March 25, 2025 • 17 mins
Join director and choreographer of the stage adaptation of The Remember Balloons, Dominic Moore-Dunson, in conversation with Des Moines Performing Arts Director of Education, Karoline Myers. Moore-Dunson talks about bringing this popular children’s book about memory loss to the stage as well as the developmental residency that DMPA supported. See this incredible show on March 29 as part of the Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield Family Series.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to DMPA Conversations. I'm Caroline Meyers, Director of Education
at des Moin Performing Arts. This podcast gives you an
insider's perspective of the fantastic performances headed to our stages
and the educational opportunities that are the core of our mission.
Des Moin Performing Arts is proud to have supported the
creation of The Remember Balloons, which will soon play to
our Applause series and public audiences at the De Moin
(00:25):
Civic Center. As part of our commitment to the field
of touring performing arts for young audiences, DMPA provided underwriting
and technical support for a week long development residency with
the director, choreographer, composer, dancers, and technical team this past summer.
This partnership was vital to the show's preparations for its
premiere and twenty twenty four to twenty five national tour. Today,
(00:47):
we're joined by Dominic Moore Dunson, the director choreographer, to
talk about that process and what audiences can expect from
this brilliant new adaptation of the children's book The Rememberableist. Well, Hi, Dominic,
(01:08):
thanks so much for being here with us today. You
have a new show that is coming to des Moines
called the Remember Balloons. So to start us off, do
you just want to share a little bit for people
who don't know what is the Remember Balloons?
Speaker 2 (01:19):
So the remembera Balloons is an intergenerational show. When we
made it, we made it for grandparents, parents and children
to be sitting next to each other in the audience.
It's this fun, joyful piece about a family trying to
figure out how to go through something that's really difficult,
which is Alzheimer's and dementia.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
And you do get to go on this.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Really wonderful, emotional roller coaster of seeing this beautiful family
and their connectivity. But then there are some more difficult
parts where you learn about how a family deals with
this disease that's the visible part of their home that's
starting to pull them apart because we're all trying to
figure out what to do with something that lots of
families have a hard time talking about. But ultimately, in
(02:03):
the end, it's a story about hope, because it's a
story about understanding how to share your stories across generations
and how to honor those stories and honor the people
that you love by sharing them with each other.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Beautifully said, So the theme that we might not oftentimes
think about being one that we talk about with young people.
So how did you come to this story and kind
of what was the inspiration for saying you wanted to
take this source material and bring it to the stage
through dance.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Well, couple of years ago, February of twenty twenty three,
I was at the library with my wife and my
two my one year old and the kids had been
playing for a while and it was haiving to go, honestly,
and so I started going through the bookshelves and here
in Akron, Ohio, at the library, there was a bookshelf
that said children's books about difficult topics. And if you
know anything about me and my work, difficult topics is
(02:50):
where I'd like to stay inside of because I think
it's really important to talk.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
About that in our world, in our society. But it's
children's books. So I found out it really interesting.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
So I started flipping through all these books at cramon
this white book with all.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
These balloons on it. I said, the remember balloons.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
I kind of skeptically opened it, like its balloons, how
hard could it be? And I opened this book and
read this story and by the end was crying, and
so I hinted it to my wife, same thing with her,
and then we packed the kids up. We go home,
and me and my wife are having this conversation about
Alzheimer's dementia, and at one point in our conversation, she says,
you know, I remember the day my grandmother forgot me
(03:26):
and she never.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Remembered me again. Wow.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
So the fact that this book inspired this conversation to
come up in our family was really important to me.
So later that night, at like two am, because the
kids were taught, you know, babies, so they were working
up in the midnight, I was up and changing diapers
and I couldn't go to sleep.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
I just thought about the author. So I just looked
up to see she had a website.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
And I saw that you could give her a direct
message to her website. So I just wrote a thank
you letter that was the point at the very end,
and I blame it on my two thirty in the
morning brain. I was like, hey, would you ever consider
letting me to turn this into a stage show.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
I just hit send and didn't think anything about it.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
And then the next morning I get an email at
nine am from our agent saying, hey, we love your ideas,
we would love to hear them. I have thirty minutes
today at three o'clock and I was like, what ideas?
That was the idea and so long story short. Five
months later, we now have the exclusive North American rights
to the Remember balloons and have been doing it ever since. So,
(04:24):
I mean, the thing for this story is in my
personal family line. We don't deal with the mentioned Alzheimer's.
But really got me was the intergenerational storytelling aspect of it.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
I grew up in a home with my great.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Grandmother, my grandmother, my mother, and my older sister and
then there was me. So I was raised by four
women in four generations, all in the same home, and
I sat at the feet of them hearing stories about
our family. And as a father, now I'm going to
be passing all those stories along because that's how you
keep the dreams and the love of the people before
(04:58):
you alive.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
That's what really really touched me personally.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
So in the face of something so terrible, there is
something we can do, and it's something we all have
the capacity to do, which is share our stories with
one another.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
I think that's really beautifully said. So this was not
a story I was familiar with until really you brought
it to me. So as you are seeking support to
bring this stage adaptation to life, you had put together
some materials that were being shared with presenting organizations that
were familiar with you and your work, and part of
that was a read a lout of the book, and
I was so immediately touched by it, both as somebody
(05:32):
who has had memory loss touching our family, but really
beyond that feeling like it's universal because we do all
have connections to people that have gone before us. So
whether memory loss is something that you've directly experienced or
might experience someday, I think everybody in the audience, particularly
the adults and the grown ups, have said goodbye to
people in their lives and are now the torch bearers
(05:53):
of those memories, which feels heavy in many ways, but
it's such also a beautiful celebration and of that legacy
and how we remain connected to one another, both while
we have people still here in our lives and after
they leave us, both yeah, physically and maybe in other ways.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
And I think part of what we want to do
with the show is just inspire people. One of the
things in my work that I'm trying to do is
touch that part of your brain that comes out in
the quiet moments when you're in the car by yourself, right.
Like one of my hopes is that somebody sees the show,
they get in the car, you know, maybe they drop
off their parents, the kids are sleep in the back,
and in their brain they say, you know, maybe I
(06:33):
should spend more time with my mom.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Right. It's it's that moment that I'm after.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
And with young ones, one of the things I love
about them is they're going to say what they have
to say out loud in.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
The moment during the show, right, like, Mom, what's happening? Right?
Speaker 2 (06:47):
And one of the things that we want, like I
see a lot of my work as kind of like
a creative town hall. So the point is we're going
to inspire conversation. Sometimes that conversation has to wait until
after the show is done. Sometimes that your child's like, Mom,
what's happen happening because something more difficult is happening.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
I want you to look at them and say, this.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Is what's going on, because I want the conversation to
start where it needs to start.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
And then that happens right in the middle of this dancing,
so be.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
It, because I don't hold the performance of the show
so precious that everyone needs to sit with their hands
folded and stay quiet. Right, So, whether it's laughter or
it's tears or whatever, or it's conversation that needs to happen,
I want to encourage people to allow that to happen
and not to think it's a bad thing that it's happening.
(07:31):
It's actually exactly what we want. So the conversation starts
right there. And as adults, our job is to be
a buffer for difficult conversations with our children. So when
you tell them, well, this is kind of what's happening now,
they're looking at the stage through a new lens because
you just connected with them, and then those questions are
going to start percolating. So when you get in the
car after the show, a real conversation is going to happen,
(07:51):
and that's what we're looking for.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
I think that's a really great point, and I think
it really is salient and the fact that when we
think about work for young audiences, and I know the
Room Member Balloons is intergenerational, but it is based on
a picture book that was designed for children. You know,
we don't want to like, yes, we're teaching theater etiquette
and all of those things, but we want young people
to have an authentic reaction and they let you know
(08:13):
they're with you. And I think that's one of the
reasons why I'm so drawn to this particular sector of
our field with work for young people so dominic. We've
talked about this, you know, kind of heavy abstract experience.
How does the Remember Balloons take that experience and kind
of put it through a filter or a metaphor that
makes it tangible, particularly for children in the audience.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
The children James, who is the main character, his memories
are inside of balloons, so everything he remembers are inside
these balloons. And every character in the story has these
balloons that their memories are inside of. So it makes
it a really changeable way to think about memories and
how they exist with us. And as the story goes,
you start to understand the different characters' relationships to balloon
(08:57):
so Sport Larlert. At one point in the story, you
learn that Grandpa is starting to lose his balloons, so
his balloons are starting to float away, and so James
is trying to run after these balloons. Captured his balloons,
get them in any way that he can so that
Grandpa keeps his memories, and you know, they even have
this shared memory. It's a day when they go out
to the docks and they're fishing, and of course Grandpa
(09:19):
ends up losing that balloon. So James has to figure
out what it means to be forgotten and how to
deal with that.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
But what's beautiful about.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
The story is you learn by the end of the book,
because James sat at the foot of Grandpa and learned
all his stories, he ends up being the holder of
his balloons. So the hope comes in because you find
out that Grandpa's balloons didn't actually go away, they were
just transferred to James. And so what I love about
(09:46):
the book is it created this kind of template for
us to explore as creators. And so what we started
doing is seeing like how can we take the literal
pages of the book and put it on the stage.
So part of what we do projection, so you will
see the images from the book projected on the screen
behind the dancers as they're moving, so you can kind
(10:06):
of follow along like where we are in the page
of the book. But also a really big part of
our description of the movement is that you know, when
you think about dancers, you think about turns and leads
and jumps, and we have all that, But on the
other side, we have what we colloquially call the get down,
which is the way your grandpa dances at the family
(10:28):
reunion or when you're at home with your family and
you're having a little dance.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
Party in the living room.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
So like that's the spectrum, and inside of that, my
own personal take on dance is that it's highly narrative
for me, So when you watch my choreography, it's story based,
so you're going to feel it might feel closer to
a play than a dance concert.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
So what I like to tell people is you're not
gonna have to worry.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
About if you will get it, because we made it
for you to get.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
We were thinking about you when we were making it.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
So the abstract pieces, but there's also a lot of
narrative that helps you follow along the story, and that
in the beautiful music by there and Brown, our composer
that really stretches the length of time of the twentieth
century when it comes to music, So there's blues, there's
R and B there's classical music as well, and it's
(11:19):
really the combination of all of us coming together as
collaborators and thinking about the people of the audience and saying,
our job is to take this book put on stage
in such a way that the material is accessible. And
I think we achieve that and we've seen the results
of that in other cities.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
It's really really great. It's a really powerful piece dominic
thinking about the creation process and kind of turning to
what we've done with you in Des Moines. So des
Moin Performing Arts played a role in supporting the development
of this work as a commissioner and by hosting you
and the company in Des Moines for a week this
past summer or a development residency. And for people who
may not be kind of familiar with what those structures are,
(11:57):
can you talk a little bit about what it means
to work with a venue as a commissioner or to
come into a space for a creative residency.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Absolutely, most of the time we don't have venues ourselves
that we own, right like we don't own our own theaters,
So we're often in the studio making our work. And
usually the way things work is you create your work,
you're in the studio for months and months and months,
and then it's the week of the show and you
move into the theater on Monday or Tuesday or the
week of the show. You do your tech rehearsals, you
(12:25):
get your lights up, you lay the Marley floor down
for dancers, and then by Wednesday or Thursday, you're doing
you dress rehearsal. Friday's the first show, so you're doing
a lot of work in like a three to four
day period. When you have commissioning presenters and organizations, they
allow you to work on the show in August when
the show doesn't premiere into October, so you get a
chance to look at the piece from these various ways
(12:46):
and try new things and experiment with ideas like lighting
and sound, or you bring people into the audience to
watch the show before it's even done to get their
opinions on what they think.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
One of my favorite moments.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
About being in Desline was we had a doctor and
he was talking to us about what he just saw,
and he said to us, you know, the one thing
I wish is that Mom had a balloon at the
end of the show, because she's the only person we
didn't see with her own memory. All of our eyes
just lit up because we hadn't thought about that. We're like,
(13:20):
oh my god, yes, that's what's missing at the end
of the show. So the next time we went to
rehearsal back and acron we put it in the show.
And now it's one of the most beautiful parts of
our show is watching Mom pull down the final balloon,
have this big smile, send it to the scrim and
the projection comes up, and then at the end they
sit as a family and look.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
At this final memory.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
But it's only because we were with you all for
that week working on it, and then had a group
come in to watch the show.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
Now we have what I feel like is the perfect.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Ending to the piece, and you don't get that if
you're just locked in your own studio, away by yourself,
with no one watching you.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
And the other thing that we did.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
When we were dem is we have the opportunity to
go out into the community and be with independent living spaces,
be with young people, and really get a chance to
talk to people about.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
Their own lives and their own memories.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
We got a chance to watch caregivers interact with senior citizens,
which for us is like data. So when we're thinking
about the way Mom and James interact with.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Grandpa on stage.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
We were watching that in real time and then going
back to the theater and talking about what we saw
and being like, oh, you know what we need to
change mom and the way Mom holds Grandpa as they
walk across the stage because a caregiver wouldn't do what
we're doing right now. So it's those real life interactions
that actually really really shape the work and why it's
so important for someone like me to have an opportunity
(14:44):
to come into an organization like you All's because it
really does change the fabric of the piece that people
get to experience dominic.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
As you think about audiences coming in, intergenerational hoping for families,
what do you hope that they really take away an
experience throughout the moment when the curtain comes down, that
you will leave a lasting impression on those that come in.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Two big things for me that whether it's the conversation
with Alzheimer's or it's something else in their life, there
can be joy in hard things. That's really important to
me because I think when you first describe this piece
of people, it's about mentioning Alzheimer's everyone kind of has
this like, oh, that's stuff, guys, you know, that kind
of reaction. But when you watch the show, you realize
how much joy is inside this family and how much
(15:29):
hope is inside this family. So, whether your family is
going through Alzheimer's or something else, that you can find
joy in it by being with one another. That's really important.
And the second thing, and I helpe people walk away with,
is the feeling and the desire to tell more stories.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
You know, I hate to be.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
Like the social media antisocial media guy, but we live
in a world that's so screen based, and there's an
exchange that happens on those screens, which is great. But
one of the things that happens when we're so connected
to our screens is we're not connected to the people
next to us giving stock stories to one another.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
And there's a different kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
That happens in your brain when you're receiving someone's story,
you know, interacting with their story that's coming out of
their mouth and watching that story come.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
Through a screen.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
I want to remind all of us, from young to old,
that tell your stories to one another, share your stories together,
sit around the dinner table for longer and tell stories,
sit around the campfire for longer and tell stories.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
So those are really two things. Tell stories to each other.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Remember the importance and the joy of that, but also
remember that there can be joy and difficult things as
a family.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
So well said, we are so thankful that you are
connecting this story with our community, and we'll be inspiring
those connections or ripple effects long into the future for
those who are able to experience it. Dominic, thank you
so much.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
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for future conversations. Thank you for listening.
Welcome to DMPA Conversations. I'm Caroline Meyers, Director of Education
at des Moin Performing Arts. This podcast gives you an
insider's perspective of the fantastic performances headed to our stages
and the educational opportunities that are the core of our mission.
Des Moin Performing Arts is proud to have supported the
creation of The Remember Balloons, which will soon play to
our Applause series and public audiences at the De Moin
(00:25):
Civic Center. As part of our commitment to the field
of touring performing arts for young audiences, DMPA provided underwriting
and technical support for a week long development residency with
the director, choreographer, composer, dancers, and technical team this past summer.
This partnership was vital to the show's preparations for its
premiere and twenty twenty four to twenty five national tour. Today,
(00:47):
we're joined by Dominic Moore Dunson, the director choreographer, to
talk about that process and what audiences can expect from
this brilliant new adaptation of the children's book The Rememberableist. Well, Hi, Dominic,
(01:08):
thanks so much for being here with us today. You
have a new show that is coming to des Moines
called the Remember Balloons. So to start us off, do
you just want to share a little bit for people
who don't know what is the Remember Balloons?
Speaker 2 (01:19):
So the remembera Balloons is an intergenerational show. When we
made it, we made it for grandparents, parents and children
to be sitting next to each other in the audience.
It's this fun, joyful piece about a family trying to
figure out how to go through something that's really difficult,
which is Alzheimer's and dementia.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
And you do get to go on this.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Really wonderful, emotional roller coaster of seeing this beautiful family
and their connectivity. But then there are some more difficult
parts where you learn about how a family deals with
this disease that's the visible part of their home that's
starting to pull them apart because we're all trying to
figure out what to do with something that lots of
families have a hard time talking about. But ultimately, in
(02:03):
the end, it's a story about hope, because it's a
story about understanding how to share your stories across generations
and how to honor those stories and honor the people
that you love by sharing them with each other.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Beautifully said, So the theme that we might not oftentimes
think about being one that we talk about with young people.
So how did you come to this story and kind
of what was the inspiration for saying you wanted to
take this source material and bring it to the stage
through dance.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Well, couple of years ago, February of twenty twenty three,
I was at the library with my wife and my
two my one year old and the kids had been
playing for a while and it was haiving to go, honestly,
and so I started going through the bookshelves and here
in Akron, Ohio, at the library, there was a bookshelf
that said children's books about difficult topics. And if you
know anything about me and my work, difficult topics is
(02:50):
where I'd like to stay inside of because I think
it's really important to talk.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
About that in our world, in our society. But it's
children's books. So I found out it really interesting.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
So I started flipping through all these books at cramon
this white book with all.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
These balloons on it. I said, the remember balloons.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
I kind of skeptically opened it, like its balloons, how
hard could it be? And I opened this book and
read this story and by the end was crying, and
so I hinted it to my wife, same thing with her,
and then we packed the kids up. We go home,
and me and my wife are having this conversation about
Alzheimer's dementia, and at one point in our conversation, she says,
you know, I remember the day my grandmother forgot me
(03:26):
and she never.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Remembered me again. Wow.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
So the fact that this book inspired this conversation to
come up in our family was really important to me.
So later that night, at like two am, because the
kids were taught, you know, babies, so they were working
up in the midnight, I was up and changing diapers
and I couldn't go to sleep.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
I just thought about the author. So I just looked
up to see she had a website.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
And I saw that you could give her a direct
message to her website. So I just wrote a thank
you letter that was the point at the very end,
and I blame it on my two thirty in the
morning brain. I was like, hey, would you ever consider
letting me to turn this into a stage show.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
I just hit send and didn't think anything about it.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
And then the next morning I get an email at
nine am from our agent saying, hey, we love your ideas,
we would love to hear them. I have thirty minutes
today at three o'clock and I was like, what ideas?
That was the idea and so long story short. Five
months later, we now have the exclusive North American rights
to the Remember balloons and have been doing it ever since. So,
(04:24):
I mean, the thing for this story is in my
personal family line. We don't deal with the mentioned Alzheimer's.
But really got me was the intergenerational storytelling aspect of it.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
I grew up in a home with my great.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Grandmother, my grandmother, my mother, and my older sister and
then there was me. So I was raised by four
women in four generations, all in the same home, and
I sat at the feet of them hearing stories about
our family. And as a father, now I'm going to
be passing all those stories along because that's how you
keep the dreams and the love of the people before
(04:58):
you alive.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
That's what really really touched me personally.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
So in the face of something so terrible, there is
something we can do, and it's something we all have
the capacity to do, which is share our stories with
one another.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
I think that's really beautifully said. So this was not
a story I was familiar with until really you brought
it to me. So as you are seeking support to
bring this stage adaptation to life, you had put together
some materials that were being shared with presenting organizations that
were familiar with you and your work, and part of
that was a read a lout of the book, and
I was so immediately touched by it, both as somebody
(05:32):
who has had memory loss touching our family, but really
beyond that feeling like it's universal because we do all
have connections to people that have gone before us. So
whether memory loss is something that you've directly experienced or
might experience someday, I think everybody in the audience, particularly
the adults and the grown ups, have said goodbye to
people in their lives and are now the torch bearers
(05:53):
of those memories, which feels heavy in many ways, but
it's such also a beautiful celebration and of that legacy
and how we remain connected to one another, both while
we have people still here in our lives and after
they leave us, both yeah, physically and maybe in other ways.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
And I think part of what we want to do
with the show is just inspire people. One of the
things in my work that I'm trying to do is
touch that part of your brain that comes out in
the quiet moments when you're in the car by yourself, right.
Like one of my hopes is that somebody sees the show,
they get in the car, you know, maybe they drop
off their parents, the kids are sleep in the back,
and in their brain they say, you know, maybe I
(06:33):
should spend more time with my mom.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Right. It's it's that moment that I'm after.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
And with young ones, one of the things I love
about them is they're going to say what they have
to say out loud in.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
The moment during the show, right, like, Mom, what's happening? Right?
Speaker 2 (06:47):
And one of the things that we want, like I
see a lot of my work as kind of like
a creative town hall. So the point is we're going
to inspire conversation. Sometimes that conversation has to wait until
after the show is done. Sometimes that your child's like, Mom,
what's happen happening because something more difficult is happening.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
I want you to look at them and say, this.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Is what's going on, because I want the conversation to
start where it needs to start.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
And then that happens right in the middle of this dancing,
so be.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
It, because I don't hold the performance of the show
so precious that everyone needs to sit with their hands
folded and stay quiet. Right, So, whether it's laughter or
it's tears or whatever, or it's conversation that needs to happen,
I want to encourage people to allow that to happen
and not to think it's a bad thing that it's happening.
(07:31):
It's actually exactly what we want. So the conversation starts
right there. And as adults, our job is to be
a buffer for difficult conversations with our children. So when
you tell them, well, this is kind of what's happening now,
they're looking at the stage through a new lens because
you just connected with them, and then those questions are
going to start percolating. So when you get in the
car after the show, a real conversation is going to happen,
(07:51):
and that's what we're looking for.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
I think that's a really great point, and I think
it really is salient and the fact that when we
think about work for young audiences, and I know the
Room Member Balloons is intergenerational, but it is based on
a picture book that was designed for children. You know,
we don't want to like, yes, we're teaching theater etiquette
and all of those things, but we want young people
to have an authentic reaction and they let you know
(08:13):
they're with you. And I think that's one of the
reasons why I'm so drawn to this particular sector of
our field with work for young people so dominic. We've
talked about this, you know, kind of heavy abstract experience.
How does the Remember Balloons take that experience and kind
of put it through a filter or a metaphor that
makes it tangible, particularly for children in the audience.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
The children James, who is the main character, his memories
are inside of balloons, so everything he remembers are inside
these balloons. And every character in the story has these
balloons that their memories are inside of. So it makes
it a really changeable way to think about memories and
how they exist with us. And as the story goes,
you start to understand the different characters' relationships to balloon
(08:57):
so Sport Larlert. At one point in the story, you
learn that Grandpa is starting to lose his balloons, so
his balloons are starting to float away, and so James
is trying to run after these balloons. Captured his balloons,
get them in any way that he can so that
Grandpa keeps his memories, and you know, they even have
this shared memory. It's a day when they go out
to the docks and they're fishing, and of course Grandpa
(09:19):
ends up losing that balloon. So James has to figure
out what it means to be forgotten and how to
deal with that.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
But what's beautiful about.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
The story is you learn by the end of the book,
because James sat at the foot of Grandpa and learned
all his stories, he ends up being the holder of
his balloons. So the hope comes in because you find
out that Grandpa's balloons didn't actually go away, they were
just transferred to James. And so what I love about
(09:46):
the book is it created this kind of template for
us to explore as creators. And so what we started
doing is seeing like how can we take the literal
pages of the book and put it on the stage.
So part of what we do projection, so you will
see the images from the book projected on the screen
behind the dancers as they're moving, so you can kind
(10:06):
of follow along like where we are in the page
of the book. But also a really big part of
our description of the movement is that you know, when
you think about dancers, you think about turns and leads
and jumps, and we have all that, But on the
other side, we have what we colloquially call the get down,
which is the way your grandpa dances at the family
(10:28):
reunion or when you're at home with your family and
you're having a little dance.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
Party in the living room.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
So like that's the spectrum, and inside of that, my
own personal take on dance is that it's highly narrative
for me, So when you watch my choreography, it's story based,
so you're going to feel it might feel closer to
a play than a dance concert.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
So what I like to tell people is you're not
gonna have to worry.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
About if you will get it, because we made it
for you to get.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
We were thinking about you when we were making it.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
So the abstract pieces, but there's also a lot of
narrative that helps you follow along the story, and that
in the beautiful music by there and Brown, our composer
that really stretches the length of time of the twentieth
century when it comes to music, So there's blues, there's
R and B there's classical music as well, and it's
(11:19):
really the combination of all of us coming together as
collaborators and thinking about the people of the audience and saying,
our job is to take this book put on stage
in such a way that the material is accessible. And
I think we achieve that and we've seen the results
of that in other cities.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
It's really really great. It's a really powerful piece dominic
thinking about the creation process and kind of turning to
what we've done with you in Des Moines. So des
Moin Performing Arts played a role in supporting the development
of this work as a commissioner and by hosting you
and the company in Des Moines for a week this
past summer or a development residency. And for people who
may not be kind of familiar with what those structures are,
(11:57):
can you talk a little bit about what it means
to work with a venue as a commissioner or to
come into a space for a creative residency.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Absolutely, most of the time we don't have venues ourselves
that we own, right like we don't own our own theaters,
So we're often in the studio making our work. And
usually the way things work is you create your work,
you're in the studio for months and months and months,
and then it's the week of the show and you
move into the theater on Monday or Tuesday or the
week of the show. You do your tech rehearsals, you
(12:25):
get your lights up, you lay the Marley floor down
for dancers, and then by Wednesday or Thursday, you're doing
you dress rehearsal. Friday's the first show, so you're doing
a lot of work in like a three to four
day period. When you have commissioning presenters and organizations, they
allow you to work on the show in August when
the show doesn't premiere into October, so you get a
chance to look at the piece from these various ways
(12:46):
and try new things and experiment with ideas like lighting
and sound, or you bring people into the audience to
watch the show before it's even done to get their
opinions on what they think.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
One of my favorite moments.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
About being in Desline was we had a doctor and
he was talking to us about what he just saw,
and he said to us, you know, the one thing
I wish is that Mom had a balloon at the
end of the show, because she's the only person we
didn't see with her own memory. All of our eyes
just lit up because we hadn't thought about that. We're like,
(13:20):
oh my god, yes, that's what's missing at the end
of the show. So the next time we went to
rehearsal back and acron we put it in the show.
And now it's one of the most beautiful parts of
our show is watching Mom pull down the final balloon,
have this big smile, send it to the scrim and
the projection comes up, and then at the end they
sit as a family and look.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
At this final memory.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
But it's only because we were with you all for
that week working on it, and then had a group
come in to watch the show.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
Now we have what I feel like is the perfect.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Ending to the piece, and you don't get that if
you're just locked in your own studio, away by yourself,
with no one watching you.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
And the other thing that we did.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
When we were dem is we have the opportunity to
go out into the community and be with independent living spaces,
be with young people, and really get a chance to
talk to people about.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
Their own lives and their own memories.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
We got a chance to watch caregivers interact with senior citizens,
which for us is like data. So when we're thinking
about the way Mom and James interact with.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Grandpa on stage.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
We were watching that in real time and then going
back to the theater and talking about what we saw
and being like, oh, you know what we need to
change mom and the way Mom holds Grandpa as they
walk across the stage because a caregiver wouldn't do what
we're doing right now. So it's those real life interactions
that actually really really shape the work and why it's
so important for someone like me to have an opportunity
(14:44):
to come into an organization like you All's because it
really does change the fabric of the piece that people
get to experience dominic.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
As you think about audiences coming in, intergenerational hoping for families,
what do you hope that they really take away an
experience throughout the moment when the curtain comes down, that
you will leave a lasting impression on those that come in.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Two big things for me that whether it's the conversation
with Alzheimer's or it's something else in their life, there
can be joy in hard things. That's really important to
me because I think when you first describe this piece
of people, it's about mentioning Alzheimer's everyone kind of has
this like, oh, that's stuff, guys, you know, that kind
of reaction. But when you watch the show, you realize
how much joy is inside this family and how much
(15:29):
hope is inside this family. So, whether your family is
going through Alzheimer's or something else, that you can find
joy in it by being with one another. That's really important.
And the second thing, and I helpe people walk away with,
is the feeling and the desire to tell more stories.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
You know, I hate to be.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
Like the social media antisocial media guy, but we live
in a world that's so screen based, and there's an
exchange that happens on those screens, which is great. But
one of the things that happens when we're so connected
to our screens is we're not connected to the people
next to us giving stock stories to one another.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
And there's a different kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
That happens in your brain when you're receiving someone's story,
you know, interacting with their story that's coming out of
their mouth and watching that story come.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
Through a screen.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
I want to remind all of us, from young to old,
that tell your stories to one another, share your stories together,
sit around the dinner table for longer and tell stories,
sit around the campfire for longer and tell stories.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
So those are really two things. Tell stories to each other.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Remember the importance and the joy of that, but also
remember that there can be joy and difficult things as
a family.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
So well said, we are so thankful that you are
connecting this story with our community, and we'll be inspiring
those connections or ripple effects long into the future for
those who are able to experience it. Dominic, thank you
so much.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
We appreciate you joining us for the special conversation. DMPA
Conversations is produced by Andrew Downs, bringing in world class
entertainment and wonderful educational opportunities to Iowan's. Wouldn't it be
possible without the generosity of our donors and the loyalty
of our seasoned ticket holders. Thank you for your continued support.
Visit DMPA dot org or wherever you get your podcasts
for future conversations. Thank you for listening.
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