The Annual Monster’s Ball Goes Virtual

Graphic by Penelope Taylor ‘20

By Rebecca Gagnon ’23

Staff Writer

The Mount Holyoke Symphony Orchestra hosted its 10th annual Monster’s Ball as a virtual haunted castle on Oct. 24. The Monster’s Ball is a Halloween dance in which people dress in costume and dance to music played by the orchestra. This year, the virtual Monster’s Ball had about 60 participants. 

“We are doing a very unusual Monster’s Ball this year where I have commissioned Lillie Rebecca McDonough [to compose],” Orchestra Director and Associate Professor of Music Tian Hui Ng said. McDonough is a film composer who got her start as a classical pianist. Ng explained that the students “set themselves up into groups and the groups came up with a concept that they would love to commission [McDonough] for.” Each of those groups then became a breakout room of the larger meeting, also representing the individual rooms in the virtual haunted castle. 

In this unique Monster’s Ball, the orchestra started the dance, as they always have, with a waltz. Participants were encouraged to get up and dance together in the main Zoom room. After the song was finished, Elizabeth Ramirez, the stage manager, assigned every participant a haunted room and the audience would watch a performance by specific groups in the orchestra. 

“We ended up coming [up] with … a constant rhythmic pulse of some sort, to bring intention to the piece, such as the clicking of the clock,” Sarah Day ’22, a music major and president of the Mount Holyoke Symphony Orchestra, said. “I guess from there it took a thematic turn, thinking about what other kinds of sounds we wanted present. It was more what we wanted to represent, which ended up being, ‘Let’s look at fall. What do you think of Halloween?’”

Day added, “You have the one side of warm, pumpkin spice lattes and good feelings versus the creepy, dark, magical, spooky Halloween.”

Day’s group became the Sugar, Spice, Creepy and Mortality room where the participants followed the storyline between good and evil. Some groups had a set storyline, while others used different techniques. One group, who called themselves the Witches, made ink dropping videos alongside experimental music. Another group did a live experimental performance by shining flashlights to create a haunting feel. A third performed traditional waltz music.

“I thought [the Monster’s Ball] was so cool and so interesting as a project,” McDonough said. “Depending on the brief, we really got to do different things together, and I could ask them questions about what sort of things they were hoping to play or how they wanted it to feel,” McDonough further explained the collaboration process with the students. “I took in all that information and got to work in my notation software, printed something out, gave it to them and then they basically all recorded at home separately.” 

“If you can imagine,” Ng said, “the first week of the semester we had auditions, the second week we had the first meeting, the third week [McDonough] met us, to see who we are, the fourth week we decided on the instrumentation. The fifth week [McDonough] started writing and in the sixth week she delivered. In the seventh week we recorded and the eighth week, it was ready.” 

“It was amazing seeing what happened when the music went back to them and they created these videos that were astonishing,” McDonough said. “It was so cool the way they picked up on moments in the music and then worked with it and did something cool. … I was very impressed with the care that they took with it and crafting their vision that really represented what they had in mind. I was blown away.”

“It has been an incredible journey of two months,” Day summarized. “It is hard to pack that much from both the composition and video side to the stage managing side to the board, to the first-years and everyone who keeps coming back. I think that is something we can be grateful for: the community that keeps coming together.”