Gasoline Lollipops and Wonderbound Re-Team in New Dance Space for The Sandman

Wonderbound, a contemporary ballet company run by the husband-wife leadership team of Dawn Fay and Garrett Ammon since 2007, is warming up its new space at 3824 Dahlia Street with Gasoline Lollipops' frontman Clay Rose to treat Denver to live music and dance in a remounted production of The Sandman: A Newfangled Western.

This Wonderbound Western special opens today, May 3, and runs through May 14. It was inspired by the song “Santa Maria (and the Sand Man)” from Gasoline Lollipops' 2017 album, Resurrection, and includes a variety of music from the band's discography. The Gas Pops will play the music live, joined by fiddle player Enion Pelta-Tiller; the choreography and projection design were covered by Ammon, while costume design was done by award-winning designer Kelly Gregson.

The Sandman chronicles the journey of characters found in Rose's lyrics, including the villainous Sandman and holy Santa Maria, who are found in an unforgiving environment where life can be created and destroyed in an instant. Rose notes that the choreography relates to the lyrics as much as it does to the music. "It's like watching a live-action music video for each one of the songs," he explains.

“Creating The Sandman in collaboration with Clay Rose and Gasoline Lollipops is deeply gratifying," adds Ammon. "Clay is a fearless songwriter and inspired storyteller in the tradition of Johnny Cash, Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen. Bringing his beautifully flawed characters to life through dance is nothing less than thrilling.”

The partnership was formed when Fay was doing research on potential local collaborators. She liked the Gasoline Lollipops' sound and noticed that the band was playing at Ophelia's Electric Soapbox. Without telling Ammon who they'd be going to see, she booked a table and informed him they were going to brunch at Ophelia's.

"I didn’t understand what was going on, but I knew something was up," recalls Ammon. "Dawn surprised me because she knew the band was good. And she was right: I was hooked one song in. On their first break, I walked over and introduced myself."
The Wonderbound team connected quickly with the Boulder-based band, which comprises Rose on vocals and acoustic guitar, Donny Ambory on electric guitar, Bradley “Bad Brad” Morse on upright and electric bass, Kevin Matthews on drums and Scott Coulter on keyboard and organ.

"It was the brunch that changed my life," says Rose. "I had been kind of half-assed working on a couple of ideas I had for what I thought were going to be rock operas. But I sorely needed a collaborator, because I just didn't have the direction or motivation to pursue it. It ended up coming in handy, though, because Garrett asked me if I had ever thought of doing anything theatrical, and I was like, 'Yeah, I got a couple of ideas in the pot,' and he was like, 'Well, why don't we get together for coffee and you tell me about them?' So I told him my ideas; he picked the one he wanted to lead with, and we met up pretty regularly for a couple of months to hammer out the story."

Their first project together was Wicked Bayou, which had its world premiere in October 2018. The story, by Clay and Cohen Rose, is based on “Old Bayou,” a song from the 2013 Widow's Bane album Don't Be Afraid; It's Only Death. It follows young lovers fighting against a hurricane, a zombie puppeteer, and an alligator who feeds on the hearts of children.

"Clay's pitch worked out well, because we were looking to fill our October show in 2018," says Ammon. "I don’t think we even had opened [Wicked Bayou] yet when I came to Clay and said I wanted to do another one with Gasoline Lollipops."

And working together the second time came even more naturally. "Writing The Sandman was second nature," says Rose. "In the first production, we were still getting to know each other, but putting together the story for The Sandman seemed almost effortless; there just didn’t seem to be any obstacles."

"That’s the wonderful thing about the working relationship that we’ve found," adds Ammon. "There are a lot of challenging things with a show like this — there is live music, intricate set pieces, fourteen dancers, lighting, projections and all these other elements that have to come together — so the collaboration has to be the thing that you lean on. You have to trust that part of it, and it has been nice that Clay and I are in lockstep on this journey."
Although neither Ammon nor Rose are Christian, the stories told in Rose's lyrics use a lot of Americana imagery that is rooted in Christian mythology.

"In The Sandman, everyone is Catholic," says Ammon. "What we have created are these personal mythologies within the family that also get mixed up with Christian folklore. It gets heavy, and the thing I love about this show is that no one is innocent. Whether they are heroes or devils, they all make mistakes. The characters are truly human characters, and are capable of good things but also horrible things."

The Sandman's world premiere was on February 14, 2020, and though the story is fundamentally the same as in the original production, the creators are taking advantage of the additional time and space in Wonderbound's new property to tweak its presentation.

"Our new space has more square footage than the venues we performed at in 2020, which allows the work to open up," says Ammon. "The first process was pretty fast, and we were still getting all the pieces together down to the last minute. Now we’re getting to revisit it and tweak the things we wanted to make better the first time; it’s that final edit to tighten it up that we never got to do."

"It's The Sandman 2.0," says Rose. "Also, I think the new space is going to affect things because it's the Wounderbound theater, and I know from being a touring musician that there is a difference between a touring space and a hometown gig. This is what the dancers are used to and what the space is built for."

Four nights have already sold out, and several others are rapidly nearing capacity.

"If you love live performances, you need to get your tickets quick," says Ammon. "The Gasoline Lollipops are one of Colorado's best bands, and we are using dance to tell their stories. It's a spectacle full of nonstop action. If you love dance, then you will get plenty of that, but one of the things I take real pride in is that you don’t have to have seen a ballet or have advanced knowledge of dance to be immersed in the narrative."
The Sandman: A Newfangled Western runs May 3-14 at Wonderbound, 3824 Dahlia Street. Tickets are $65. Find more information at wonderbound.com.