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Richard Alston Dance Company Returns To Peak Performances

originally published: 01/29/2020

Richard Alston Dance Company Returns To Peak Performances

(MONTCLAIR, NJ) -- PEAK Performances presents Richard Alston Dance Company in its final American engagement before the company closes its doors after more than 25 years. The beloved group will perform a selection of recent works highlighting Alston’s vision for “contemporary dance full of classical sensibility…class and craft” (The Guardian). This includes three U.S. premieres, one of which—Shine On—will be the last piece the choreographer creates for the company. These performances, February 20-23, continue PEAK Performances’ 2019-2020 season at the Alexander Kasser Theater at Montclair State University.

Richard Alston Dance Company launched in November 1994 to great acclaim, Richard Alston Dance Company is one of the UK’s leading choreographer-led companies, for which its founder Artistic Director Richard Alston has created over 45 dance-works. Richard Alston is also Artistic Director of The Place, London’s leading centre for contemporary dance, where the company is based.  Richard Alston Dance Company focuses on Alston’s new choreography but combines this with the re-creation of seminal past works from Alston’s career. Music plays a vital part in the company’s identity and since its inception Alston has made work to the music of a diverse range of composers. www.richardalstondance.com

A First Impressions talk with Richard Alston; Janet Eilber, Artistic Director Martha Graham Dance Company; and Emily Coates, Director of Dance Studies and Associate Professor in Theater Studies at Yale University will take place following the performance on Saturday, February 22.

The 2019-2020 season at PEAK surrounds vocabularies of expression and communication across artistic (and spoken) languages and forms. Alston’s work honors and further illuminates the timeless connection between musical compositions and dancing bodies, often taking specific musical works or artists as points of departure. The company’s new pieces—set to Johannes Brahms, Benjamin Britten, Michael Gordon and Akira Miyoshi, and Claudio Monteverdi—emphasize this core cross-disciplinary inspiration.

Performances at PEAK will include Brahms Hungarian, played live by solo pianist Jason Ridgway. Created last year, the piece “exemplifies the shrewd, elegant musicality that has captivated audiences over the years, stitching bounds and pivots into the swerving notes of Brahms’s ‘Hungarian Dances’” (The Observer). The company will perform another new Alston work, the U.S. premiere of Voices and Light Footsteps, inspired by the sensuously expressive vocal madrigals and instrumental sinfonias of Italian Baroque composer Claudio Monteverdi. (Voices and Light Footsteps is a reworked version of a piece previously titled Arrived, which had its U.S. premiere at the Virginia Arts Festival in March 2019). Shine On, Alston’s final work for the company, and another U.S. premiere, is set to Benjamin Britten’s 1937 song cycle On This Island (which the composer set to five poems by W. H. Auden), again performed live by pianist Jason Ridgway and featuring soprano Gelsey Bell, the singer, composer, and scholar recently profiled in The New York Times (who will return to PEAK April 2—5 in the world premiere  of a new Kate Soper opera, The Romance of the Rose).



 
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The U.S. premiere of the complete version (Part I and Part II) of the punchy and rapidly moving company piece Detour, created by associate choreographer Martin Lawrance and danced to two percussion works by Michael Gordon and Akira Miyoshi, rounds out the thrilling program. The Independent writes that with Detour, “a dance of darting, quicksilver speed, with flashing footwork and hair-raising lifts and catches…Lawrance is at the top of his game.”

As the company makes their last U.S. stop on their Final Edition tour, this event celebrates a troupe still in top form, even as the curtain closes. Richard Alston says, “This tour is the last for my dance company and it’s a chance for me to say a huge thank you to the marvelously loyal audiences who have come to see us year after year. We are so, so lucky to have had such terrific support.”

PEAK’s Jedediah Wheeler said: “PEAK is enormously proud to have provided a U.S. home for Sir Richard and his world-class company. It’s been a joy and we feel immensely privileged to present Richard Alston Dance Company’s final American engagement.”

Performance Schedule and Ticketing

Performances by Richard Alston Dance Company will take place Thursday, February 20 & Friday, February 21 at 7:30pm; Saturday, February 22 at 8:00pm; and Sunday, February 23 at 3:00pm at the Alexander Kasser Theater at Montclair State University (1 Normal Ave, Montclair, NJ). Performances run 150 minutes, with an intermission following Detour. 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.

The First Impressions talk will take place following the performance on Saturday, February 22. For more information, please visit www.peakperfs.org/engage

Programs in PEAK Performances’ 2019-20 season are made possible in part by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts.



 
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Under the artistic direction of Office of Arts + Cultural Programming 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. Programs in this season are made possible in part by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts.


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