Elephant on #WordyMonday
Witch-hunt at the Linbury Theatre Studio, Royal Opera House, (c) Carole Edrich 2013
Today’s WordyMonday theme, Elephant, was suggested by Ms Hedgehog . I’ve decided to show it through the phrase ‘the elephant in the room’. On researching the story behind Cathy Marston’s choreography I discovered that the attractive Anna Goeldi arrived in the Swiss village of Glarus to work for the local mayor as a maid and became victim of a witch hunt at the time of Europe’s Age
of Enlightenment (well after the Middle Ages). The events around it, which include torture, seem to have been an easy way to remove an inconvenient truth. Research by local journalist Walter Hauser suggests that she threatened to tell others about an affair she had with the local mayor after he threatened to sack her. Hauser says; “Anna Goeldi was a threat to powerful people. They wanted her out of the way, accusing her of being a witch. It was a legal way to kill her.”
Witch-hunt at the Linbury Theatre Studio, Royal Opera House, (c) Carole Edrich 2013
Even though an official apology has been issued and there’s a museum named after her, I discovered that some of the locals still don’t believe a formal exoneration would be of benefit. Indeed, on a Radio 4 programme I heard one young villager saying that she believed it would serve no purpose. That’s why I chose these images to represent the ‘elephant in the room’.
Witch-hunt at the Linbury Theatre Studio, Royal Opera House, (c) Carole Edrich 2013
by Carole Edrich
WordyMonday is a word game that anyone can join. Someone suggests a word (you can see the current list here) and I try to interpret that word with a dance image. If you’d like to suggest a word
please do, as a comment to this blog, to @CE_Images on Twitter or at Carole Edrich Photography on facebook. Anyone interested can take up the challenge by finding an image that reflects their interpretation of the word suggested for that week. If you do, please share what you’ve done by posting a link on this blog and use the #WordyMonday tag.