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  2015-2016 Season Brochure

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

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  Go Down, Moses

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

  This work transfigures the various moments of the life of Moses as they are narrated in the Book of Exodus. In the events of this man’s life there is something inherent in the substance of our time. As with Michelangelo’s Moses, described in the text that Freud dedicated to this work, the prophet of monotheism is presented here as a man, forced to react when faced with the difficulties that this God—without name and without image—puts before him: the abandonment of his newborn body in the waters of the Nile, the mystery of the burning bush in which the blinding splendor of the glory of YHWH—in the kabod—manifests itself, and the 40 days passed on Mount Sinai where he receives the tablets of the law only to discover, on his return, the golden calf erected and venerated by his people.

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  La Double Coquette

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

  Florise is at home, wallowing in self-pity, when she receives an e-mail inviting her to a party. She assumes that Damon, her fickle suitor, has sent it. She sees him on Facebook with another woman—Clarice. She devises a plot to break them up, dressing as a man, complete with fake moustache.

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  Shanghai Quartet

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

  Renowned for its passionate musicality, impressive technique, and distinctive blend of styles, the Shanghai Quartet has become one of the world’s foremost chamber ensembles. The “utterly sublime” (The New York Times) ensemble returns for two enchanting engagements. The Shanghai Quartet is the quartet-in-residence at Montclair State University’s Cali School of Music.

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  portrait of myself as my father

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

  portrait... takes place in a simulated boxing ring in which Chipaumire and Senegalese dancer Pape Ibrahima Ndiaye, also known as Kaolack, are tied together in an exhausting and symbolic dance-ritual. They are joined by Jamaican-born, Brooklyn-based dancer Shamar Watt, who plays the coach/corner man/cheerleader/shadow. In this performance, the spectres of the estranged father dance, struggle, and fight against prejudices, social pressures, the weight of traditions and history.The piece considers the African male through the lens of capitalism, Christianity, colonialism and liberation struggles—and how these political and cultural traditions impact the African family and society on a global scale. The imaginary daughter and father are tethered to the stage and to each other: they are both linked and opposed, and the elastic bands are a literal and figurative connection that questions family ties. The performance also celebrates and critiques masculinity: its presence, presentation, and representation. This timely examination of black maleness asks: What is it about the black male body that we fear?

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  Krapp's Last Tape

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

  Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape is a solo/dialogue. One actor onstage carries on a conversation with his own voice recorded many years before. An old man sitting alone in his den on his birthday gets ready to make a recording about the past year of his life, as he has done on every birthday since he was a young man. Getting ready to make the new recording, he listens to a recording he made some 30 years before, at the end of a year that was perhaps the last truly happy one in his life. Bitter, funny, ironic, he finds it hard to recognize himself in the brash, romantic, confident voice of his youth.

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  The Grand Parade (of the 20th Century)

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

  It all started with a question: How would we write a mythology for our time? We began with the recent past—the 20th century—and the paintings of Marc Chagall. We encountered a brutal and chaotic century, one in which cataclysm and destruction branded the times. This is how we chose to walk alongside Chagall. For the better part of the 20th century, he chose the flight of the imagination, folk tradition, and the collision of dreams as his portal of memory, as a means of passage through the war and revolution and exile that he painted.

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  The Book of Disquiet

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

  Michel van der Aa’s music theatre work, The Book of Disquiet, was the first staged production in Linz’s Cultural Capital of Europe celebrations in January 2009. Following his opera After Life, which enjoyed a sell-out run at the Holland Festival in 2006, van der Aa again provides cutting-edge integration of music, live action and video, here built from text fragments by Fernando Pessoa.

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  Shanghai Quartet with Wu Man

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

  Renowned for its passionate musicality, impressive technique, and distinctive blend of styles, the Shanghai Quartet has become one of the world’s foremost chamber ensembles. The “utterly sublime” (The New York Times) ensemble returns for two enchanting engagements. The Shanghai Quartet is the quartet-in-residence at Montclair State University’s Cali School of Music.

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  Horizon

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

  Horizon is a new work for seven dancers centered around the idea of density. In this piece I endeavored to add as much as possible to the space in terms of dancers and movement. With multiple phrases occurring simultaneously, the dance takes the form of a constantly shifting universe full of activity. glacier, my preceding work was an exercise of stripping away in an effort to reduce movement to its least possible form. Working again with collaborators Michael Schumacher and set and lighting designer Robert Wierzel, we’ve done something different. Michael’s multiple rhythms and use of a live percussionist propel the actions onstage, supporting the dancer’s movement in a way that is unusual for us.

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  Girl Gods

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

  Girl Gods explores the ancestry of women, individuals, and family—and the idea of rage. Both a visual installation and a time-based performance, Girl Gods has connections to feminist artists and art practices of the 1970s, influenced by Judy Chicago’s installation projects and the earth-body work of Ana Mendieta.

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  Rooms of Light : The Life of Photographs

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

  "...A lot had happened in the world to make photography even more central: the rise of online dating sites, of the tweet, the iPhone, the selfie; a ban had finally been lifted on taking photographs of soldiers’ coffins returning home from the Middle East. We were consuming photography, and photography was consuming us. Our lives were validated somehow by photographs, each one of them a “room of light.” So our song cycle concluded—although the implications of photography will never be finished."

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  Elements of Oz

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

  A MASHUP OF PERFORMANCE, TECH & POP CULTURE; The Builders Association takes you on a journey through the Wonderful Land of OZ - From the surreal novel, to dark conspiracy theories, to the making of the iconic film, ELEMENTS OF OZ uses live music, video, performance and AR to bring this iconic American story to life.