ArtsEmerson: ‘Book of Mountains and Seas’

Book of Mountains and Seas is a daring, new work by award-winning composer Huang Ruo and MacArthur Fellow puppeteer/artist Basil Twist. In this pitch-perfect collaboration, the show takes on ancient Chinese creation myths—first transcribed in the 4th century BCE—which are strikingly relevant to our current climate change emergency. An ensemble of massive puppets, as beautiful as they are intimidating, and the chorus of Ars Nova Copenhagen harness music and a stunning visual tableaux to offer a portrait of the natural world and our vital, yet tenuous, relationship to it.

Basil Twist is a third-generation puppeteer and object theater artist, renowned globally for his visionary adaptations of opera, dance, and theater. Chinese-born American composer Huang Ruo has been called “one of the world’s leading young composers” and was formerly Composer in Residence at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.