HANSEL & GRETEL and TRIBE plus tap and some solos by The Shetland Community School of Ballet.

Matthew Lawrence is presenting Hansel & Gretel, a fairy tale that could have had a pretty grim ending, or indeed any ending you like. This version of the story stretches the brief a little bit, over a few years, but it remains accurate as the Brothers Grimm intended it to!

Then the school's wee group of tappers are going to do a little number ably assisted by their teacher, well, because he wants to join in actually. There are also two solos danced by some of the Senior girls, one piece of music by Aretha Franklin and the other by Billy Joel.

Then there is Tribe, which the school did in conjunction with the very first BBC Ten pieces performed by the Shetland Community Orchestra. The musical piece is a concerto for orchestra accompanied by a scratch DJ. In 2017, we had to use a recording of the one piece we were using and then Matthew found the whole concerto on CD with other DJ's covers of the five pieces of the concerto. The theme that evolved into the school's full-blown performance at the end of 2017 was to do with indigenous people and their relationships with each other and life and things ending dramatically. The 2024 Tribe piece goes a step further, taking two tribes being at loggerheads and whilst reuniting together as one, celebrating their new unity, travelling and being joyous, find that are things can still take an unexpected term...

As Matthew points out, this piece is influenced by indigenous peoples from the South Pacific. Their dances, lifestyles and their close connection with their environment and their successful survival, which sadly even today is being challenged by corrupt governments and big corporations. Having been brought up in this environment living shoulder to shoulder with New Zealand's indigenous people at school as a youngster and working within the arts, this has had a strong influence on his ideas about this piece. It is not intended to be a fully abstract piece but as Mark Rothko once said; 'everyone deems his/herself a good judge and an adequate arbiter of what a work of art should be and how it should be'. So, in other words we will leave it to you, the viewer/audience to make your own mind up.