'HOWL'. Theatre Deli, 2026
'HOWL' is a 30 minute piece of music broken into eight parts. It was written to accompany spoken and sung poetry which was explored, embodied and danced to onstage. The piece of music follows a journey of learning instinctual movement and expression. It was developed around the theory of 'Chiasmic wildness', the concept of the intertwining, fluidity and balance of humanity and wilderness. To reflect this, Whiteway balanced the earthy acoustic sounds of the cello, acoustic guitar and foley-style rhythm with metallic, sharp and forceful MIDI instruments and electronic drumming.
01
The Crystal Keep is the track that opens 'HOWL' a piece of gig-theatre featuring spoken and sung poetry, movement and contemporary dance. The Crystal Keep music is an entrance into a world made of crystal and glass, a case within which the protagonist lives unable to move freely or see the wild world outside her casing. This piece of music features sharp and ominous sounds which echo around the space cutting off her movements and creating a constant overwhelming but quiet noisiness which overpowers her intuition.
02
Scared stiff
Scared Stiff is part two of the HOWL Series. It is all about unfounded fear. Fairytales that seep into you as you sleep. It's about the narratives of fear which are told time and time again to keep a person afraid. For that reason it is slightly out of sync at times but very repetitive and was designed for a dance motif which was performed again and again but getting smaller and smaller until the protagonist was too afraid to move. Hence, Scared stiff.
03
I dream of TEETH
Part three of HOWL is 'I dream of teeth', the first time the audience is allowed to see a glimpse of the protagonist's true intuition. A dreamscape where she follows a wolf into the woods, slowly morphing into it as she goes deeper and deeper into the trees. The movement is slow, developing and intentional and this was written into the music by using swirling cello sounds and very little rhythmic direction which creates an empty space for the protagonist to follow her own instincts within the music. Whatever she does the cloud of sound will follow her.
04
CRASH
CRASH is the building moment of the piece. The entirety of this dance was performed on tiptoes. It was designed to reflect the uncertainty, the liminal space between the moment you make the decision to do something and the moment when you do it. It's precarious and unbalanced and full of uneasiness. The music was written to convey this rising heartbeat and bouncing back and forth from the decision. Therefore there's a lot of reverb and echo built into the rhythm to reflect that idea.
05
Stars
Stars is the moment in the piece where the protagonist breaks out into the vast wilderness. It's a piece of music about space. About the moment of realisation of how small we are and the curiosity and playfulness that come from being a tiny thing within a great landscape. It was written to allow the performer and protagonist complete freedom to discover this curiosity on stage, to improvise the movement. It is intensionally sparse and simple to create a big and empty atmosphere that the performer is brought into with complete authority but focused awe.
The Poppy, CRASH reprise
A reprise of CRASH that turns curiosity and wonder into fire. A rage the protagonist feels now she knows she was lied to. She wasted so much time believing in fear. The music blends the space of stars into darker version of coming to a realisation which makes the protagonist feel crushed and betrayed. The music picks up and the rhythm then drives the performer into a strength of anger. This strength in the music encourages the performer to use forceful, muscular sweeping movements that reflect her growing power and intuition.
06
Make me SILVER
Make me SILVER is an empowering piece of music designed to promote powerful and considered movement that is blurred and jagged around the edges. Slow and dragged rhythm with the snarling electric guitar which gets more and more wild, ferocious and out of control as the piece goes on encourage decided and powerful movements of dance with a hint of electricity and unpredictability. This reflects the growing strength and determination but also blindness of rage in the protagonist.
07
You're in the Mud
This is a moment of pure defiance, recklessness and rudeness. An explosion of wildness designed to encourage the performer to move wildly and hazardously. With moments of clarity that burn into the music the performer is able to switch in and out of control with the music. There will be times she knows exactly what she's doing: calculated, precise and burning as the cello swells and swerves and the guitar strikes into the sound and then moments of sheer chaos where everything slips out of place, the guitar loses its control and the rhythm becomes unknowable.
08
HOWL!
The final Part of the Music is HOWL part 1 and 2. This is the moment of joy in wildness, once anger is pushed aside as well as fear and the protagonist feels truly an agent of wilderness. It was written in accompaniment with the image of dappled sunlight through tree leaves and it's adjoining movement for the performer begins with a rippling of the fingers in a wave-like motion which spreads out through the whole body and evolves into movement which blends the protagonist into the trees themselves. The music follows this slow evolution with rippled piano melodies that the fingers just itch to dance to.