“Winter Solstice Bash” - A Regenerate! event at Planet Rock Climbing Gym in Ann Arbor (2022)

“Winter Solstice Bash” (2022)

A Regenerate! event at Planet Rock Climbing Gym in Ann Arbor

Wednesday, December 7th - Friday, December 23rd, 2022

Rehearsals at The Neutral Zone’s B-side, and show at Planet Rock Climbing Gym

This project marked a significant milestone for Regenerate. For this show, Peter Littlejohn (my principal Regenerate Ann Arbor collaborator) and I invested way more of our personal resources into recruitment, spreading the opportunity to play in the group far and wide. We engaged in a months-long campaign to get new kinds of people involved in the project. The result was a forty-person ensemble of people with wildly eclectic musical backgrounds, and getting to know them all during out three workshops ate the Neutral Zone was the highlight of the project.

Each rehearsal was catered with delicious meals of local foods by Assistant Director and Chef Peter Littlejohn of Espy coffee. This project let us experiment with intermedia elements in a major way for the first time, the final performance featured performers flying paper airplanes, spinning bicycle wheels, tying knots, blowing on pinwheels, lighting birthday candles, and making sounds on freshly foraged local plants. The show took place in the main climbing chamber of Ann Arbor’s Planet Rock climbing gym, a cavernous space that was equal parts grand and whimsical.