Wreck

Commissioned by Minnesota’s Black Label Movement dance company, Mary Ellen Childs’ score for Wreck, like many of her works, finds itself grounded in the kinetic movement of the body itself and creates a cohesive whole, even though the dance for which it was written is not a narrative work. Set on an ore boat sinking in Lake Superior, the performance presents the crew gathered in the last airtight compartment of the vessel. Childs began work when much of the choreography was completed, and so she approached it like a film score, creating evocative sound worlds that would convey the full range of expressive possibilities the story would evoke—moments of joy, reflection, anxiety, fear and everything else that a life whose minutes are ticking away might go through.

Perhaps this soundtrack approach is why the work stands so strongly on its own, from the low, urgent bass and scrawling, scratched violin of opener “Anat” through the pulsing, gamelan-esque bells and percussion of “Spirit Duet” and the clockwork tintinnabulation that opens “The Box” before ending with the ghostly, mournful emptiness of “The Abyss.”

Childs’ score won the 2008 Sage Award for outstanding music for dance and Dance Magazine wrote of the performance, “Childs’ score, which sounds like a soundtrack for some noir thriller infected by the driving ostinato of Steve Reich, carves out a menacing soundscape that drives Wreck to its very last gasp.”

In addition to her many multi-media works, Childs is well known for her “visual percussion” pieces for her percussion group CRASH, in which she incorporates the movements of the bodies of the performers. Childs has received commissions from the Kronos Quartet, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Kitchen, Other Minds Festival, Chamber Music America, Opera America and the Walker Art Center, among others.  She has received artist fellowships from the McKnight Foundation, the Bush Foundation and the Minnesota State Arts Board. Recent works include Air for the male vocal ensemble Cantus, Unfettered, a solo string bass piece for Robert Black (Bang On A Can All-Stars), Parterre for QNG, a recorder collective based in Germany.  CDs of her work include Kilter (XI label) and Dream House (innova). She was named United States Artist Friends Fellow in 2011.