Sheppard Ferguson/submitted The Washington Revels will bring three ancient cultures of Andalusia to life in thier annual celebration of the winter solstice.

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Annual holiday shows have a way of attracting audiences year after year. But unlike other Christmas staples such as “The Nutcracker,” the Washington Revels transport audiences to a different time and place every year with their cultural celebration of the winter solstice.

The 29th annual holiday show by the Silver Spring-based Washington Revels celebrates Sephardic, Arabic and Iberian cultures in a musical spectacular featuring more than 75 performers of all ages and the traditional music of Trio Sefardi and Layali El Andalus.

Themed “Andalusian Treasures: Jewish, Arabic and Spanish Music, Dance and Drama,” the production explores a period of cultural richness in medieval Andalusia, a region in southern Spain. The story follows two adventurers looking for treasure, who along the way uncover something greater.

Executive Director Greg Lewis chats with The Gazette about turning the art and culture of ancient people into a modern message for the holidays.

Cody Calamaio: What is this year’s “Revels” all about?

Greg Lewis: It is a celebration of the legacy of medieval Andalusia…Christmas Revels is really something of a misnomer. It’s a celebration of the winter solstice and we do it in different cultures. …This a little bit of an interesting mix because no one really knows what the music was in medieval Andalusia because it wasn’t notated. There were words but nobody wrote down (the music) it was an oral tradition. So we sort of traced things back though folk roots. A lot of what we’re doing is celebrating legacy of these three cultures that came together on the Iberian Peninsula back in the whole 800 years of the Middle Ages from the 700s up until the expulsion of the Moors and the Jews in 1492. It’s not historical, we don’t run the whole gamut. It’s really put together as celebration of the cultural flowering that took place and the extraordinary richness of these three cultures that intertwined and lived together in a better way during much of this period. So in that way it’s also a celebration of the symbol that Andalusia has become for great tolerance greater acceptance greater engagement… It sort of indirectly asks the question ‘Why not today?’

CC: How do you take something that I would assume the average person might not know about in-depth and make it a learning experience and an enjoyable performance?

GL: In general, you don’t get very heavy into the history and into the philosophy of the tolerance. You offer that there, and we offer it in a lot of different ways. Our program book is heavily researched and offers a lot of educating materials… Within the show itself, it’s entertainment in one respect but it’s also a celebration. Revels are celebrations and they’re bringing community together in important times like the winter solstice, the changing from dark to light. What we really want people to see at a minimum is the bringing together of the cultures on stage. You just don’t see that very much. You don’t see Jewish and Arabic performers coming together very often. It is something that tells people there was a time when this happened. And yes, it broke down, but it was a rich time and it was an important time.

CC: How do you take the performers, musicians, et cetera, and use them to tell this story?

GL: The Revels is an interesting mix. It is multigenerational. It is professional and non-professional. It is large. It has as many as 90 to 100 people on the stage at the same time. We don’t necessarily take a specific story. Sometimes we do. Last year, we did a Revels in rural England based on a novel by Thomas Hardy. But very often it is a loose plot that allows the stitching together of the music the dance and the drama.

CC: How do you deal with staging, costumes, makeup? It sounds like it would be a lot if you have such a big cast.

GL: It is, and we have an extraordinary costume team who works through the entire year in preparing. A lot of stuff is built and made, also rented. The tableau of costumes is beautiful and rich. This mix of costumes that is all very authentically done. People put a lot into the study and the effort of it. …What we try to do in all of this, particularly in the costumes, is give a sense of authenticity…The staging is intricate. It is much like grand opera because of the size.

CC: What is something you hope the viewer will get out of this performance?

GL: The biggest thing is a sense of the importance of bringing the community together in celebration. That there is something important in gathering together and remembering these times. It’s different now. Before people would do it because the light was going dim and they got together to sing around fires and at some point to keep the year alive as they burned fires all night long in the shortest day. It’s a little different now, but a sense of the importance of coming together and that community that we’ve lost a little in touch with. And that doing this around these important markers of the winter solstice, spring, is something that is deeply important in a grounding level in our humanness.

ccalamaio@gazette.net

The Washington Revels will present “Andalusian Treasures: Jewish, Arabic and Spanish Music, Dance and Drama,” at 7:30 p.m. Friday, 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, and 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. Sunday at George Washington Lisner Auditorium, 730 21st St. NW, Washington D.C. Tickets range from $12 to $45. Call 1-800-595-4849 or visit www.washingtonrevels.tix.com.