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Arts on the Edge Wolfeboro Schedule
July 2nd–August 13th, 2009
Music | Dance | Workshops
Art Exhibit: Marcia Christensen & Laurie Olinder
Thursday July 2nd—Friday August 13th
opening reception with the artists July 2nd, 4–6 p.m.
Exhibit dates and hours: July 3–August 14
Wed. - Sat. 10-2, Sunday 1-4. (closed 7/24–25, 7/30–8/2)
Village Players Theater free admission |
Music
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"utterly polished professionals: a triumph"
-San Francisco Classical Voice |
Margaret Leng Tan by Michael Dames
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Margaret Leng Tan: The Sorceress of New Piano
Sunday August 9th, 3 p.m.
Hailed by The New Yorker as “the diva of avant-garde pianism”, MARGARET LENG TAN has established herself as a major force within the American avant-garde. Renowned as the pre-eminent performer of John Cage’s music, her penchant for works that transcend the piano’s normal boundaries has inspired like-minded composers to write for her such as Toby Twining, Ge Gan-ru and Erik Griswold. Ms. Tan is also a favorite of composer George Crumb. She will perform music by these composers on her Arts on the Edge program.
Ms. Tan also takes a lively interest in the artistic potential of toy instruments and her groundbreaking 1997 CD, The Art of the Toy Piano (Philips/Universal), made her the world’s first toy piano virtuoso. She has elevated a humble toy to the status of a real instrument.
Margaret Leng Tan’s performance will showcase her artistry on pianos big and small. In Part One, Toy Piano Plus, Ms. Tan presents the premiere of Erik Griswold’s Old MacDonald’s Yellow Submarine featuring the toy piano, prepared piano, music boxes and toys. Also Toby Twining’s Satie Blues and Nightmare Rag combining the toy piano and piano. Wrong, Wrong, Wrong!,Ge Gan-ru’s melodrama for Ms. Tan’s voice self-accompanied by 17 toy instruments, completes the set.
In Part Two Margaret Leng Tan celebrates George Crumb’s 80th birthday with a performance of his Makrokosmos II (12 Fantasy-Pieces After the Zodiac for Amplified Piano). Since their creation three decades ago, George Crumb's monumental Makrokosmos cycles have become classics of the 20th century piano repertoire. Ms. Tan's insightful and riveting performance fusing sound, choreography and theater, distills the magical essence of Crumb's timbral universe.
"Ms. Tan has created a small revolution in piano playing over the last 20 years…her way of combining the avant-garde pianism with her toy piano work, as well as her program of commissioning new works for both instruments, has made this diminutive pianist an important figure in the world of contemporary music."
ALLAN KOZINN—New York Times
“I am very flattered that you have joined Schroeder as one of the great toy piano performers of all time.”
-Charles M. Schulz
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Toby Twining Music
Vox out of the Box: New Music for Instruments and Voices
Monday August 10th, 7:30 p.m
Toby Twining, composer / vocalist
photo by Nancy Langfeld
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"There's good music, there's great music, and every once in a while there's mind-blowing music. Like a great wizard, Twining seamlessly weaves...an incredible variety of microtones and practiced extended techniques...into the fabric of the music. But beyond all the incredible technique...what really stuck with me...was the profound sense of humanity in the work. I felt like a better person after hearing this, more creative and sensitive."
- Payton McDonald, American Record Guide
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DANCE
Eiko and Koma by Rose Eichenbaum
Eiko and Koma by Philip Trager
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DUE TO AN INJURY, THIS PERFORMANCE HAS BEEN CANCELLED
Eiko and Koma: Hunger of the Land
Tuesday August 11th, 7:30 p.m.
"If Eiko and Koma could replenish the fecundity of land the way they restore the sacral energy of human gestures in their dances, no living thing would go hungry on Earth. These Japanese performers and choreographers invoked a world so exquisite in its detail and so ferocious in its impact that it left an audience reeling."
-Debra Cash, Boston GlobeHunger of the Land
Hunger of the Land is Eiko & Koma’s reworking of their 1991 work Land, made in
collaboration with Native American musician Robert Mirabal. Land was inspired by Eiko
& Koma’s time in Taos, New Mexico, where Mirabal was raised and still lives. Taos has
been the tribal territory of Taos Pueblo Indians for more than 1,000 years, and it is home
to 2,000 people who live with ancestral traditions. Yet this New Mexico landscape was
also the site of the first nuclear testing, which enabled the 1945 atomic bombings of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Eiko & Koma and Mirabal visited Hiroshima in the process of
making of Land.
In Land, Eiko & Koma created their own archaic landscape, a site of perseverance
actively imagined and kinetically felt by performers and audience alike. Now, 15 years
later, Eiko & Koma are revisiting the concept and commissioned music of Land and
incorporating the theme of hunger from their newest work Hunger (2008). In Hunger of the Land, Eiko & Koma show how it is not only humans that are hungry—land is also
hungry for nourishment and intimacy.
Hunger of the Land is one of the first components of Eiko & Koma’s multi-year, multifaceted
Retrospective Project which will include live installations, the publication of
catalog and DVD set, photo exhibitions, and workshops. This project will allow Eiko &
Koma to reflect on their work and examine the motifs they have shared with their
audience over time. Prototype versions of Hunger of the Land were performed in Spring
2009 at the Alaska Dance Theater during Eiko & Koma’s residency as Alaska AIR
Fellows, a United States Artist program, and as a part of the Retrospective Project’s
inaugural meeting at Wesleyan University. In Hunger of the Land Eiko & Koma will
examine, question, and contradict their own history as they continue to perform and
create.
Eiko & Koma are interested in how land perseveres while also remembering its past.
Even though Hiroshima’s land was assaulted by humans, the land keeps living—just as
people strive to live even when they are hungry. Neither the assault nor the hunger is
forgotten—these become essential parts of how land or people continue to live. In
Hunger of the Land, Eiko & Koma are presenting a visual landscape that is scorched yet
also nurtures new life. This work started with sites specific to the collaborators but it will
take on new meaning at each site where it is presented. Audiences will bring individual
knowledge of the land and ancestry at each site so that the work becomes both universal
and specific.
Hunger of the Land will be performed in Summer 2009 at Arts Edge Wolfeboro in
Wolfeboro, New Hampshire and Teater Salihara in Jakarta, Indonesia. Set and costumes
are by Eiko & Koma. |
Choreographers Leslie Dworkin and Darla Stanley
in collaboration with projectionist Laurie Olinder:
New Choreographic Works
Thursday August 13th, 7:30 p.m.
"The atmosphere is charged by these alert, nimble, tactile movers. Nothing is gratuitous or decorative."
- Brenda Dixon Gottschild, Dance Magazine
This is a collaboration that was fostered by the desire to continue a dancing relationship that began back in Philadelphia in 1993. Although we have danced together, in a variety of works for other choreographers, and in a variety of cities, venues, and countries (!) this is the first choreographic collaboration that we have undertaken together. Creating a work long-distance presents it own challenges (Leslie in Austin, TX, and Darla in Wolfeboro), but we found that there was a common sensibility that we shared during this time period. We were both playing with the idea of home and the metaphoric associations of house and home—the house of the body, the house of the psyche, and the home of the spirit. Darla’s interest in archetypes, and Leslie’s study of 5-element theory (traditional Chinese medicine) have a lot of cross-over; both assert the interconnectedness of varying energetic and emotional states, and that these states, rather than being contentious, serve to support and balance each other.
For those who are new to viewing dance, we hope that you will allow yourselves to enter a kind of ‘dream state’, letting the dance images wash over you like a wave, and that you take a hint from Albert Einstein who says “the most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.” |
Leslie Dworkin
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Darla Stanley
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FREE WORKSHOPS & SYMPOSIUM
All workshops will be held at The Village Players Theater and are free.
WORKSHOP CANCELLED DUE TO INJURY - Monday August 10th, 10-11:30am - Eiko "Delicious Movement"
Delicious Movement Workshops are designed for all people who love to move or who want to love to move with delicious feelings. You don't have to be a dancer to enjoy the experience. The workshops are also for actors, poets, musicians, visual artists or anyone interested in developing their creativity.
The workshops are noncompetitive and appropriate to all levels of training and ability. Eiko & Koma hope each participant will develop lifelong pleasure in dancing any time, anywhere available to them, whether professionally or in their living room.
The workshop is grounded in Eiko & Koma's movement vocabulary as well as their compositional and performance techniques, which employ images, body articulation, floor work and transformation. However, the aim of the workshop is not to teach these. Rather, the participants, through their personal digestion of the material and of the improvisation and nonchalant partnership which supports it, are encouraged to acquire personal taste and flexible discipline to suit their own moving body. They are guided through a series of exercises designed to increase skills and awareness in the areas of focus, coordination and stance. Imagery is used as a creative stimulus.
Tuesday August 11th
10-11:30am - Toby Twining Music "New Instrumental Techniques"
Instrumentalists in Toby Twining Music discuss new music for instruments and demonstrate performance techniques.
2-3:30pm Laurie Olinder "Projecting and Painting Patterns"
Laurie Olinder, projection designer and Painter talks about her work as a painter and as a projection designer for Ridge Theater, one of America’s premiere creators of avant-garde theater, opera, and new music performance. Ridge productions are epic visual and aural works that typically position performers within film and video projections, redefining traditional theatrical boundaries.
Their productions have been presented at venues such as the American Repertory Theater, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Royal Festival Hall, and Walt Disney Concert Hall.
The work has been described as “hallucinatory, oddly beautiful, and disturbing”, by the Chicago Tribune, “They conjure up a dreamlike world, in which the actors seem to float.” Ridge Theater and its collaborators have received numerous awards including multiple Village Voice OBIE, and NY Dance & Performance BESSIE awards, an Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Design in the Theater, as well as fellowships from The Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation. Five films from Ridge productions are part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.
Wednesday August 12th
10-11:30am Leslie Dworkin/Darla Stanley
Experience a synergy of yoga and dance through guided improvisation, sequences of fluid yoga postures, and release techniques. Exploring subtle levels of body awareness, informed by breath and intuition, this workshop celebrates the individual through movement. No prior dance experience necessary.
2-3:30pm Toby Twining Music "Vox out of the Box"
Singers lead participants through the techniques of overtone singing, mouth percussion and other forms of vocal play.
Thursday August 13th
10-11:30am "Church and Art: An Unholy Divorce" - a round table discussion with visiting scholars and artists.
"Church and Art: An Unholy Divorce" - a round table discussion with visiting scholars and artists. Scholars include Mark Burrows, Professor of Christianity and Director of Worship, Theology, and the Arts program at Andover Newton-Theological School, James Christensen, Senior Paster, First Congregational Church, Wolfeboro, UCC, Elizabeth Nordbeck, Moses Brown Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Andover Newtonw, Kent De Spain, Dance Scholar, and R. Blair Moffett, Honorably Retired, Presbyterian Church (USA)
Historically, some of the world's finest art has been created for the Christian church. But in America, the relationship between Christianity and the arts has long been on the rocks. Reconciliation begins with conversation. Come join a round table discussion about the past and future of this relationship.
The round table discussion/symposium is being held at First Congregational Church, Wolfeboro, 115 S. Main Street, Wolfeboro, NH.
2-3:30pm - "An Artist's Talk"
Artist Marcia Christensen will talk about her techniques, inspirations and ideas behind her exhibition, "The Fellowship of Women".
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