The Creative Arts Guild’s annual full-length ballet, The Snow Queen, is celebrating its 13th anniversary! Join us on this magical journey through the seasons inspired by the Hans Christian Andersen fairy-tale and learn how love can melt even the coldest of hearts.
The Snow Queen 2018 will be performed with a professional live chamber orchestra. This is an experience that we initiated for our 2016 production and one that we are proud to continue for our community as it raises the bar for arts experiences in our region.
In 2005, CAG produced its first annual production of The Snow Queen. The Snow Queen was adapted from a beautiful and well-known Hans Christian Andersen story and was transformed into a full-length classical ballet. Every part of the ballet was hand picked by CAG’s Dance Director Jessie Fincher and former Assistant Dance Director Elizabeth Fisher. The score incorporates pieces from Glazunov, Tchaikovsky, and Delibes among other public domain music, each costume was carefully selected, and every step was choreographed from the ground up making this a truly original work of art.
After the 10th anniversary of this production in November of 2015, CAG staff and board members began dreaming about how we could elevate this annual production and bring an even greater arts experience to our community audiences and elevate the performance and educational opportunity for our students. CAG was also charged with a new strategic focus to engage and support working artists. The idea of the addition of a live orchestra was born.
With the support of the Ken and Myra White Foundation, during the 2016 year, the score was constructed by arranger Rodney Bishop, David Pasqua was brought on as the production’s conductor and leader of the Creative Arts Guild Chamber Orchestra’s musicians, and our 11th annual production of The Snow Queen opened to our largest audience to date.
The addition of the professional musicians not only added a tremendous learning opportunity for our students, and engaged working artists validating their work in the world, but also engaged a broader and larger audience – people who loved music but fell in love with the ballet. Although the production was 11 years strong in 2017, many of our audience members were first-time attendees.
After the huge success of our inaugural year with a live orchestra, CAG looked to take the arts engagement a step further and received funding from Georgia Council for the Arts to support bringing our chamber orchestra into our school field trips for 960 students. CAG reached out to Dalton High School Drama department to partner with us to write and perform a script in conjunction with an abbreviated version of the production incorporating several of the new arts standards.
Now beginning its 13th year, The Snow Queen is seen as a treasured work of art in the Dalton community and a crown jewel of CAG.
Act I
Scene I: Opening: We are introduced to the four royal sisters, Spring Princess (a kind but lonely woman); Summer Princess (playful but selfish); Fall Princess (a wild gypsy) and the Snow Queen (beautiful but cold and conniving). Here, we take a look back to when the Queen of the Sprites and her little Sprites made a magic mirror that controls the seasons of the four sisters. Snow decides that she alone wants to possess the mirror and steals it with the Sprite’s help. When stolen, the mirror shatters into a million pieces and one shard lands in the eye of a village girl, Kay. Snow Queen begins her search to find Kay and get the shard back.
Scene II: The Village: It’s dawn in the marketplace. The townspeople enter as the sun is rising and greet one another as they begin to sell their wares. Here we are introduced to the Village Adults, Children, Mazurka Girls and close, loving Sisters, Kay and Gerda. All villagers are dancing joyously on a lovely day. As the time to head to school and work comes, the village girl Kay is gifted a beautiful hand embroidered handkerchief by the village’s Seamstress. Kay shows her beautiful gift to her sister. We are then left only with Kay and Gerda who are frozen by the Snow Queen when she enters to kidnap and take Kay back to her snowy castle to retrieve the final missing shard of glass. During the kidnapping, Kay leaves behind her handkerchief and heads through the seasons to winter under the Snow Queen’s spell. The Queen of the Sprites enters the village, awakens Gerda, shows her the handkerchief and begins the journey through the 4 seasons to find her sister in Winter and take her home.
Act II
Scene I: The journey through Spring: We are introduced to the Spring Princess, a kind but lonely woman who welcomes Gerda with open arms and wishes more than anything that she will stay. Knowing that Gerda needs rest, Spring Princess tells Gerda to sleep, hoping that she will forget her journey. However, the whispering roses wake Gerda up and remind her to think of her sister and continue on to the next season.
Scene II: The journey through Summer: Here we are introduced to the lovely but arrogant Summer Princess who dances merrily to a very impressed Gerda. But once she realizes the Princess’ intentions for her – to make her a servant – she escapes from Summer’s Palace and continues on to Fall. Summer sends her Pages after her but to no avail. Gerda is already gone.
Scene III: The journey through Fall: Gerda is scared and tired now as her journey has been long. She sneaks into Fall and bumps into the Fall Princess who is a wild and fearsome gypsy. Fall Princess’ daughter, Robber Girl, enters and begs her mother to give her Gerda as a plaything because she has no friends her own age. The Princess finally agrees. In time, Gerda realizes that she must leave because her sister is the most important thing to her. Gerda tricks the Robber Girl into letting her go and her mother, the Fall Princess, reveals her disappointment with her child.
Scene IV: The journey into Winter: Gerda, again with the help of the Queen of the Sprites, finds her sister Kay with the Snow Queen. Icicles, Frost and Snow Storms dance around them trying to keep them under the control of the Snow Queen. Eventually, the other royal sisters — Spring, Summer and Fall, along with the Queen of the Sprites — come to the rescue and help Gerda and Kay escape. Kay puts the final shard of glass back in the mirror and returns the mirror to the Queen of the Sprites to be taken away for good. Kay and Gerda rejoice in their reunion!
Thank you to our 2018 Sponsors!
Sustaining Partners
Jeanne Burr
Textile Rubber & Chemical Company
Marketing Alliance
Ken and Myra White
Barrett Properties
Norris and Bille Little
Cindy Michaels
Bob and Dottie Shaw
STEARNS & WEST
Gregg and Sandra Sims
Bill and Linda Blackman
Christopher and Amanda Brown
Jerry Henderson
John and Cynthia Wilson
David and Pauline Aft
Snow Queen
Ken and Myra White
Finley Family Charitable Foundation
Georgia Council for the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts
Marketing Alliance Group
Shaw Industries Group, Inc
Textile Rubber & Chemical Company
Hans Christian Andersen
Dalton Plastic Surgery
Mieke DeClerck Hanssens
Engineered Floors, LLC
Schlotzsky’s
Winter
Dalton Utilities/Optilink
Bill and Heidi Edwards
David and Cindy McCreery
Fall
BB&T Bank
First Nainal Community Bank
Jerry Henderson
Marvin and Joanne Lewis
Maryville Jewelers
John Minor
Mohawk Group
Mr. Real Estate
North Georgia Urology Center
Tate and Katie O’ Gwin
Snipes Orthodontics
Peds Care
Steve and Cathy Snyder
Summer
Marc and Penny Carpenter
John and Marilyn Hutcheson
Jolly Textile Sales
Love Funeral Home
Bob and Dixie Kinard
Norris and Bille Little
Norville Industries Inc
Spring
Trisha and Jim Bethal
Joanne and Marvin Lewis
The Minor Firm
Willis Funeral Home, Inc
