Trisha Brown Dance Company launches Bard SummerScape this Friday, June 27, as part of farewell tour
The Trisha Brown Dance Company kicks off the 2014 annual Bard SummerScape festival this Friday, June 27, at 7:30pm, with the first of three performances of Proscenium Works: 1979–2011. The program features the final creation of MacArthur Fellow Trisha Brown, alongside revivals of two of her most beloved large-scale stage works, made in collaboration with Laurie Anderson and Robert Rauschenberg. Brown’s esteemed company is now making its farewell tour, so SummerScape’s presentation offers one of the final opportunities to see these examples of her groundbreaking oeuvre. The two additional performances are on Saturday, June 28 at 2pm and 7:30pm, and all three will take place in the Frank Gehry-designed Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts on Bard College’s stunning Hudson River campus, with dining available in Bard’s nearby authentic Belgian Spiegeltent. As the Star-Ledger declared when the Trisha Brown Dance Company launched SummerScape in 2010, “If any dance event is worth a quick run out of town, it’s this one.”
Since helping to found the avant-garde Judson Dance Theater movement in the 1960s, Trisha Brown has consistently expanded perceptions of what dance can be. She was awarded a coveted MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant in 1991, becoming the first female choreographer to be so honored. As Dance Magazine put it, “When it comes to postmodern choreography, Trisha Brown is royalty.” The Trisha Brown Dance Company, which the choreographer formed in SoHo in 1970, soon became one of the nation’s foremost contemporary dance ensembles, and continues to command heartfelt respect more than four decades on. John Rockwell writes: “Her current company is wonderful: handsome dancers confident in their execution of Ms. Brown’s choreography. They’re a pleasure to watch, all by themselves. But they’re not by themselves; Ms. Brown’s ideas and sensibility are ever present” (New York Times).
Proscenium Works 1979–2011 offers a retrospective of the Trisha Brown Dance Company through key examples of Brown’s choreography for the proscenium stage: Set and Reset (1983) and If you couldn’t see me (1994), both featuring designs by Robert Rauschenberg and respectively set to music by Laurie Anderson and Rauschenberg, with I’m going to toss my arms—if you catch them they’re yours (2011), the final work of her career, which the New York Times pronounced “entirely absorbing,” adding presciently: “The transience of this work is its beauty. Here today, gone tomorrow.”
SummerScape has opened with significant dance performances each summer since 2005. On seeing A Rite (2013), a new dance-theater piece from the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and SITI Company, co-commissioned by SummerScape to celebrate the centenary of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring last season, Deborah Jowitt marveled: “Like many immersed in dance, I’ve seen a number of works set to Stravinsky’s score. … This is the first new one to pull me into the music and its history in so many unexpected and provocative ways” (ArtsJournal).
Dance at Bard SummerScape 2014
Trisha Brown Dance Company
Proscenium Works: 1979–2011
I’m going to toss my arms—if you catch them they’re yours (2011)
Choreography by Trisha Brown
Music by Alvin Curran, SAIE
Set design by Burt Barr
Costume design by Kaye Voyce
Lighting design by John Torres
Set and Reset (1983)
Choreography by Trisha Brown
Music by Laurie Anderson (“Long Time No See”)
Set and costume design by Robert Rauschenberg
Lighting design by Robert Rauschenberg with Beverly Emmons
If you couldn’t see me (1994)
Choreography by Trisha Brown
Music by Robert Rauschenberg
Set and costume design by Robert Rauschenberg
Lighting design by Robert Rauschenberg with Spencer Brown
Sosnoff Theater
Friday, June 27 at 7:30pm
Saturday, June 28 at 2pm*
Saturday, June 28 at 7:30pm
Tickets: $25–$60
* Round-trip bus service from Manhattan is provided exclusively to ticket-holders for the matinee on Saturday, 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 new, lower round-trip fare is $20, and the bus departs from Lincoln Center at 10:30am. Visit fishercenter.bard.edu/visit/transportation for more information.
SummerScape 2014: other key performance dates by genre
MUSIC
Bard Music Festival, Weekend One: “The Making of a Romantic Legend” (Aug 8–10)
Bard Music Festival, Weekend Two: “A New Aesthetics of Music” (Aug 15–17)
* Round-trip transportation from Manhattan to Bard is available for certain performances on August 8, 10, 15, and 17. The round-trip fare is $20 and reservations are required; see further details below.
OPERA
Carl Maria von Weber: Euryanthe
Sosnoff Theater
July 25* and Aug 1 at 7 pm
July 27, 30, and Aug 3 at 2 pm
Tickets start at $25
Franz Schubert: Die Verschworenen
Franz von Suppé: Franz Schubert (1864)
Sosnoff Theater
Aug 10 at 5:30 pm* (BMF Program 6)
Tickets start at $25
Franz Schubert: Fierrabras
Sosnoff Theater
Aug 17 at 4:30 pm* (BMF Program 12)
Tickets start at $25
THEATER
John Banville: Love in the Wars – A version of Heinrich von Kleist’s Penthesilea
Theater Two
Previews July 10 and 11 at 7:30pm
Performances July 12*, 17, 18, and 19 at 7:30 pm and July 13*, 16, 19, and 20* at 2 pm
Tickets start at $25
FILM SERIES
“Schubert and the Long 19th Century”
Thursdays and Sundays July 3 to August 3 at 7pm
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 Theater Two 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. Film Series screenings are at the Jim Ottaway Jr. Film Center in the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Center.
New York City Round-Trip Bus 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 new, lower round-trip fare is $20 and reservations are required. The coach departs from behind Lincoln Center, on Amsterdam Avenue between 64th and 65th Street. Bus departure time will be included on the ticket order receipt, or visit fishercenter.bard.edu/visit/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.
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© 21C Media Group, June 2014