Bard SummerScape 2015 Opens This Week with First Nights of Oklahoma! (Thurs, June 25) and Pam Tanowitz Dance (Sat, June 27)

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, NY: The Bard SummerScape Festival returns this week, kicking off on Thursday (June 25) with the first of five preview performances of Oklahoma!, in an intimate and revelatory new treatment from director Daniel Fish. Starring Damon Daunno, Amber Gray, and two-time Tony nominee Mary Testa, Fish’s production offers an entirely new way of experiencing the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic, with new choreography from John Heginbotham and original musical arrangements for six-piece Americana band by Daniel Kluger (June 25–July 19). The weekend also brings another key SummerScape presentation, when New York’s Pam Tanowitz Dance makes its Fisher Center debut, showcasing the choreography of Bessie Award-winner Pam Tanowitz in a triple bill that features the world premiere of Untitled (solo for Ashley Tuttle) and live music from FLUX Quartet (Sat, June 27 & Sun, June 28). Both productions take place in the striking Frank Gehry-designed Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts on Bard College’s idyllic Hudson River campus, where dining is available in the beloved Belgian Spiegeltent. As the New York Times put it, SummerScape’s eight-week arts festival is “ever a hotbed of intellectual and aesthetic adventure.”

Theater: Oklahoma!, directed by Daniel Fish

As in previous seasons, SummerScape follows the theme of the Bard Music Festival, which this year explores “Chávez and His World,” celebrating the life and works of Carlos Chávez. Close contemporaries of the Mexican composer, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II shared his concern with the forging of a new relationship between popular music and national identity. Revolutionizing the authentically homegrown art form of musical theater, their first collaboration, Oklahoma! (1943), is set in the Territory of Oklahoma during the years before statehood, and investigates America’s cultural identity through her frontier roots. Director Daniel Fish – “a magical manipulator” (New York Times) – explains:

“For me, Oklahoma! is about the relationship between the individual and the community: what people gain and what they sacrifice when they decide to form a community, whether the union of a married couple, a state, or a nation. It explores the need for that community to create an outsider and the cost of doing so.”

Bringing audience and artists together in the round, his production will be mounted in five previews (June 25–July 1) and 20 performances (July 2–19) in the Fisher Center’s LUMA Theater.

Oklahoma! is presented through special arrangement with R & H Theatricals: www.rnh.com.

 

Dance: Pam Tanowitz Dance & FLUX Quartet

 

In her new work, Untitled (solo for Ashley Tuttle), choreographer Pam Tanowitz draws on the modernist language of Mexican composer Carlos Chávez in an en pointe solo created for former American Ballet Theatre principal Ashley Tuttle. Tanowitz explains:

“Working with Ashley allows me to examine classic ideas of beauty, femininity, grace and purity against contemporary images of these same characteristics, allowing audiences to be pulled back and forth by the uncanny sense of the familiar in the unfamiliar.”

Bookending her new work are two of the choreographer’s most recent ensemble pieces, Broken Story (wherein there is no ecstasy) and Heaven on One’s Head. Set to the music of innovative American experimentalist Conlon Nancarrow, performed live by FLUX Quartet, it was this last piece that prompted the New York Times to observe: “The dance steps, phrases and constructions by the choreographer Pam Tanowitz are among the finest being made anywhere today.”

Staged in two performances on June 27 and 28, the triple bill takes place in the Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater.

Click here to download high-resolution photos.

 

Theater at Bard SummerScape 2015

Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!
Music by Richard Rodgers
Book and Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II
Based on the play “Green Grow the Lilacs” by Lynn Riggs
Original Dances by Agnes de Mille

Artistic team:
Director: Daniel Fish
Music supervisor and arranger: Daniel Kluger
Music director: Nathan Koci
Choreographer: John Heginbotham
Scenic designer: Laura Jellinek
Costume designer: Terese Wadden
Lighting designer: Scott Zielinski
Sound designer: Drew Levy
Projections designer: Joshua Thorson
Production stage manager: Megan Schwarz Dickert
Assistant stage manager: Kelly Hardy

Cast:
Curly: Damon Daunno
Jud Fry: Patrick Vaill
Ali Hakim: Benj Mirman
Will Parker: James Patrick Davis
Andrew Carnes: Mitch Tebo
Laurey: Amber Gray
Ado Annie Carnes: Allison Strong
Aunt Eller: Mary Testa
Cord Elam: John Carlin

Gertie Cummings: Mallory Portnoy

Musicians:
Eleonore Oppenheim, bass
Joseph Brent, mandolin and guitar
Hilary Hawke, banjo
Brett Parnell, pedal steel and electric guitar
Blake Allen, violin and viola

Performances:
Thurs, June 25, 7:30pm†
Fri, June 26, 7:30pm†
Sat, June 27, 7:30pm†
Sun, June 28, 2pm*†
Wed, July 1, 2pm†
Thurs, July 2, 7:30pm
Fri, July 3, 7:30pm
Sat, July 4, 2pm
Sat, July 4, 7:30pm
Sun, July 5, 2pm
Sun, July 5, 7:30pm
Wed, July 8, 2pm
Thurs, July 9, 7:30pm
Fri, July 10, 7:30pm
Sat, July 11, 2pm
Sat, July 11, 7:30pm
Sun, July 12, 2pm*
Sun, July 12, 7:30pm
Wed, July 15, 2pm
Thurs, July 16, 7:30pm
Fri, July 17, 7:30pm
Sat, July 18, 2pm
Sat, July 18, 7:30pm
Sun, July 19, 2pm*
Sun, July 19, 7:30pm

(Tickets start at $25)

† Preview performance

Special support for this program is provided by the Martin and Toni Sosnoff Foundation, and by Rebecca Gold.

Round-trip bus service from Manhattan is provided exclusively to ticket-holders for the matinee performances on June 28, July 12, and July 19. A reservation is required, and may be made by calling the box office at 845-758-7900 or by selecting this option when purchasing tickets. The round-trip fare is $40, and the bus departs from behind Lincoln Center, on Amsterdam Avenue between 64^th and 65^th Streets, at 11am (June 28) and 10:30am (July 12 & 19). Visit fishercenter.bard.edu/visit/transportation for more information.

This season’s SummerScape theater performances are held in 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.

Dance at Bard SummerScape 2015

Pam Tanowitz Dance & FLUX Quartet

Broken Story (wherein there is no ecstasy)
Choreography: Pam Tanowitz
Danced by Maggie Cloud, Dylan Crossman, Stuart Singer, and Melissa Toogood
Music: Caroline Shaw (1655); David Lang (almost all the time); and Ted Hearne (For David Lang)
Played by FLUX Quartet (Tom Chiu, violin; Conrad Harris, violin; Max Mandel, viola; Felix Fan, cello)
Lighting design: Davison Scandrett
Costume design: Reid Bartelme

Untitled (solo for Ashley Tuttle)
World premiere
Choreography: Pam Tanowitz
Danced by Ashley Tuttle
Music: Carlos Chávez (Sonatina for Violin and Piano)
Played by Pauline Kim Harris, violin; Michael Scales, piano
Lighting design: Davison Scandrett
Costume design: Reid Bartelme
Heaven on One’s Head
Choreography: Pam Tanowitz
Danced by Andrew Champlin, Maggie Cloud, Dylan Crossman, Sarah Haarmann, Lindsey Jones, Vincent McCloskey, Stuart
Singer, and Melissa Toogood
Music: Conlon Nancarrow (String Quartets Nos. 1 & 3)
Played by FLUX Quartet (Tom Chiu, violin; Conrad Harris, violin; Max Mandel, viola; Felix Fan, cello)
Lighting design: Davison Scandrett
Costume design: Reid Bartelme

Sosnoff Theater
Sat, June 27 at 8 pm
Sun, June 28 at 3 pm*
Meet the Artists:
Post-performance conversation June 27
Pre-performance talk June 28 at 2 pm
Tickets start at $25

* Round-trip bus service from Manhattan is provided exclusively to ticket-holders for the matinee on Sunday, June 28. A reservation is required, and may be made by calling the box office at 845-758-7900 or by selecting this option when purchasing tickets. The round-trip fare is $40, and the bus departs from behind Lincoln Center, on Amsterdam Avenue between 64^th and 65^th Streets, at 11am on June 28. Visit fishercenter.bard.edu/visit/transportation for more information.

SummerScape 2015: other key performance dates by genre

MUSIC
Bard Music Festival, Weekend One: “The Musical Voice of Mexico” (Aug 7–9)
Bard Music Festival, Weekend Two: “Mexico, Latin America, and Modernism” (Aug 13–16)

OPERA
Ethel Smyth: The Wreckers
Sosnoff Theater
July 24* & 31 at 7:30 pm
July 26*, 29 & Aug 2* at 2 pm
Tickets start at $25

PERFORMANCE-INSTALLATION
Fernando Rubio: Everything by my side
Fisher Center lawn
July 9, 10, 11 & 12 at 5 pm
July 10 at 2 pm
July 11 & 12 at 12 pm
Tickets: $5 (not discounted in subscription packages)

FILM SERIES
“Reinventing Mexico”
Saturday, July 11 to Sunday, Aug 2
Ottaway Film Center
Tickets: $10

SPIEGELTENT
Live Music, Cabaret, Festival Dining, and After Hours salon
Dates, Times, and 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, Oklahoma! is in LUMA Theater, and Everything by my side takes place out of doors. The Spiegeltent has its own schedule of events, in addition to serving as a restaurant, café, and bar before and after performances. Film Series screenings are at the Jim Ottaway Jr. Film Center in the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Center.

New York City Round-Trip Coach Transportation:
To make a reservation on the round-trip SummerScape coach provided exclusively to ticket holders for specific performances indicated by * in the listings above, call the box office at 845-758-7900 or select this option when purchasing tickets. The round-trip fare is $40 and reservations are required. The coach departs from behind Lincoln Center, on Amsterdam Avenue between 64^th and 65^th Street. Find additional details at: 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. Fisher Center members receive priority access to the best seats in advance, and those who join the Center’s email list receive advance booking opportunities as well as regular news and updates. For further information, visit fishercenter.bard.edu/summerscape.

#          #          #

© 21C Media Group, June 2015