Images
Listen
A New Multidisciplinary Work for Dance, Theatre, Percussion, and Orchestra
Based on the book by Shannon Stocker
Choreography by Preeti Vasudevan
Music by Vasco Mendonça
Featuring Deaf and hearing performers with American Sign Language integration
Listen is a vibrant multidisciplinary performance that brings together dance, music, theatre, and visual storytelling to explore the extraordinary journey of hearing-disabled percussionist Evelyn Glennie. Inspired by Shannon Stocker’s acclaimed book, the work follows young Evelyn’s determination to pursue her passion for music while discovering the unique ways she experiences and understands the world around her.
Featuring choreography by Tresh Dance’s Artistic Director Preeti Vasudevan and a new score by Vasco Mendonça, Listen brings together Deaf and hearing performers in a richly collaborative theatrical experience that integrates American Sign Language, Bharatanatyam-inspired movement, live percussion, and symphonic sound. Rather than presenting accessibility as an addition, ASL and musical interpretation are woven directly into the choreography and storytelling, becoming essential artistic elements of the work itself.
Through movement, rhythm, and shared expression, Listen celebrates perseverance, inclusion, and the courage to embrace one’s individuality. Evelyn’s journey invites audiences to reconsider what it means to listen—not only through hearing, but through the full range of human senses and connections.
A powerful experience for audiences of all ages, Listen encourages us to discover sound and movement in a new way — as if discovering our senses again for the very first time.
Duration: Approximately 20 minutes
Photo Credit © Philip Rathmer (for Brigitte)
Q&A with evelyn and preeti
EG: My life has never been lived in a single language, a single culture, or a single art form, so it could never be faithfully told through just one discipline.
What drew me to Preeti Vasudevan and Vasco Mendonça is their shared curiosity of interpretation. Preeti doesn’t just choreograph Bharatanatyam; she uses its ancient, precise physical vocabulary to speak to the modern world. Vasco is a master at constructing architectural landscapes of sound that capture complex psychological depths. By weaving their distinct heritages together with sign language and contemporary theatre, Listen! Opens up more doors of communication. My story is deeply personal, but this multidisciplinary project transforms it into something far bigger. It proves that when we truly pause to listen across different worlds, we don’t just bridge cultural divides – we discover a completely new, shared human language.
PV: I have always been a huge fan of Evelyn Glennie, and what moved me most about the book was her perseverance and refusal to give up. What drew me to creating a dance-theatre work was her description of rhythm and sound as a sensation that lived deep inside her. As a choreographer and dancer, that resonated with me immediately. Dancers also work from an internal pulse, expressing outwardly what is felt within. Reading about how Evelyn developed this profound relationship to sound and learned to communicate it to the world felt incredibly powerful to me. It opened up a beautiful connection between movement, music, sensation, and expression that I felt compelled to explore through this new work.
PV: While the project is still in development, Listen will use six dancer-actors, both deaf and hearing, to explore the rhythmic and sonic world that shaped young Evelyn’s “magical listening.” Combining American Sign Language, classical South Asian dance hand gestures, highly energized rhythmic dance, and live percussion, the work will create a universal theatrical language that is layered, immersive, and multi-sensory. At its heart, the piece asks: How do we learn to read each other? And how can stories help us listen deeply to one another with true empathy?
A central focus of the work is rhythm-driven movement and footwork that blend South Indian classical dance techniques with a live percussion score created by award-winning composer Vasco Mendonca, inspired by Evelyn’s electrifying presence as a performer—a kind of “fire dancer” onstage. The performers will incorporate ASL alongside Indian dance vocabulary, using expressive hand and facial gestures woven into the choreography as a new language of expression.
The piece will trace Evelyn’s life across four stages, from childhood and the loss of her hearing to her evolution into one of the world’s most celebrated artists. Using the book as an inspiration, the production aims to create an abstract, emotionally resonant world of music, movement, and visual storytelling. The creative team is also researching the use of haptic technology so that audience members who are Deaf or hard of hearing can experience the vibrations and physical energy of the performance.
EG: To live with a disability is not a limitation of capability – it’s a specialization in navigation. When people look at a disability, they often see a door that has been closed. What they fail to see is that when standard doors are closed, you are forced to develop an entirely new way of moving through the world. You learn to listen with your body, to see with your intuition, and to problem-solve with a level of creativity and curiosity that the mainstream world rarely has to access. The difference is not a deficit but an extraordinary blueprint for innovation. My message to young people is to not waste your energy trying to fit into a world built for the mainstream. The world does not need you to conform to definitions of how things “should” be done. It desperately needs your unique perspective to show what else is possible.
You are not here to be tolerated or accommodated. You are here to teach the world how to truly listen.
EG: Listening has not become more difficult; it has become endangered.
The greatest trap of our modern, hyper-connected world is that we confuse hearing with listening. We are bombarded by an unceasing, aggressive torrent of data, notifications, and noise. In response, our brains have naturally built thicker filters just to survive the day. But when we filter out the noise, we accidentally filter out the nuance. We have transitioned into a culture of defensive broadcasting, where people only listen to formulate their next counter-argument, rather than to comprehend. True listening requires a willingness to be changed by what you encounter. The noise of the world tells us that whoever shouts the loudest wins. But real power, real innovation, and real connection happen in the pauses, the undertones, and the resonance.
Listening is no longer just a soft skill or an artistic discipline. It is a radical act of rebellion against a distracted world. If we lose the capacity to listen deeply, we lose our capacity to think deeply, to feel empathy, and to truly coexist.
PV: I believe orchestras should program Listen because live music has the power not only to entertain, but to awaken emotional and physical awareness in audiences. By combining symphonic music with movement, I want the work to invite both deaf and hearing audiences to experience sound as sensation, emotion, and human connection rather than passive listening alone. Through dance and live orchestra, Listen encourages audiences to reflect on how emotions live within the body and how we connect through shared sensory experience. I see the project as an opportunity for orchestras to expand the meaning of “listening” and create more immersive, inclusive, and emotionally activating performances. I hope audiences leave Listen feeling reawakened to the power of live human connection in an increasingly artificial world. Through the shared energy between performers and audience, the work invites people to experience music, movement, and storytelling as deeply human acts rooted in vulnerability and presence. At its heart, the piece is also about resilience — inspired by Evelyn Glennie’s journey overcoming obstacles to become a groundbreaking artist. I hope audiences will feel empowered to embrace their own individuality, discover their inner voice, and listen more deeply to themselves and to one another.
EG: Listening is not a physical act of the ears; it is an intellectual and emotional commitment to presence. When we created The Evelyn Glennie Foundation, our mission To Teach the World to Listen – was intentionally designed to reach far beyond the music world. Today, humanity is more connected than ever before, yet we are profoundly divided because we have forgotten how to receive. We hear the noise, the arguments, and the signals, but we fail to listen to the spaces in between. The Foundation’s work is focused on treating listening as a vital, foundational life skill that can heal communication, bridge cultural divides, and spark deep curiosity. Through our educational initiatives and global partnerships, we are showing people how to engage with sound and each other with their entire being. We teach corporate leaders, educators, and children alike that true listening requires vulnerability and patience. My greatest hope for the Foundation’s enduring legacy is that it serves as a global catalyst for empathy. If we can shift the world from a state of constant, defensive broadcasting to one of deep, intentional listening, we don’t just change how we create art – we change how we resolve conflict, how we innovate, and how we coexist on this planet.
EG: It would be a dream to bring Listen Up! to the United States!
We live in a culture obsessed with the microphone. We are taught that to matter, to have power, and to create change, we must project our voices louder than the surrounding noise. But a society composed entirely of broadcasters quickly becomes deafening, polarized, and stagnant. When I say that the most radical act we can offer is our listening, I mean that true power lies in our capacity to receive, absorb, and be altered by the world around us. When Listen Up! comes to America (I am optimistic), my hope is to completely disrupt the Western misconception that listening is a passive, submissive act. It is quite the opposite. True listening is a fierce, active, and deeply physical engagement. It requires immense courage because you must silence your own internal monologue and risk being changed by what you experience. My intention is for American audiences to walk away realizing that listening is the ultimate tool for social architecture. We do not need more echo chambers; we need resonance. By transforming listening from an overlooked physical mechanism into a conscious, creative, and human act, we can begin to heal our social fractures. I want people to leave the residency not asking, “How can I make myself heard?” but rather, “What have I been missing because I forgot how to truly listen?”
EG: My imagination has never been fuelled by what I have achieved, but by what I have yet to perceive. The moment we believe we have “accomplished” everything, our curiosity dies and for me, curiosity is the very pulse of life. My ultimate dream project is not a specific concert hall, an award, or a particular collaborator. My grandest ambition is to completely dismantle the global, systemic architecture of how sound and space are designed. I want to collaborate with urban planners, architects, and scientists to build the world’s first entirely resonant city spaces – environments explicitly engineered not to suppress sound, but to invite tactile, full-body listening. I dream of creating public landscapes where the deaf, the hearing, the neurodivergent, and the neurotypical can experience sound equally, through their skin, their bones, and the earth beneath their feet. My imagination is continuously captured by the invisible and the ignored. I want to look into the shadows of our creative industries and elevate the artistic voices we have systematically tuned out. The projects that inspire me are those that force us to question our sensory limits. I am not interested in leaving behind a monument to my past; I want to leave behind a world that is vastly more open, curious, and deeply attuned to the vibrations of life.