Walker and the Ghost Dance

Two dazzling dramas on American themes from the Nobel laureate Derek Walcott Walker and Ghost Dance.. On a cold winter''s day on the Dakota plains Catherine Weldon receives a caller Kicking Bear bringing news of Indian rebellion. In the fort nearby a tiny community splinters apart over how to react. In Ghost Dance first performed in 1989 Walcott turns a story with a foregone conclusion -- Sitting Bull and his Sioux followers will die at the hands of the Army and Indian agents -- into a portrait of life at a crossroads of American history. . In Walker an opera first performed in 1992 and revised for its revival in 2001 Walcott shifts his attention east taking for his subject David Walker the nineteenth-century black abolitionist. In Walcott ''s hands Walker becomes a classical hero for his people: a leader who is also a poet.