Millennium Park’s Annual Founders Dinner

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Large opaque clouds made from lace and delicate bedding hung from the ceiling with a backdrop of night blue. Each cloud held either a trio of musicians playing ethereal, playful and at times eerie and dreamlike music, or characters asleep in beds. A performer dressed in nightclothes and carrying a lit candle entered the room and pulled a cord hanging from one of the clouds triggering a series of poetic movements, music and light shifts from the clouds. At specific points during the performance characters would fall from the clouds attached by either bungee cords, silks or straps, sometimes dancing and bouncing on their own sometimes joining each other in a series of tightly choreographed movement that dangled just above the tables of the guests. Upon the finale, the performers ascend once again into their clouds as the sleepy character on the floor yanks the cord one last time causing a shower of rose petals to fall from the clouds.

Acknowledgments

Directed by Jim Lasko
Produced by Rebecca Hunter
Cloud Design by Alan Donahue & Jim Lasko
Rigging by Chicago Fly House
Music by Jeremy Jacobsen