In the weeks after Hurricane Helene, Heather Maloy, the founder of Terpsicorps Theatre of Dance, was not out on the frontlines of storm response. Like many parents, she made the tough choice to evacuate with her 12-year old son as the region struggled to access food, water, electricity and other essentials.
So when Maloy returned to Asheville, weeks later, she was moved by what she saw.
“I was just so enamored by the determination and the drive of these people who were doing all these things,” she said.
There was the pretzel shop that kept everyone in Swannanoa fed. The troupe of volunteers who helped flush toilets during the water outage. And the church pastor in Asheville who wrote checks for millions of dollars in overdue rent. All of these heroic actions inspired Maloy – and made her ask herself – what could she do?
“I had 100% survivor guilt,” she said. “I didn’t do enough. And that's why I decided to honor these people and create a situation that would be healing for the community in a way that I know how to do.”
As a longtime choreographer, dance felt like an intuitive way to pay tribute. She put out an open call for local heroes, and after gathering more than 50 stories, wrote a performance. These stories were submitted by community members and not independently verified by BPR.
“Before we had words and before we had language, we had body language,” Maloy said. “And so when you tell a story through dance, it resonates in a much deeper and more visceral way.”
Her contemporary ballet, Appalachian Phoenix, translates the unspeakable moments of grief, loss and recovery in a two-hour long show that premieres at The Wortham Center for Performing Arts on Thursday, July 24 and runs through Saturday, July 26.
While most of the show’s material is sourced from Western North Carolina, the dancers come from all over the country for the summer troupe.
Garret McNally, a dancer based in New Orleans, said he and the rest of the troupe researched and listened intently so that they could understand the emotions behind the choreography.
“We really dug deep,” he said. “So once we get on stage we can picture those things and feel them and then move accordingly.”
He hopes the show makes people reflect on what grew from Helene.
“By retelling it, we're in a way cementing it in history, so we don't forget,” he said. “It’s going to make them go, ‘Huh. What came of this? What grew from this? Look where we are now. It shows the progress that people are capable of.’”
One of the heroes featured is a four-year-old boy, Mikey Palomo Ramos, who grabbed a shovel and a tiny bucket to help his neighbors dig mud out of their home after the flood swept through.
“He put on his little galoshes and he went outside and he started digging them out,” Maloy said. “And even when the adults came and were doing the big work, he was right there beside them shoveling and carrying it down the hill and dumping.”
Another one of the heroes, portrayed by dancer Alexandra Zakharchenko, is an anonymous nurse, who helped reunite a dementia patient with her husband, after they both ended up at different hospitals.
“It's a true story where the wife and husband got separated by the river during the hurricane and ended up in two different hospitals,” Zakharchenko said.
Despite no power, electricity and limited road access, “she made it happen. She reunited the two,” she said.
These are just a few of the stories represented in Appalachian Phoenix. The show also weaves in physical relics left over from Helene.
In the lead-up to the show, Maloy collected thousands of empty water bottles, left over from the water crisis. She worked with her team to bag them into hexagons; they now hang on stage, configured into a translucent curtain as the backdrop to the performance.
A live, original score will emanate from behind bottles, performed by composers Jeff Schmitt, River Guerguerian and Chris Rosser, vocalist Datrian Johnson and Madelyn Ilana on fiddle and bass.
Maloy also upcycled some of the donated clothing that went unused after Helene. She set aside all of the blue pieces of fabric and eventually wove them into the shape of a river that thrashes, and eventually helps heal the community throughout the performance.
“I wanted to make sure that there was something about these rivers of clothes that could also become this thing of beauty and comfort,” she said.
Terpsicorps Theatre of Dance is a business sponsor of Blue Ridge Public Radio.
