Paul B. Goode

On July 6, A Rite by Bill T. Jones/Anne Bogart Celebrates Centenary of The Rite of Spring

Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.—The Bard SummerScape festival opens in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, on Saturday, July 6 at 8pm, with A Rite (2013), a major new dance-theater piece by the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and SITI Company. Co-commissioned by SummerScape and created by Bill T. Jones and Anne Bogart, two titans of American performing arts, A Rite commemorates the centenary of Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring (1913) and its notorious, game-changing Paris premiere. The New York Times calls A Rite “a serious, intricate, multidirectional centennial tribute to a work of art whose spell it deepens.” Both A Rite’s opening night and a second performance on Sunday, July 7 at 3pm will take place on Bard College’s stunning Hudson River campus in the Frank Gehry-designed Fisher Center, which celebrates its tenth anniversary this year.

As in previous seasons, SummerScape 2013 is keyed to the theme of the Bard Music Festival, which this year explores “Igor Stravinsky and His World.” Arguably the most important composer of the 20^th century, Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) first achieved international fame with the three ballet scores he composed for impresario Sergei Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes: The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911) and The Rite of Spring (1913). At its now infamous Paris premiere, The Rite of Spring’s revolutionary sound and demonic paganism, as showcased by Vaslav Nijinsky’s choreography, provoked a near riot. This extraordinary response foreshadowed the seismic impact the ballet would have on the course of music and dance; even today, a full hundred years after its first performance, the aftershocks still reverberate. 

SummerScape’s timely new dance-theater piece brings together two key American directors: Bill T. Jones, “one of the most prominent and provocative American choreographers of his generation” (New York Times), and contemporary theater director Anne Bogart, a 1974 Bard alumna, whose awards include two “Best Director” Obies and the Jesse L. Rosenberger Medal for Outstanding Achievement in

Creative & Performing Arts. Jones formed the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company with his late partner, Arnie Zane, in 1983; as the New Yorker reports, “it quickly became known as a remarkable multicultural troupe of breathtaking performers.” Currently celebrating its 30^th-anniversary season, the company has performed worldwide in over 200 cities to date, and continues to be, as the New York Times recently noted, “a company in beautiful shape.” Collaboration is central to the company’s ethos, and previous artistic partnerships range from Keith Haring and Jenny Holzer to the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

The SITI Company was founded in 1992 by Anne Bogart and Tadashi Suzuki to redefine and revitalize contemporary American theater. Originally envisioned as a summer institute in Saratoga Springs, NY, the company – now in its 21^st season – has expanded to encompass a year-round program in New York City as well. After a recent Euripides adaptation in Los Angeles, Variety observed: “Anne Bogart and her acclaimed SITI Company have unearthed the vital, immediate drama within this classic. The result is essential viewing.” Like the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, the SITI Company places especial emphasis on collaboration and cultural exchange, so their partnership proved a natural fit. “Working with Bill so far has been nothing less than miraculous,” Bogart discovered. “We listen to one another and then each of us makes bold suggestions.” With the support of Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane’s Associate Artistic Director, Janet Wong, the two directors and their companies joined forces to produce a fresh response to Stravinsky’s revolutionary ballet score.

As Jones – a resident artist at Bard, whose abundant honors include two “Best Choreography” Tonys and a MacArthur “Genius” Award – explains:

“Though the apparition of what was staged that night in Paris and the scandal of the opening performance confronted us regularly, we have – for the most part – tried to look past the scenario and engage the music and the 100-year-old discourse around it with as fresh and personal an approach as possible.”

To this end, A Rite explores the revolutionary context of The Rite of Spring, which premiered just months before the outbreak of the First World War, and at the dawn of Cubism, Einstein’s theory of relativity, and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. Jones and Bogart have created a new libretto that draws from diverse sources to explore the ballet’s rich history and its lasting cultural influence: interviews with a distinguished musicologist who becomes a muse in the new work, words from soldiers returned from World War I, and writings on theoretical physics by the string theorist Brian Greene.

Set and costume design is by James Schuette, whose credits include the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Houston Grand Opera, and New York City Opera; lighting design is by Robert Wierzel, who has collaborated with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company for 26 years. 

As a result, A Rite is, as the New York Times’s Alastair Macaulay found at the work’s premiere this past January in North Carolina:

“A remarkable, … haunting new theater piece. … It honors Stravinsky’s music. … The performers sing parts of it – a marvelous effect. … Nijinsky’s 1913 choreography is very much part of the mix. … The overlaps between acting and dancing are pronounced. … You’re continually struck by how prepared the actors are to move in the same rhythms and shapes as the dancers and how readily the dancers are to speak. … “We feel how much Stravinsky’s Rite has entered into our nervous systems. … [A Rite] is a serious, intricate, multidirectional centennial tribute to a work of art whose spell it deepens.”

* * * * *

A significant dance performance has opened SummerScape each year since 2005. Of last season’s offering, the Financial Times found that Compagnie Fêtes Galantes’ Let My Joy Remain “perfectly suited the pastoral setting,” with choreography that “seemed to emerge organically from the music.” In 2011, Finland’s Tero Saarinen Company offered “a magic that is hypnotic” (Daily Gazette), and in 2010 the Trisha Brown Dance Company prompted the Star-Ledger to comment: “If any dance event is worth a quick run out of town, it’s this one.”
 

Dance at Bard SummerScape 2013

Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and SITI Company

A Rite (2013; SummerScape co-commission)

Conceived, directed, and choreographed by Anne Bogart, Bill T. Jones, and Janet Wong

Music: The Rite of Spring (1913) by Igor Stravinsky

Excerpts from the recordings by the Kirov Orchestra, 2001; Los Angeles Philharmonic, 2006; San Francisco Symphony, 1999; Darryl Brenzel and Mobtown Modern Big Band, 2012; Daniel Bernard Roumain, 2013; and Birdsongs of the Mesozoic.

Text excerpts from: Brian Greene, Werner Herzog, Jonah Lehrer, Severine Neff, and testimonies from WWI veterans, plus “In Spring” by Shuntaro Tanikawa (courtesy of The Japan Writers’ Association) and Gisela Cardenas’ English translation of Antigona by José Watanabe.

Vocal score for The Augurs composed by Timothy Hambourger; vocal score for Spring Rounds composed by Yayoi Ikawa.

Costume design: James Schuette

Lighting design: Robert Wierzel

Performers:

Akiko Aizawa
Will Bond
Antonio Brown
Leon Ingulsrud
Talli Jackson
Shayla-Vie Jenkins
Ellen Lauren
LaMichael Leonard, Jr.
I-Ling Liu
Erick Montes Chavero
Jennifer Nugent
Barney O’Hanlon
Joseph Poulson
Jenna Riegel
Stephen Duff Webber

Sosnoff Theater

Saturday, July 6 at 8pm

Sunday, July 7 at 3pm*

Tickets: $25, 40, 45, 55

* A round-trip bus service from Manhattan is provided exclusively to ticket-holders for the matinee on Sunday, July 7. Reservation is required, and may be made by calling the box office at 845-758-7900. The round-trip fare is $40, and the bus departs from Lincoln Center at 11am. Visit fishercenter.bard.edu/transportation for more information.

A Rite was co-commissioned by Carolina Performing Arts at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with additional finding by the National Endowment for the Arts.

SummerScape 2013: other key performance dates by genre

MUSIC

Bard Music Festival, Weekend One: “Becoming Stravinsky: From St. Petersburg to Paris” (Aug 9–11)*

Bard Music Festival, Weekend Two: “Stravinsky Re-invented: From Paris to Los Angeles” (Aug 16–18)*

* Round-trip transportation from Manhattan to Bard is available for certain performances on August 9, 11, 16, and 18. The round-trip fare is $40 and reservations are required; see further details below.

OPERA

Sosnoff Theater

July 26* and Aug 2 at 7 pm

July 28*, 31, and Aug 4* at 3 pm

Tickets: $30, $60, $70, $90

THEATER

Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita (adaptation)

LUMA Theater

July 11, 12, 13*, 18, 19, and 20 at 7:30 pm

July 14*, 17, 20, and 21* at 3 pm

Tickets: $45

* Round-trip transportation from Manhattan to Bard is available for this performance. The round-trip fare is $40 and reservations are required; see further details below.

FILM FESTIVAL

“Between Traditions: Stravinsky’s Legacy and Russian Émigré Cinema”

July 12, 13, 19, 20, 26; Aug 2 and 3 at 7 pm

July 13, 20, 21, 27; Aug 3 at 2 pm

July 14 at 3pm

July 21 at 5:30 pm

July 27 at 6:30 pm

July 27 and Aug 2 at 9 pm

Ottaway Film Center

Tickets: $12

SPIEGELTENT

Live Music, Cabaret, Family Performances, and Festival Salon

Prices vary

Venues:

SummerScape opera, theater, and dance performances and most Bard Music Festival programs are held in the Sosnoff Theater or LUMA Theater in Bard’s Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, designed by Frank Gehry and celebrated since its opening as a major architectural landmark in the region. Some chamber programs and other BMF events are in Olin Hall. The Spiegeltent has its own schedule of events, in addition to serving as a restaurant, café, and bar before and after performances. The Film Festival screenings are at the Jim Ottaway Jr. Film Center in the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Center.

New York City Round-Trip Bus Transportation:

Inexpensive, convenient round-trip transportation from Manhattan to Bard is provided, exclusively to ticket holders, for select SummerScape and Bard Music Festival performances (as indicated above). The round-trip fare is $40, and reservations are required. The bus departs from behind Lincoln Center, on Amsterdam Avenue between 64^th and 65^th Streets. For details, including departure times, visit fishercenter.bard.edu/transportation.

Bard SummerScape Ticket Information

For tickets and further information on all SummerScape events, call the Fisher Center box office at 845-758-7900 or visit www.fishercenter.bard.edu.

To download high resolution images go to bit.ly/15kujqt

Or http://fishercenter.bard.edu/press/photos.php?group_id=723668

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This event was last updated on 05-09-2013

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