BWW Blog: Adam Castaneda Talks the FrenetiCore Dance 2015 Winter Show, THE SNOW QUEEN

For its 2015 winter show, FrenetiCore Dance presents THE SNOW QUEEN, a family-friendly narrative dance based on the renowned Hans Christian Andersen tale of the same name. It's a wonderfully sweet story as FrenetiCore Dance's Adam Castaneda attests in the essay below. Scroll down to read Adam's thoughts on the enchanting SNOW QUEEN presented by FrenetiCore Dance.

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In anticipation of FrenetiCore Dance's December show, The Snow Queen, many people in the community have asked why our company chose this particular fairy tale in creating our first family-friendly holiday production. It would be easy to say that we're jumping on the [2013 film] FROZEN, but the real reason is a bit more complicated than that. After all, Disney's interpretation of Hans Christian Andersen's beloved tale has little in common with the original. We wanted to stick a little closer to Andersen's intentions by paying homage to the original narrative while also infusing it with some elements of our own imaginations.

My own relationship with THE SNOW QUEEN goes further back before it was even in pre-production at Disney. I read the story in graduate school, as part of my research on the Victorian obsession with childhood and the birth of a new literary genre, one we now know as children's literature. At its core, THE SNOW QUEEN is about a little girl who leaves her sheltered village life and journeys into the world to save her childhood playmate, who becomes enchanted by the elusive Snow Queen. Gerta and Kai share a platonic bond, and Gerta is ultimately moved to action by the necessity of keeping her friendship intact.

Along the way, Gerta meets a host of fascinating characters. She meets a benevolent witch, a bumbling princess and her bumbling prince, a robber woman and the robber woman's daughter, the Lapp Woman and the Finn Woman, and a jolly reindeer who takes Gerta across an arctic landscape. Gerta does not just encounter these fantastical characters, but befriends them, and therein lies the magical theme of Andersen's work. Gerta goes from having one friend in the world to having many. Andersen's work shows us that making friends isn't about winning a popularity contest, but about entering people's lives and making a difference.

Friendship as a theme is so pivotal to THE SNOW QUEEN that the title character herself only makes a brief appearance. There's no climactic showdown between the heroine and the villainess. Gerta is just a little girl after all. Gerta is able to break the Snow Queen's enchantment by sheer ingenuity and the power of her own heart. Andersen created her journey to illustrate the wonderful act of friend-making, and how the strength of special friendships, like Gerta's and Kai's, can create a shift in perspective. By the time the two children return home, a whole year has passed by, but they are able to look at the world with new eyes and open hearts.

Not all of Andersen's characters made it into our show, and some make an appearance in other iterations. In reimagining the narrative, I thought it would be nice to have Gerta and Kai be around the age of 18 and of marriageable age. I wanted to deconstruct the idea that two youths of the opposite sex and in close proximity to each other had to be involved romantically. Kai, in fact, has a fiancée, an original character named Aldine. When the Snow Queen steals Kai away, it is Gerta, not Aldine, who goes to Kai's rescue. Aldine may have Kai's heart, but it's Gerta who shares with Kai the childhood stories of the Snow Queen; it's her familiarity with the folklore and with Kai that makes her the only candidate for the job, superseding even his romantic relationship with Aldine.

Of course, there's no reason why Gerta shouldn't find her soulmate along the way, so I decided to give her one in the form of Crow. Crow, you ask? The character is based on a minor character in Andersen's original. The Crow in that story was, in fact, a crow and takes Gerta to the princess' castle where he thinks the prince is Kai. That scene is deleted from our version of the story, but I thought it would be nice to keep the Crow as a character and make him Gerta's chief helper. My Crow is a young man who Gerta stumbles across on her journey. They have instant chemistry, not as romantic partners, but as friends. As often happens, love develops out of this strong friendship.

To tell this story, I hired two choreographers from the Houston dance community whose work I've admired for a while. Laura Harrell and Heather VonReichbauer don't just produce wonderful movement, but I knew they had an innate sense of character and narrative. FrenetiCore is Houston's only professional modern dance company with an emphasis on producing narrative work, so I felt their voices would greatly enhance the project, especially combined with that of the organization's Founding Artistic Director Rebecca French. I think the three have produced some wonderful dances that convey the power of Andersen's story and give new insight into these timeless characters.

And what of the Snow Queen herself? As I mentioned earlier, she makes one appearance in the original fairy tale, but in my reimagining, she has a more central role. For one, I've given her a backstory, which reveals how she became the Snow Queen. I won't give anything away here, but I think the story will give the audience a new perspective into this mysterious character. I always thought that underneath the icy exterior, there was a passionate woman who was ruled not by evil whims, but the harsh reality that she's been dealt and which defines most of the world.

I think THE SNOW QUEEN will appeal to audiences on multiple levels because who doesn't love a fairy tale? And in the world we live in today, we need fairy tales. Hans Christian Andersen's story is so essential today because it reminds us that things like friendship, love, and community are still important. Gerta's journey to rescue Kai is really about finding joy in the world. It may be hard to do so when we're faced with so many uncertainties and so much pain, but it's possible. And if we have friends, then the world becomes a magical place.

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FrenetiCore Dance's THE SNOW QUEEN performances are December 4-6 and 10-12 at 7:30 p.m. and December 6 at 2 p.m. Frenetic Theater, 5102 Navigation Blvd. Adult: $16-$25, Children: $8-$10, and on December 10: Pay-what-you-can. freneticore.net

Photos courtesy of FrenetiCore Dance