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  2013-2014 Season Brochure

  Office of Arts + Cultural Programming and PEAK Performances at Montclair State University

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  Still Will Be Heard

  Office of Arts + Cultural Programming and PEAK Performances at Montclair State University

  Still Will Be Heard is a portrait of two lives intertwined. During her father’s last years suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease, singer/composer Liz Queler discovered a new and unexpected refuge in the words of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay.Elements of folk, bluegrass, country, rock, and jazz breathe new life into Millay’s timeless poetry. The songs, interspersed with spoken word culled from the writings of both women, take us on a journey by turns dark, playful, fierce and beautiful. An on-stage company of actors and musicians brings these songs and stories to life, while scenic elements interweave archival images and video montages, creating a time and place where these paths meet.

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  Swimming with My Mother

  Office of Arts + Cultural Programming and PEAK Performances at Montclair State University

  A heartfelt journey for mothers and children of all ages, Swimming with My Mother tells the story of a boy who learns lifelong lessons from his mother, a swimming coach. Life passes in laps, things change and the boy teaches his mother to dance. As their own stories intertwine and swell like a rising tide, the bonds of familial love are revealed to the sultry tones of Nat King Cole. Performed by acclaimed Irish choreographer David Bolger and his 80-year-old mother Madge, this award-winning production is told with affectionate humor, and also includes a screening of Wildfire Films’ Deep End Dance, starring David and Madge. This Mother’s Day weekend, treat the mom in your life to this gentle and joyful story of the things we inherit, and the things we pass along.

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  Orlando

  Office of Arts + Cultural Programming and PEAK Performances at Montclair State University

  A transformative evening of theater, Orlando opens with the hero as a young man in Elizabethan England, and follows his transformations of fortune, love and even gender in thie multi-faceted, century-spanning quest for "life and a lover". A sensuous epic of self-discovery, Virgina Woolf's novel has been described as the most charming love letter in literature, relishing an era where opulence and hedonism were savored.

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  Bullycide- Shanghai Quartet with Orion Weiss and DaXun Zhang

  Office of Arts + Cultural Programming and PEAK Performances at Montclair State University

  The Shanghai Quartet is proud to present the Northeast premiere of David Del Tredici’s Bullycide, a new work written in memory of five gay teens who committed suicide, including Rutgers student Tyler Clementi. With elements that revolve around the number “5”, the piece serves as a passionate tribute to five young men who left too soon and to the lives that might have been.

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  Rushes

  Office of Arts + Cultural Programming and PEAK Performances at Montclair State University

  Michael Gordon, maverick composer and founder of the iconic new music organization Bang on a Can, has brought together one of the most unorthodox ensembles imaginable. Best known for music with a driving intensity and power, Gordon’s Rushes pushes new boundaries and explores interweaving musical textures and timbres with this piece written for seven bassoons. Led by Dana Jessen, the Rushes Ensemble is poised to provide an entirely new way of experiencing the double reed.

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  Atomos

  Office of Arts + Cultural Programming and PEAK Performances at Montclair State University

  Atomos is the newest full-length work by cutting-edge choreographer Wayne McGregor. Imagining the indivisible, order created through uncuttable structures and interwoven with an architectural manipulation of bodies, the newest piece from Wayne McGregor is performed by his ten dancers in McGregor’s unique style – sculptural, rigorous, jarring and hauntingly beautiful. Neo-classical ambient composers A Winged Victory For The Sullen play a new live score, with lighting from Lucy Carter, film by Ravi Deepres, and costumes designed by Studio XO whose groundbreaking wearable technologies and digital skins place them at the forefront of fashion and technology.

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  Stardust

  Office of Arts + Cultural Programming and PEAK Performances at Montclair State University

  Stardust explores the evolving nature of intimacy in our technology-driven, furiously-paced world. Redefining the coming-of-age story for the electronic age, the evening-length piece follows an African American gay urban teenager who is present only by the emotionally laden tweets and text messages he sends. Dance, multimedia, and the music of Nat King Cole and d. Sabela Grimes combine to form an intensely personal journey of self-discovery.

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  Aubade

  Office of Arts + Cultural Programming and PEAK Performances at Montclair State University

  For his entire career, Douglas Dunn has done it his way – all the way. Now, witness his next surprising pivot forward. Aubade, his new dance/theater piece, is all about apprehending mortality and the unstoppable progress of time. All the senses engage with scenic and video design, music, and lyrics by noted artists Charles Atlas, Steven Taylor, and Anne Waldman, respectively. As if that wasn’t enough, Douglas Dunn’s amazing company expands to even greater numbers by casting six Montclair State College of the Arts dance students. The title refers to the classic “aubade”, the opposite of a serenade. At its heart, the aubade is a morning song of love won and lost, and of endless possibilities both bitter and sweet.

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  Darkness Is Your Candle

  Office of Arts + Cultural Programming and PEAK Performances at Montclair State University

  World music supergroup East of the River has a very different type of holiday concert in store this upcoming season. With a focus on the winter solstice, family, and new beginnings, Darkness Is Your Candle explores music of the Mediterranean, Balkans, Armenia, and the Middle East, presenting the earliest songs of those extraordinary cultures. Taking its name from the work of Persian poet Rumi, the program shifts from a lunar atmosphere in the first half of the program into rebirth and daylight in the second half, creating a unique and unforgettable musical journey for the New Year.

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  Tragedy of a Friendship

  Office of Arts + Cultural Programming and PEAK Performances at Montclair State University

  Inspired by Richard Wagner’s 13 operatic masterpieces, Jan Fabre is putting his own shocking spin on the composer’s 200th birthday, documenting the friendship and dramatic feud between Wagner and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Racing from humor to horror across the span of Wagner’s works, the piece features extremely graphic imagery and standout vocal performances from tenor Hans Peter Janssens and soprano Lies Vandeweghe. In collaboration with writer Stefan Hertmans and German composer Moritz Eggert, Jan Fabre has constructed a stunning piece of art that is part opera, part theater, and not for the faint of heart.

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  Motherland

  Office of Arts + Cultural Programming and PEAK Performances at Montclair State University

  Winding its way through airbrushed beauty, boob jobs and Botox, victim blaming, slut shaming, the might of motherhood and the challenge of childlessness, Motherland is a funny, moving show about having it all. With universal appeal and a potent mix of live music, theater, and dance, Motherland is a call to arms: one that raises a finger (guess which one) at the shallow hypocrisies of our time and asks “where are we now?”

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  Shanghai Quartet with Miró Quartet

  Office of Arts + Cultural Programming and PEAK Performances at Montclair State University

  The Shanghai Quartet is celebrating their 30th anniversary with two concerts taking the group’s sound to new places. In the fall, the group joins forces with the Miró Quartet to become an octet supergroup, performing works by Shostakovich (Two Pieces for String Octet, Op. 11) and Mendelssohn (Octet in E-flat major, Op. 20). The highlight of the afternoon is the regional premiere of Dan Welcher’s Museon Polemos, described by the composer as “a ballet without dancers.”

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  Open City

  Office of Arts + Cultural Programming and PEAK Performances at Montclair State University

  Vijay Iyer, one of the most celebrated young jazz pianists and composers of his generation, is thinking big with this world premiere concert event. Featuring two dozen musicians and artists, OPEN CITY will include spoken text performed live by rap artist Himanshu Suri and Teju Cole, whose 2012 award-winning novel of the same name inspired this wide-ranging work.

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  Fold Here

  Office of Arts + Cultural Programming and PEAK Performances at Montclair State University

  Initially inspired by Raymond Carver’s short story Cathedral, in which a sightful man’s hand is guided by a blind man’s heart in drawing a cathedral, Fold Here unfolds in an implausible universe filled with empty cardboard boxes as the basic units of all existing matter. In pursuit of the boxes’ elusive essence, the performers explore the physical, sensorial, and spiritual properties of human beings–as parallel contents and containers of existence.

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  glacier

  Office of Arts + Cultural Programming and PEAK Performances at Montclair State University

  Liz Gerring’s glacier, a new dance work featuring an ever-evolving 360-degree soundscape by composer Michael J. Schumacher, explores the nature inside nature and sheds light on a raw, elemental state of existence. Over the past few years, Gerring’s unfettered physicality has garnered attention from audiences and critics alike. Her company’s signature style – athletic, precise action with an ever-rising, unstoppable momentum – is on full display in this, her largest-scale work to date.