The Seamstress

I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world's eyes
As though they'd wrought it.
Song, let them take it,
For there's more enterprise
In walking naked.


—William Butler Yeats


The Seamstress is an imaginary one-act ballet. Alone on the stage, the seamstress is seated, unraveling threads from an antique cloth laid gently over her lap. Lost in her thoughts, her mind begins to meander and her imagination spirals into a series of five tales that range from love to despair, and that combine memory with fantasy.


—Anna Clyne

"...[Clyne] shows that she can invest what is relatively traditional violin writing with real freshness..."
—The Guardian

“Clyne’s writing alternates folklike gestures and Coplandesque textures with episodes of fiery dissonance and an eerie recitation of Yeats’s eponymous poem whispered by Irene Buckley.” —The Arts Fuse