A dance/music performance for young people and families based on The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone:
He cannot choose but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner.”

Written by Coleridge when he was 26, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is considered by many to be one of the great poems of the English language - remarkable for its vivid imagery and haunting metre.

To the accompaniment of violin, clarinet and percussion, a carefree wedding dance is shattered by the arrival of a mysterious seafarer, a man bent by the memory of his misdeeds.  He tells a tale - a terrible story of his ill-fated sea voyage, in which he kills the charmed albatross so condemning himself and his shipmates to a world of phantoms, death and redemption.

Despite being 204 years old, this long narrative poem is easy to follow and startlingly modern, indeed Goosebumps and Harry Potter have nothing on The Rime of the Ancient Mariner!

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