E-Mail This Article to a Friend Sacré bleu! Revels goes French-Canadian BY JEFFREY GANTZ

Imagine the scenario: John (Le) Kerry is elected president and Revels winds up giving command holiday performances of its French-Canadian Christmas Revels at the White House. Well, it didn’t happen, but that just means we’ll have Revels’ always gratifying Christmas production all to ourselves. As for the French-Canadian theme, its choice obviously wasn’t predicated on a Kerry victory, so how did the Revels folks hit on that as opposed to, say, a French theme?

We last had a French mediæval theme in our 1985 Christmas Revels," explains Revels music director George Emlen. "That was also the first time I worked with Paddy [Revels artistic director Patrick Swanson]: he was brought in to direct the ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’ play. Then in 1996, we focused on Brittany, which combined a lot of Breton singing and dancing and bombards, those ear-splitting double-reed instruments that are characteristic of Breton music, with French music, and we reprised ‘Sir Gawain.’ For our Spring Revels of 2000, I hired the Prince Edward Island band Barachois, which of course is Canadian but whose culture is more Acadian than, shall we say, mainland Canadian. We wove them into an ‘Evangeline’ story in which the Acadians, driven out of Nova Scotia by the Brits around 1750, eventually surfaced in Louisiana as Cajuns.

"So this is the first purely Québecois Revels. It is quite distinct from English-speaking Canada, in music, dance, and tradition as well as in language, but there are some themes that spread out across Canada in this show, notably the voyageur traditions. When we say Québec, we are referring to the province, not the city. Since Montréal is also in the province of Québec, we are by no means ignoring that fair city. In fact, Pierre Chartrand, our phenomenal step-dancer, dance teacher, and tradition bearer for this show, is from Montreal. His three musician friends that he is bringing with him are all from Québec City or thereabouts.

"I found out about Pierre through a woman in Maine named Cindy Larock, who spent a lot of time telling me who was who in the world of traditional French-Canadian music and dance. I contacted a number of other musicians but finally went with Pierre and friends for a number of reasons. For one thing, Pierre had been in the 2000 Revels North production in Hanover, New Hampshire, and they all loved him there. For another thing, I realized from talking with him that he would be great to work with, that he would instinctively understand what we would be doing together, and that I wouldn’t have the problem of wrestling with an outsized ego. With talented artists, you occasionally have to deal with people who are trying to build careers or enhance reputations to such an extent that they resist the Revels æsthetic, which is very much an ensemble experience and always works to create community on different levels. At any rate, Pierre was just right, and we are delighted to have him.

"Paddy and I took a road trip to Montreal with Judy [Revels choreographer Judy Erickson] in September to meet Pierre and videotape him as he taught Judy dances for the show. I borrowed his terrific three-volume collection of traditional French Canadian songs and learned a lot about the culture and traditions of the region just from talking with him. One of the most fascinating traditions is the "Chasse-Galerie" legend about the flying canoe, which Paddy immediately seized upon as a great visual element for the show. In the French version, Lord Galerie is condemned to hunt for eternity in the night sky, and people say they hear his hounds baying on stormy nights. In Québec, the hunting party is replaced by a flying canoe bearing voyageurs on their way home to their families for Christmas, and this too is sometimes visible at night.

So is Revels expecting Kerry to attend this year? Perhaps deliver an introduction in his (almost) native tongue? Is a vote for French (Canadian) a continuing vote against the current administration?! "M. Le Kerry," Patrick Swanson affirms, "is welcome with clogs on." "Sorry I don’t know what Monsigneur Kerry has in mind for holiday entertainment this year," Emlen concludes. "Certainly this Revels should be at the top of his list. I’m not sure an introduction from His Holiness would set the right tone for a Revels performance, but you never know.

The Christmas Revels, with Danse Cadence, the Québecois Kids, the Revels Chorus, David Coffin, the Pinewoods Morris Men, and the Cambridge Symphonic Brass Ensemble, opens next Friday, December 10, and runs through December 28 at Harvard’s Sanders Theatre, in Memorial Hall, between Harvard Yard and the Law School Yard in Harvard Square. Tickets are $20 to $42, or $12 to $32 for children under 12; call (617) 496-2222, or visit www.revels.org.