“This sense of SHARED HUMANITY when you are in a room full of STRANGERS and you feel that you can CONNECT in such a deeper way - it’s WOW.”
From a career creating theatrical experiences with BLUE MAN GROUP, Christopher Bowen introduces
A unique collectively-played instrument is your guide through this connective music experience inviting collaborative listening and an expansion of the senses by playing with sounds, images, and space.
Music as a felt experience belonging to everyone.
BELONGALONG is an experience that is as much about LISTENING and opening up SONIC SPACE for others as it is about one’s own EXPRESSION.
“There is this GENTLENESS about it that TRANSCENDS who we were in the room. We were all UTTERLY EQUAL.”
“The SOUNDS themselves are just so BEAUTIFUL…
…they OPEN UP LISTENING to everything else.”
ABOUT BELONGALONG
At its heart, BELONGALONG seeks non-ordinary ways to find playful connection and presence with others. Participants are guided from the discovery of the instrument through a series of evocative visual and sonic pieces creating a relational field encouraging collaborative listening, opening up space for others and a feeling of connection in an otherworldly exploration of community. The sounds and vibrations of the Belongalong instrument are felt in the body and immediately participants realize that they themselves are the essential medium of the experience - that nothing comes to life without their collective intention.
Belongalong is inspired by the sense of play that performing musicians have with each other as they influence and are influenced by the changing flow of music. The resonances of their instruments vibrate against their bodies and into the space around them creating a sensation allowing them to connect and communicate on a different, more visceral, level. Belongalong creates a similar field for gathered groups of people (musical or not) to experience.
ABOUT ME
I am a sound and visual performance artist, instrument inventor, musician, actor, and composer for film.
My explorations into interactive, immersive theatrical group experiences started in 1991 when I began my decades-long career with the internationally acclaimed and Grammy-nominated Blue Man Group. During this time, I was a Blue Man, Performer Director, Drummer, Composer, Writer, Instrument Creator, and Creative Development Director for the Group.
As a film composer, my scores include Cannes Camera d’Or winner 'Jellyfish’, the Annie-nominated stop-motion feature ‘$9.99’, and the documentary feature ‘Nathan-ism’, the 2023 winner of DocAviv’s Yad Vashem award.
