2014-2015 Discover the Heartbeat of Creative Life

10th Anniversary | On October 7th, 2004, Mikhail Baryshnikov stepped onto the Alexander Kasser Theater stage in a wholly original work. His entrance was the first ever by an artist onto the Kasser stage. In the ten years since that moment,many artists from around the world have performed and created new works forPeak Performances. Artists of note and artists of promise have realized works reflecting each one’s singular imagination. And we are proud to say this has been accomplished without compromise.Conventional wisdom might say that the user defines the space. Yet the Alexander Kasser Theater is not a conventional theater, as it was designed for both audience and artist to flourish - spacious for performing while intimate for appreciation. The 14/15 season reflects a philosophy that has become the hallmark of Peak Performances and its home, the Kasser: discovery is the heartbeat of creative life. Celebrate the unique synergy of artist and audience made tangible by the Alexander Kasser Theater.

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2014-2015 Season Brochure

Office of Arts + Cultural Programming and PEAK Performances at Montclair State University
Analogy/Dora: Tramontane

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

Two-time Tony winner and National Medal of Arts recipient Bill T. Jones’ long affiliation with Peak Performances has produced some of his most profoundly moving works, including the highly acclaimed Blind Date (2005) and the widely celebrated Story/Time (2011). Analogy*, his new evening-length piece, draws on two tales that question the nature of service, duty, and what constitutes a life well lived: W.G. Sebald’s celebrated historical novel The Emigrants and Jones’ own oral history of Dora Amelan, a French Jewish nurse and social worker who survived World War II. Focusing on memory and the effect of powerful events on the actions and inner lives of individuals, Jones continues his exploration of how text, storytelling, and movement pull and push against each other. The outstanding company dances, sings, and speaks in this evocative, inspirational new performance.
La Madonna

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

A Baroque celebration of Mother’s Day and motherhood! Repast Baroque Ensemble, a group of “practiced period perfectionists” whose articulate, spirited playing has won rave reviews, has created a program of works in praise of motherhood. From Biber’s Annunciation sonata to Purcell’s Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation, all the works on this program, played by some of the finest instrumentalists on period instruments, will honor the mothers among us.
Triptych

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

Heidi Latsky is a choreographer who “beautifully resets preconceptions about bodies and movement” (The New Yorker). Ideas about beauty are often shaped by convention, but Latsky defies convention by exposing the gorgeous virtuosity of unconventional dancers’ bodies in motion in an edgy, intimate way. With Triptych, comprised of two live works and a new dance created especially for film, she celebrates the essence of individual dancers, exults in the pure joy of movement in a piece created for herself, as an “older dancer” at 56, dancing in juxtaposition with five younger dancers, and reveals the hidden beauty of all bodies.
Swim

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

Performance pioneer Robert Whitman is always at the vanguard of theater and art. With Swim, he creates an enchanting, thrillingly inventive new work that expands and heightens the theater experience by creating a rich environment of sound, movement, smells, and activities, in which the visual is only one part of the experience. According to Whitman, “an image, an object, a performer, or an action may not be seen, but it can be heard; it can be smelled; it can be perceived and felt; and in this shared experience the audience, sighted and blind, can be brought into a single community.”
ROCCO

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

In the exuberant ROCCO, choreographers Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten transform the Alexander Kasser Theater stage into a boxing ring, where every seat is ringside. Dancers become boxers in a high-stakes match, challenging each other with punches and strikes, fast footwork and ingenious tactics. Inspired by the classic Italian film Rocco & His Brothers, ROCCO depicts brotherly love and the struggle for a better life with dazzling physical virtuosity.
Shanghai Quartet, Du Yun | Works by Beethoven, Ravel, and Du Yun

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

The New York Times called Shanghai Quartet’s performance of the Ravel String Quartet in F Major “passionate…driven, elegant and nuanced.” In this program, the Quartet pairs it with Beethoven’s String Quartet no. 12 in E-flat Major, op. 127, and the world premiere of a new work by acclaimed young composer Du Yun. Tentatively titled Tattooed in Snow, the new work is inspired by the temporary and fragile crystallization of art in nature and in space, as well as by chant and poetry.
American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME) and Roomful of Teeth

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

Ask Caroline Shaw – composer, violinist, vocalist, and now youngest-ever recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music – to program a concert for the two ensembles with which she performs, and what do you get? An incredible evening of music that celebrates the works of three breathtakingly original composers, including Shaw’s own Partita for 8 Voices, declared a “dazzling, emotionally generous take on a Baroque dance suite” by The New York Times; the world premiere of a new version of her multimedia tour de force, Ritornello, featuring elements of American hymnody and Baroque music; Gavin Bryars’ heartrending Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet; and the intense, introspective glory of Henry Purcell’s fantasias.
At the same time we were pointing a finger at you...

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

Provocative South African choreographer Robyn Orlin returns to Peak Performances after the success of 2011’s exuberant Walking next to our shoes… For her latest work, she joins forces with Germaine Acogny’s famed Compagnie Jant-Bi, a touchstone of new and traditional African dance in Dakar, to investigate the charged and often taboo issue of the human body itself. Questioning standards of ugliness and beauty, illness and health, Orlin places the body itself at the heart of the debate, revealing the range of pressures to which it is subjected, especially in the African context.
NPR’s From the Top Live with Host Christopher O’Riley

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

Concert pianist and Peak Performances favorite Christopher O’Riley returns with a live recording of NPR’s From the Top, which The Boston Globe called “an unpretentious mix of the ridiculous and the sublime…[Featuring] an entertaining, accessible and often inspirational mix of outstanding musical performances, informal interviews, skits and games, the show is a celebration of extraordinary musicians who happen to be teenagers leading fairly normal lives.” The whole family will enjoy seeing this beloved radio program come together on the stage of the Alexander Kasser Theater.
Great Britten

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

Richard Alston, dubbed by The Times of London “our most musical choreographer,” makes a triumphant return to Peak Performances after the enormous success of his last visit, when The New York Times named Richard Alston Dance Company’s Unfinished Business the year’s best dance performance. The 2014 engagement includes the American premieres of two glorious new works created for the Benjamin Britten centenary, Rejoice in the Lamb and Holderlin Fragments along with the reprise of Unfinished Business(Duet) and 1994’s Illuminations, set to Britten’s song cycle based on poems by Rimbaud. Live music for this special performance is provided by rising star tenor Nicholas Phan; vital new music group American Contemporary Music Ensemble; renowned pianist Jason Ridgway; and Montclair State’s own 24-voice choir, Vocal Accord.
Apropos

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

With trademark playfulness and wit, The Symptoms, Hungary’s premiere contemporary dance/theater company, ponders the critical questions of aging. When will I lose my virginity? Will I find work I love? How do I balance work with parenthood? Do I have enough money to retire? How long will I keep my looks? Will I ever have sex again? The Symptoms’ clear-eyed, kind-hearted response to our human vulnerabilities is poignant, funny, and brave. Don’t miss the American debut of this highly original troupe.
Shanghai Quartet | Wu Han Quintets by Dvořák and Schumann

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

The internationally-acclaimed Shanghai Quartet is joined by pianist Wu Han, artistic director of Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and one of the most esteemed classical musicians in the world today, for a program including Dvořák’s ebullient, exuberant Second Piano Quintet, Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E-flat Major, op. 44, and Haydn’s String Quartet in D Major, op. 20, no. 4.
Mind Out of Matter by Scott Johnson

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

What are the origins of religion and supernatural ideas in human consciousness and culture, and how do they evolve into our religious traditions? Groundbreaking composer Scott Johnson’s newest work, Mind Out of Matter, approaches this and other perennial questions of human existence with a lively, rock-infused musical sensibility. Inspired by the ideas of renowned philosopher Daniel C. Dennett, Johnson weaves Dennett’s recorded voice into a rich instrumental score performed by Alarm Will Sound, an adventurous 20-member band acclaimed by The New York Times as “one of the most vital and original ensembles on the American music scene.”
Healing Wars

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

How do soldiers returning from the battlefield recover from their wounds? How do doctors and nurses heal the injuries these soldiers suffer, seen and unseen? Trailblazing choreographer Liz Lerman returns to Peak Performances with Healing Wars, a profoundly relevant and deeply moving new work. Through spoken word, video, and dance, Healing Wars reaches across the centuries to connect the modern wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the American Civil War. The ensemble of performers is joined onstage by a young Navy veteran whose presence personalizes the tribute that this brilliant, deftly nuanced production pays to all soldiers and healers, past and present.
Imagining O

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

How better to celebrate the Kasser Theater’s 10th anniversary than with a world premiere that makes the entire facility its stage? In the latest devised work from maverick director and pioneering founder of The Performance Group Richard Schechner, nothing is off-limits as performers guide you through the space from stage to wings, dressing rooms to lobby. Imagining O – part theater, part dance, part installation art – investigates sexuality and artistry, abjection and power as imagined by Hamlet’s Ophelia, O from Pauline Réage’s Story of O, and the ensemble.