![Peak Performances Presents Martha Graham Dance Company & World Premiere of Troy Schumacher's "The Auditions"](https://www.newjerseystage.com/events2019/Peak-Oct16.jpg "Peak Performances Presents Martha Graham Dance Company & World Premiere of Troy Schumacher's "The Auditions"")
(MONTCLAIR, NJ) -- Peak Performances presents the Martha Graham Dance Company, comprising the “most skilled and powerful dancers you can ever hope to see” (The Washington Post), dancing the revolutionary choreographer’s Appalachian Spring. The company celebrates the 75th anniversary of this enduringly powerful work with a dynamic, lyrical new dance that resonates with Graham’s classic: Peak Performances commission The Auditions, choreographed by Troy Schumacher to an original score by composer Augusta Read Thomas, and performed by seven Martha Graham Dance Company members. The International Contemporary Ensemble, “America’s foremost new-music group” (Alex Ross, The New Yorker), joins the Graham Company for world-class renditions of new music by Thomas and the original Pulitzer Prize–winning score for Appalachian Spring by Aaron Copland. The ensemble will be conducted by Vimbayi Kaziboni. Performances will take place November 14-17 at the Alexander Kasser Theater at Montclair State University.
Appalachian Spring, created in 1944 amidst a war that had torn many couples apart, follows a young 19th century frontier couple on their wedding day, imagining a dreamlike idyll of simplicity and togetherness. Springtime in the wilderness is celebrated by this man and woman building a house with joy and love and prayer; by a revivalist and his followers in their shouts of exaltation; and by a pioneering woman with her dreams of the Promised Land. Graham’s choreography references American folk dance, Aaron Copland infuses his score with elements of Shaker song, and a Shaker-inspired rocking chair stands out on Isamu Noguchi’s angular minimalist set. In the world premiere performance of the dance at the Coolidge Auditorium at the Library of Congress in 1944, Graham and Erick Hawkins danced the parts of The Bride and The Husbandman, Merce Cunningham played the The Preacher, and May O’Donnell was The Pioneering Woman. The New York Times called the dance “shining and joyous…a kind of testimony to the simple fineness of the human spirit.”
Martha Graham Dance Company Artistic Director Janet Eilber says of Appalachian Spring, “During the dark days of WWII, Copland and Graham were interested in representing the essential elements of America and of our democracy. They wanted to create a dance/drama that celebrated our optimism, yes, but also our belief in a system in which every person has a voice, every person is offered opportunity, and every person has hope—the American Dream. While details and specific issues of these conversations may have changed over the years – from McCarthyism to #metoo – the essential American tenets are the same. I believe this is why Appalachian Spring has traveled through time so beautifully and speaks to today’s America just as it did 75 years ago.”
In conceiving The Auditions, Troy Schumacher and Augusta Read Thomas took as their starting point Appalachian Spring’s portrayal of longing for the unknown. The Auditions takes place in two worlds—one grounded, one ethereal, as people gathered in a room audition to progress to what is perhaps another plane of existence.
Troy Schumacher says, “I too come from an arts organization (NYCB) that was founded by an artistic force whose presence still lingers over and influences everything decades after their passing. Janet inspired me to communicate with the Graham legacy in both historically respectful and forward-looking ways, which is, in my opinion, exactly how it should be done. Appalachian Spring looks at pioneers in historical America, and touches on both what it feels like to be settled in a new place and how the yearning for exploration continues. The Auditions is about a group of people in the present looking to be pioneers who are unsure of where they are going or how and why they will get there.”
Augusta Read Thomas says, “Troy and I collaborated closely for 18 months on the creation of this artwork. At every level, we are concerned with transformations and connections. The Auditions unfolds a labyrinth of musical and movement interrelationships and connections that showcase the dancers and musicians in a virtuosic display of rhythmic agility, counterpoint, skill, energy, dynamic range, clarity and majesty. We worked hard to ensure that the music dances and that the dance is musical. I like my music to feel organic, self-propelled — as if we listeners are overhearing (capturing) an un-notated, spontaneously embodied improvisation.”
Ross Karre, International Contemporary Ensemble percussionist and co-artistic director, says, “What we hope to do is draw organic relationships between the dancers' movements and our instrumental performances and also between the two works. What binds us all—across genre, discipline, and time—is respiration. We must breathe. The union of these two disciplines and these two works will be a sequence of interpretations between inhalations and exhalations. The musical manifestation of that is how a musical phrase starts and ends. The physical manifestation is how a gesture starts and ends. Where these elements push, pull, and synchronize is the organic art of interpretation. When the dancers initiate momentum and a violinist retakes their bow to prepare the next moment, we find common ground and allow the piece to grow and develop through our shared air.”
ACP Executive Director Jedediah Wheeler says, “For our commission of The Auditions, we were searching for a composer who creates as though she were a choreographer and a choreographer who makes dance steps as though each was a note of music. Together Troy and Gusty have made an American dance born out of our own anxious moment that pays tribute to a seminal work of another time, equally fraught by uncertainty but buoyed by the democracy’s unrealized promise. May we all join the conversation with these wonderful artists and extraordinary dancers. I am deeply grateful for Janet Eilber’s stellar leadership without which this could not have been realized.”
Appalachian Spring (75th-Anniversary Performance) features music by Aaron Copland, a set by Isamu Noguchi, choreography by Martha Graham, costume design by Karen Young, and lighting design by Yi-Chung Chen. Dancers include Anne O’Donnell and Charlotte Landreau (as The Bride); Lloyd Mayor and Jacob Larsen (as The Husbandman); Lloyd Knight and Lorenzo Pagano (as The Preacher); Natasha M. Diamond-Walker and Leslie Andrea Williams (as The Pioneering Woman); and So Young An, Laurel Dalley Smith, Marzia Memoli, and Anne Souder (as The Followers).
The Auditions (World Premiere) features music by Augusta Read Thomas, choreography by Troy Schumacher, costume design by Karen Young, and lighting design by Yi-Chung Chen. Dancers include Lloyd Knight, Charlotte Landreau, Marzia Memoli, Anne O’Donnell, Lorenzo Pagano, Anne Souder, and Leslie Andrea Williams. Both works will be performed by the Martha Graham Dance Company (Janet Eilber, Artistic Director) with International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). Vimbayi Kaziboni will conduct.
Performance Schedule and Ticketing
Appalachian Spring & The Auditions will take place Thursday, November 14 and Friday, November 15 at 7:30pm; Saturday, November 16 at 8:00pm; and Sunday November 17 at 3:00pm at the Alexander Kasser Theater at Montclair State University (1 Normal Ave, Montclair, NJ). Performances run 50 minutes, plus intermission. Tickets are affordably priced at $30, and can be purchased at www.peakperfs.org or 973.655.5112. Tickets are always free for Montclair State students.
On Friday, November 15, at 6pm, in the Alexander Kasser Theater, there will be a conversation with Neil Baldwin, Professor of Theatre & Dance at Montclair State University, and Janet Eilber, Artistic Director Martha Graham Dance Company.
A First Impressions talk will take place following the performance Saturday, November 16, with Troy Schumacher, Janet Eilber, Augusta Read Thomas, and Vimbayi Kaziboni.
On Sunday, November 17 at 2:00pm, there will be a special reading of the children’s book Ballet for Martha: Making Appalachian Spring, written by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan and read by Janet Eilber.
Credits
Programs in Peak Performances’ 2019-20 season are made possible in part by funds from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
About Martha Graham Dance Company
The Martha Graham Dance Company has been a world leader in the evolving art form of modern dance since its founding in 1926. Today, under the direction of Artistic Director Janet Eilber, the Company is embracing a new programming vision that showcases masterpieces by Graham alongside newly commissioned works by contemporary artists. With programs that offer a rich thematic narrative, the Company creates new platforms for contemporary dance and multiple points of access for audiences.
Since its inception, the Company has received international acclaim from audiences in over 50 countries throughout North and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. The Company has performed at such illustrious venues as the Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall, the Paris Opera House, and Covent Garden, as well as at the base of the Great Pyramids of Egypt and in the ancient Herod Atticus Theatre on the Acropolis in Athens. In addition, the Company has also produced several award-winning films broadcast on PBS and around the world. Though Martha Graham herself is the best-known alumna of her company, the Company has provided a training ground for some of modern dance’s most celebrated performers and choreographers.
The current company dancers hail from around the world and, while grounded in their Graham core training, can also slip into the style of contemporary choreographers like a second skin, bringing technical brilliance and artistic nuance to all they do—from brand new works to Graham classics and those from early pioneers such as Isadora Duncan, Jane Dudley, Anna Sokolow, and Mary Wigman.
The astonishing list of artists who have created works for the Graham dancers in the last decade reads like a catalog of must-see choreographers: Kyle Abraham, Aszure Barton, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Lucinda Childs, Marie Chouinard, Michelle Dorrance, Nacho Duato, Mats Ek, Andonis Foniadakis, Liz Gerring, Larry Keigwin, Michael Kliën, Pontus Lidberg, Lil Buck, Lar Lubovitch, Josie Moseley, Richard Move, Bulareyaung Pagarlava, Annie-B Parson, Yvonne Rainer, Sonya Tayeh, Doug Varone, Luca Vegetti, Gwen Welliver and Robert Wilson.
About Troy Schumacher
Troy Schumacher is an American choreographer, dancer, and director living in New York, NY. His aesthetic draws upon the artists he collaborates with to produce fresh, unexpected results. He is a soloist dancer with New York City Ballet and the founder of BalletCollective, an arts collective driven toward creating new ballet-based works that has been moving ballet forward since its inception in 2010. His work has been presented by New York City Ballet, Performa, Danspace Project, Guggenheim Works & Process, the Joyce Theater, and NYU Skirball Center, among others. He has collaborated with many artists, including Jeff Koons, Zaria Forman, Thom Browne, Karen Russell, Ellis Ludwig-Leone, Maddie Ziegler, and David Salle. In addition to live performances, Schumacher has choreographed numerous art, fashion and commercial shoots, including works for Google, Sony PlayStation, Capezio, HP, Aritzia, CR Fashion Book, Tom Ford, Thakoon, and The New York Times.
About Augusta Read Thomas
The music of Grammy winning composer Augusta Read Thomas is majestic, elegant, lyrical—“boldly considered music that celebrates the sound of the instruments and reaffirms the vitality of orchestral music.” (Philadelphia Inquirer) The New Yorker called Augusta "a true virtuoso composer." The citation at her 2009 American Academy of Arts and Letters induction read: “Her impressive body of works embodies unbridled passion and fierce poetry. She has become one of the most recognizable and widely loved figures in American Music.”
Thomas has composed over 48 works for orchestra. She was the Mead Composer-in-Residence for Daniel Barenboim and Pierre Boulez with the Chicago Symphony from 1997 through 2006, a residency that culminated in the premiere of Astral Canticle – one of two finalists for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Music. She founded and Directs the Center for Contemporary Composition at the University of Chicago and The Grossman Ensemble.
Barenboim, Boulez, Salonen, Knussen, Ozawa, Rostropovich, Luisi, Eschenbach, Masur, Boughton, Maazel and McAdams have championed her music, which has been commissioned by leading orchestras and ensembles around the world. She won Germany’s prestigious Ernst von Siemens Music Prize and many other international awards. Her opera, made in collaboration with librettist Leslie Dunton-Downer, commissioned by a consortium led by Santa Fe Opera and San Francisco Opera including Lyric Opera Kansas City, Minnesota Opera, Opera Theatre Saint Louis, Sarasota Opera, and Seattle Opera was and featuring Beatboxer superstar Nicole Paris, recently premiered.
About International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE)
The International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) is an artist collective that is transforming the way music is created and experienced. As performer, curator, and educator, the International Contemporary Ensemble explores how new music intersects with communities across the world. The Ensemble’s 36 members are featured as soloists, chamber musicians, commissioners, and collaborators with the foremost musical artists of our time. Works by emerging composers have anchored the Ensemble’s programming since its founding in 2001, and the group’s recordings and digital platforms highlight the many voices that weave music’s present.
A recipient of the American Music Center’s Trailblazer Award and the Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, the International Contemporary Ensemble was also named the 2014 Musical America Ensemble of the Year. The group currently serves as artists-in-residence at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts’ Mostly Mozart Festival, and previously led a five-year residency at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. ICE was featured at the Ojai Music Festival from 2015 to 2017, and at recent festivals abroad such as gmem-CNCM-marseille and Vértice at Cultura UNAM, Mexico City. Other performance stages have included the Park Avenue Armory, The Stone, ice floes at Greenland’s Diskotek Sessions, and boats on the Amazon River.
About Vimbayi Kaziboni
Described as “a conductor of great intensity without distancing, maneuvering without indifference” (Neuemuzikzeitung), Zimbabwean-born conductor Vimbayi Kaziboni (b. 1988), has led many critically lauded performances with orchestras across the globe, performing at some of the world’s most prestigious concert halls, including Carnegie Hall, Walt Disney Hall, Philharmonie de Paris, Admiralspalast, Deutschlandfunk, Hessischer Rundfunk, Oper Frankfurt, Sala Sao Paulo, among others. This season he makes debuts at the Elbphilharmonie (Hamburg), Acht Brücken (Cologne), Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center (New York), Ruhrtrienalle (Essen) and the South Bank Centre (London) with the Ensemble Modern, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Ensemble Contrechamps, and the Hamburg Camerata.
Hailed among the foremost interpreters of modern and contemporary music of his generation, Mr. Kaziboni has worked directly with many of the leading composers of the day that include Helmut Lachenmann, George Benjamin, Matthias Pintscher, Rebecca Saunders, Heiner Goebbels, Olga Neuwirth, Bruno Mantovani, Nicolaus A. Huber, Manfred Trojahn, Morten Lauridsen, and Jacob TV among many others. He has led premieres of new works at festivals across the globe.
Mr. Kaziboni has had a long association with leading contemporary music ensembles, Ensemble Modern (Frankfurt) and Ensemble InterContemporain. Paris. Mr. Kaziboni has also been Artistic Director of The What's Next? Ensemble (Los Angeles), Artistic Director of The New Philharmonic Omaha (Omaha, NE), Assistant Professor of Music and Director of Orchestral Activities at Gettysburg College (Gettysburg, PA), and conductor of the International Ensemble Modern Academy (Frankfurt).
About Peak Performances
Under the artistic direction of ACP’s Executive Director, Jedediah Wheeler, PEAK Performances has achieved international recognition for presenting and producing innovative works in dance, music theater and opera. With a celebrated emphasis on interdisciplinary work, PEAK hosted 75 World and American Premieres since 2005. Notable among the artists whose work has been seen on the Alexander Kasser Theater stage are Richard Alston, David Rousseve, Bill T Jones, Camille A. Brown, Wayne MacGregor, Robyn Orlin, Romeo Castelucci, Crystal Pite, Liz Gerring, Faye Driscoll, Angelica Liddell, Jan Fabre, Emma Dante, and Pam Tanowitz.
Robert Wilson conceived and directed The Life of Clementine Hunter for the Kasser stage and has also directed Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape with himself in the title role. Writer, director, designer, and choreographer David Gordon revived his production of Robert Brustein’s seminal musical, Schlemiel the First. PEAK-commissioned works notably include Dog Days by David T. Little and Royce Vavrek; Spinning by Maya Beiser, Julia Wolfe and Laurie Olinder; Leonora and Alejandro by Stacy Klein for Double Edge Theater; and My Coma Dreams by Fred Hersch.
Companies who have made their American debuts with PEAK include Gandini Juggling (UK), Via Katlehong (South Africa), Inbal Oshman (Israel), Charlotte Vincent (UK) and Raphaelle Boitel (France). By bringing together artists of uncommon imagination with diverse audiences of adventuresome spirit, PEAK promotes a greater appreciation of human possibility.
Peak Performances is a program of the Office of Arts + Cultural Programming at Montclair State University and has been honored by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts with an Arts Citation of Excellence and Designation of Major Impact. Programs in this season are made possible in part by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts.
