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Embedded within the large-scale, multi-year project The Carnival of the Animals, Aquarium is one act of the 14-movement work engaging the titles from Camille Saint-Saëns’s 1885 musical suite for children, but with a concentration on endangerment and extinction. With original plans to premier the live work in 2020, the performance was still in development when the Covid-19 pandemic led to indefinite postponement.

Work continued in private with drawings by director Lin Hixson (above), and through writing and creative projects presented in our quarterly newsletters. By Autumn 2020, we began working cautiously and with strict protocols in a converted garage to make a short film engaging selections of the costumes and choreography from the live work in development, as well as introducing new camera-specific elements.

Aquarium (13:36) surveys an impossible ecosystem of three endangered sea entities, featuring performances by Bryan Saner as The Lesser Electric Ray, Elise Cowin as The Eyelash Seaweed, and Alex Bradley Cohen as Limestone, and the original Aquarium Song written and performed by Madeleine Aguilar, with lyrics from a poem by Ed Roberson.