"The Snow Queen" comes to the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts

November 17, 2005

"The Snow Queen," Hans Christian Andersen's classic tale about holding onto your beliefs, returns to Fairfield University's Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts on Sunday, Dec. 18 at 1 and 3 p.m. Set to the music of Archangelo Corelli, the unusual production features a narrated ballet by larger-than-life puppets from Hudson Vagabond Puppets.

The Quick Center is bringing "The Snow Queen" back by popular demand, said Deborah Sommers, the Quick Center's director of programming. "The mix of beautiful music and life-size puppets makes this production a real treat for the whole family," she said.

Suitable for children in all grades, "The Snow Queen" tells the tale of two friends, Kay and Gerde, who are as close as brother and sister. When Kay catches a sliver of a demon's magic mirror in his eye, he sees everything in the world as bad and twisted. Fascinated by the mathematical beauty of the mystical Snow Queen, Kay travels with her to her frozen palace in the north.

Gerde searches the world for her friend and, with the help of some wise animal friends and a rowdy robber girl, she makes her way to the Snow Queen's palace. In the end, the story holds a valuable lesson about holding onto one's beliefs.

Incorporated in 1980, Hudson Vagabond Puppets borrows from the Japanese Bunraku style, as dancers and actors don black costumes and become shadows of the enormous figures they bring to life. HVP tours nationally throughout the year at major performing arts centers, including Brooklyn Academy of Music, the California Institute of Technology, Empire Center at The Egg and the New Jersey Performing Arts Center.

The company specializes in narrated ballets and its puppets have danced with The Little Orchestra Society at Lincoln Center, the Phoenix Symphony, the St. Louis Symphony, the Detroit Symphony and the United States Military Concert Band at West Point.

Tickets are $12 for adults, $10 for children. The production will be repeated on Monday, Dec. 19, at 10 a.m. and noon for the Center's ArtsBound Schoolday series. The ArtsBound series is sponsored in part by the Greater Bridgeport Area Foundation, The Harry Chapin Foundation and the Herman Goldman Foundation. Tickets for the ArtsBound shows are $7. For tickets, call the Quick Center box office at (203) 254-4010 or toll free at 1-877-ARTS-396. For more information, visit www.quickcenter.com.

Media Contact: Dana Ambrosini, (203) 254-4000, ext. 2726

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Vol. 38, No. 99

Fairfield University is a comprehensive Jesuit university that prepared undergraduate, graduate and continuing education students for leadership and service in a constantly changing world. In its 2006 editions, U.S.News and World Report's "America's Best Colleges" ranks Fairfield fourth among universities with master's programs in the North and The Princeton Review lists Fairfield among "The Best 361 Colleges." Approximately 5,000 undergraduate and graduate students from 34 states, 45 countries, and the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico are enrolled in the University's six schools. The University was founded in 1942 in the scenic shoreline community of Fairfield, Connecticut.