatre (main stage), University of Colorado at Boulder

• Cambridge/Boston (Revels, Inc.) - 617-972-8300
  Celebrate the solstice with music, family and friends at the 32nd annual Christmas Revels! The Christmas Revels features rousing audience participation and an 80-member cast presenting Music, Dance and Folk Rituals from around the world. This year we travel to 18th century Armenia and Georgia to hear exquisite singing and music played on exotic instruments, and celebrate the end of the old year and the birth of the new with carols, folk plays and "The Tightrope of Order and Chaos," a remarkable circus stunt thatıs also a traditional Armenian folk tradition!
  
  18 Performances: December 13-15, 19-23, 26-29, 2002
  Sanders Theater, Harvard University
  

• Evanston, Illinois (Revels Chicago) - 312-409-3834
  The 4th Annual Christmas Revels is set in the mountains of Appalachia, where we celebrate the courage of the African Americans who traveled the gospel train, and rejoiced in the simplicity and warmth of an Appalachian Christmas. Join us on our big front porch as we enjoy the moving harmonies of Gospel Singers, Tennessee lullaby's sung by Appalachian singers and storytellers, a wonderful string band, and the Revels adult and children's Chorus.

  5 Performances: December 5-8, 2002
  Cahn Auditorium, Northwestern University

• Hanover, New Hampshire (Revels North) - 603-646-2422
  This year's Christmas revels will explore the Winter Solstice traditions of Celtic peoples with music, dance, ritual, poetry and drama from Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, The Isle of Man and Brittany. While our celebration begins in the glowing warmth and conviviality of a rural pub where tall tales, exuberant dances, laughter and song occupy the folk gathered there on the eve of the solstice; in the depths of the night, as the full moon rises to its apogee, two young men, a fiddler and a poet, set out from the pub on their journey home only to be drawn into the magical world of the beautiful and startling creatures who dwell beneath a faery hill beside their path. In this strange and wonderful place they become caught up in the intoxicating whirl of wild Solstice revelry among these great and powerful spirits. And then, with the rising of the new sun as the brilliant light reaches deep into the land of Faery . . . .

  6 Performances: December 12-15, 2002
  Hopkins Center, Dartmouth College

• Houston, Texas (Revels Houston) - 713-668-3303
  This year we gather on a stage in the New World to celebrate this ancient Celtic world by singing their songs, telling their tales and following in the footsteps of their dances. We rediscover the wealth of meaning in customs that have become our own but that originated in the far-off world of Druid priests and priestesses of as we, too, pay homage to the transition from the Old World to the new one that is coming into being.
  

  7 Performances: December 14-15; 21-22, 2002
  Moores Opera House, University of Houston

• St. Paul, Minnesota (Minnesota Revels) 612-343-3390
  The 2002 Christmas Revels honours the traditions of Scandinavian countries including Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Iceland. Traditional dance, music, ritual, and story are all part of the show, including instruments like hardanger fiddle and nyckelharpa, dances like gammeldans and bygdedans, and visits from the Scandinavian Yule elves Tomtar and Nissen.
  
  6 Performances: December 13-15 & 20-22, 2002
  DeSalles Theater, Convent of the Visitation School Mendota Heights
  
  
• New York City, New York (New York Revels) - 718-242-5370
  
  5 Performances: December 13-15, 2002
  The New Symphony Space on West 95th St & Broadway, NY
  

• Oakland, California (California Revels) - 510-452-9334
  This year, journey with Revels to the Galician region of Spain at the tail end of the Renaissance. Join our merry band of travelers on their way to a Winter Festival in Santiago de Compostela, and discover the unique cultural melting-pot of peoples, languages and traditions embodied by the many characters who encounter each other along the way, all with stories to tell and songs to sing. This year's Revels will draw on musical and dance traditions from throughout Spain, from popular Flamenco dancing to the little-known Celtic roots of Galician folk music.

  10 Performances: Dec. 13-15, 20-22, 2002
  The Scottish Rite Theater
  

• Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (Philadelphia Revels) - 610-949-9410
  In the shortest day of the year, in a Medieval Hall, the Celtic chieftains gather their clans to choose a king. But first, there will be eating, drinking and dancing. The Fairmont Brass will lead the cast and audience in familiar songs of the season. Tunes will be played by local Irish band, The Morrigan, and dancing will be provided by the Brennan School of Irish Dance. Our own Scottish dancers will be accompanied on the highland pipes, and Celtic harper Terence Coe will add an ethereal note to the evening. A solo sword dance and a traditional dirk dance will be performed to prepare the new king for his duties and the sword team will add new touches this year.
  
  6 Performances: December 12-15, 2002
  Centennial Hall, The Haverford School
  

• Portland, Oregon (Portland Revels) - 503-224-7411
  Once again, we go back to the Middle Ages. This time, it's to the English court world of Henry V who has just returned from his great victory at Agincourt only to confront a darker and deeper danger. It is Christmas and the court is filled with the revelry of music and foolishness. The king's troubadour, played by musician and composer John Vergin, entertains all with songs of the period.
  

  8 Performances: December 6-8, 13-15 , 2002
  The Scottish Rite Theatre

• Tacoma, Washington (Puget Sound Revels) - 253-756-1804
  In 2002 we will present a Revels set in Queenstown, Ireland. From there, in the year 1905, over 50,000 people embarked for America. Their music, poetry, stories, songs and dances were shaped by adversity and sorrow but contain a vibrant, irrepressible strain of hope. They carry the feeling of the famous blind harper, Turlough O'Carolan, who asks whether it is harder to "make dark songs in the darkness, or to make brilliant ones that shine through the gloom?" Patrick Ball, an acclaimed and award-winning storyteller in the Celtic bardic tradition, will be joining our cast as a featured performer.

  6 Performances: December 14-15; 17-18, 2002
  Rialto Theatre, Tacoma, WA

• Washington, DC (The Washington Revels)
  The Washington Revels celebrates its twentieth year by traveling to Victorian London, the hub of Empire--the most international of cities, and somehow the most English, too. The 1890s are well underway; Victoria has been on the throne for over half a century, and, in John Betjeman's words, the city is thronged with 'all sorts of trades and types and classes and nations.' Irish navvies and mill girls rub elbows with Italian organ-grinders; Cockney voices mix with accents from the farthest reaches of the Empire.

  Eight Performances: December 6-8 and 13-15, 2002
  Lisner Auditorium, George Washington University