Oregon's Orchestra Next, in collaboration with the Eugene Ballet Company, has released its debut album featuring the world-premiere recording of Kenji Bunch's ''The Snow Queen''. This ballet score is a substantial addition to the repertoire. Unlike Disney's movie ''Frozen'', this retelling follows the Hans Christian Anderson tale somewhat closely. At its heart, ''The Snow Queen'' is the classic tale of a hero's quest. In this particular version, though, the hero is actually a heroine and she goes off on adventures to rescue a boy from the forces of evil. In the story, childhood friends Gerda, a girl, and Kay, a boy, are separated when Kay is blinded to the good of the world by shards of a frozen mirror made by Satan. Kay ends up being taken to the Ice Palace of teh Snow Queen; with help from various other characters, Gerda rescues him there. In was this reversal of the classic gender roles that drew Eugene choreographer Toni Pimble to the story. ''It's the heroine who saves the hero in this stoyr,'' she says. ''And, the two main characters are women. That's very different.'' The story works equally for children and adult audiences alike. As composer Kenji Bunch writes, ''Helping to tell this hauntingly beautiful but entirely wordless story for close to two hours was, simply put, the largest undertaking of my career to date, by a longshot.''
