Waiting for green

Many years ago while I was living in Härnösand in the northern part of Sweden I had an assignment working as a producer for a dance performance where the dancers were students from two of our schools in town. The two choreographers came from Toronto in Canada and was invited to Sweden to perform themselves but also to inspire our students by choreographing a dance performance that were then going to tour the county. The two leaders intervjued our dance students on what they thought the performance was going to be about. What was it going to be called. The time of year was about now, we had lots of snow and cold weather outside so, what name did the dancers come up with? "Waiting for green". That name then inspired the composer, also invited from Canada, to compose music that was going to be played live during the performance by our schools percussion ensemble. It's a quite common obsession among swedes in general to be longing for spring, sun and warmth, our students,  dancers and musicians were no exception. The tour became a huge success and I'm sure all the performers still remember the occasion.

I had a brief walk outside this evening after the sun had set. Last night we had quite a lot of snow, for being here, and the world was completely white when I woke up to an amazing sunrise. Four hours later all the snow was gone, leaving a completely soggy wet ground behind. We have a typical southern Sweden winter. When I got home in the dark I noticed the lamp I put up in my window, where my advent star had been, facing the streeet. Its bright green light felt welcoming and I remembered the dance show thinking I'm one of the swedes who, this time of year, likes to think about spring, sun and the greening grass. It'll soon be here, only three more months to go.