Saturday, October 22, 2016, 8pm Sunday, October 23, 2016, 3pm Zellerbach Hall Cullberg Ballet Deborah Hay’s Figure a Sea Choreography and Direction Deborah Hay Dancers Ulrika Berg,* Anand Bolder , Barry Brannum,* Eleanor Campbell , Jac Carlsson , Eszter Czédulás , Samuel Draper , Unn Faleide, Katie Jacobson , Eva Mohn , Gesine Moog , Vera Nevanlinna,* Camille Prieux , Adam Schütt , Daniel Sjökvist , Simon Tanguy,* Vincent Van der Plas, Katie Vickers ,* Tiran Willemse , Darío Barreto Damas *guest Composer Laurie Anderson Sound Designer Martin Ekman Lighting Designer Minna Tiikkainen Assistant Lighting Designer Heikki Paasonen Costumes Marita Tjärnström Choreographic Assistants Mira Mutka and Laurent Pichaud Rehearsal Director Lisa Drake Artistic Director Gabriel Smeets Managing Director Stina Dahlström Producer Malin Brereton Assistant Producer Josefin Kahraman Technical Coordinator Matz Palmklint Stage Manager Tony Bohlin Lighting Manager Elin Holmberg Klasen Sound Manager Martin Ekman Wardrobe Supervisor Tuva Danhard Tour Manager Camilla Carlström Marketing and Public Relations Manager Erica Espling Major support provided by The Bernard Osher Foundation and additional support provided Patron Sponsor Rockridge Market Hall. n é r ö J n a b r U Vera Nevanlinna, Alexandra Campbell, and Unn Faleide in Deborah Hay’s Figure a Sea PROGRAM a continuity of discontinuity An introduction to Figure a Sea with Deborah Hay INTERMISSION Figure a Sea Duration: approximately 60 minutes World premiere: September 24, 2015 at Dansens Hus, Stockholm Co-commissioned by: Zodiak, Center for New Dance, Helsinki, Finland; Peak Performances @ Montclair State University, New Jersey; Balletto di Roma, Rome, Italy; Centro per la Scena Contemporanea – Comune di Bassano del Grappa, Bassano del Grappa, Italy; CCAP, Stockholm, Sweden Supported by the Italian Cultural Institute, Stockholm e US tour is made possible with support by e Embassy of Sweden, Washington, DC, e Swedish Arts Council, and Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation. Cullberg Ballet is represented by Key Performance, Koen Vanhove, [email protected] PLAYBILL ABOUT THE ARTISTS Cullberg Ballet has performed all over the to be considered soloists and therefore receive world and is a vital contributor to the interna - the same pay. Dancers earn a monthly salary of tional presentation of contemporary dance. e SEK 2,000 plus daily allowance. e company company also engages in national outreach builds a repertoire of works by Birgit Cullberg through its tours within Sweden. Cullberg Ballet and guest choreographers. collaborates with a variety of national and in - ternational choreographers and performing 1969 artists who create works for large and small Cullberg Ballet is contracted to the new televi - stages. e company’s activities encompass a sion channel TV2 for one year. e company multitude of different projects and productions, features in the channel’s opening night pro - including collaborations with dance training gramming and several ballet broadcasts during programs. Cullberg Ballet was founded by the 1969–70 season, with Red Wine in Green Birgit Cullberg in 1967 under the auspices of Glasses attracting the most attention. Chroma- Riksteatern—the Swedish national touring key technology creates new visual effects, al - theater—of which it still is a part. e company lowing the dancers to move “inside” an oil currently consists of 16 dancers from nearly as painting, for example. (is revolutionary ap - many countries. Since its inception, the stage proach earns the program the Prix Italia in personalities, creativity, and technical strength 1971.) Cullberg Ballet also wins a gold medal of its dancers have been Cullberg Ballet’s defin - for Best Foreign Ballet at that year’s Paris ing characteristics. Gabriel Smeets became the Autumn Festival. artistic director in 2014. Highlights from Cullberg Ballet’s history 1970 include: Cullberg Ballet moves to a permanent home on Stockholm’s Jungfrugatan. Until now the company has moved from place to place, spending one memorable winter rehearsing at the Gröna Lund amusement park, where the building was so cold that huge fan heaters had to be brought in to warm the dancers. 1971 Cullberg Ballet is a major international success, giving 14 performances in London followed by 20 in Paris in 1972. In the space of a few years the company has attained a leading position in the world of dance. 1976 Mats Ek choreographs his first work for Cull - berg Ballet, e Officer’s Servant. He also pro - 1967 duces Soweto and St. George and the Dragon, in Cullberg Ballet is founded under the auspices which he dances the main role. of Riksteatern, by Birgit Cullberg, a prominent choreographer who has staged ballets in Chile, 1978 Iran, Poland, the Soviet Union, the UK, and the Mats Ek’s major breakthrough as a choreogra - United States. e company consists of eight pher comes with e House of Bernarda Alba, of the world’s top dancers, from Canada, New a phenomenal success for Cullberg. e work Zealand, Sweden, the US, and Yugoslavia. e is based on the famous play by the Spanish founding philosophy is that all the dancers are dramatist Federico García Lorca. n é r ö J n a b r U Jea van Dinther’s Plateau Effect, 2013 1982 2007 Mats Ek creates his masterpiece, Giselle, which Cullberg Ballet turns 40 and celebrates with a has been performed by the Cullberg Ballet more successful and sold-out performance at Dans - than 300 times in 28 countries. ens Hus in Stockholm. 1985 2010 Mats Ek becomes artistic director. Anna Grip becomes artistic director and intro - duces the company to several site-specific works 1987 both outside in parks and at festivals, and in - Mats Ek produces a new version of Swan Lake, side museums. Grip also takes the initiative in to great public acclaim. Birgit Cullberg creates developing programs for smaller-scale stages, her last work for Cullberg Ballet at the age of 79. and invites Canadian choreographers Benoît Lachambre and Crystal Pite, and Norwegian 1989 Ina Christel Johannessen to create for Dansens Cullberg Ballet moves from Jungfrugatan to the Hus’ small stage. Grip also invites Alexander Riksteatern headquarters in Hallunda, a suburb Ekman to create his first full-evening produc - south of Stockholm. tion, Ekman’s Triptych—A Study of Entertain- ment, as well as Jea van Dinther, who creates 1993 his first large-stage production with Plateau Carolyn Carlson succeeds Mats Ek as artistic Effect, which premieres at Julidans in Amster dam director. Carlson introduces improvisation, in 2013. largely a new departure for the company. 2013 1995 Anna Grip steps down as artistic director in Lena Wennergren-Juras, a member of the com - August. A board consisting of Monica Fred - pany since its founding, and Margareta Lid - riks son, Jane Hopper, Lisa Drake, and omas ström (a dancer from the Royal Swedish Opera) Za molo is appointed to serve until the end of become artistic directors. e collaborative re - the year. lationship with Mats Ek continues, and other guest choreographers are also invited to create 2014 works for the company. Gabriel Smeets becomes artistic director and introduces the work of choreographers Trajal 2003 Harrell, Eszter Salamon, Cristian Duarte, and Choreographer Johan Inger becomes artistic di - Deborah Hay. rector, leaving the position in 2008. PLAYBILL To Look in Order to See Susan Leigh Foster As a tool for how to generate and also practice ese koan-like questions emphasize their dance movement, Deborah Hay has recently own inability to be answered or to be answered proposed the directive “turn your f**king head.” in any conclusive or final way. By asking dancers is phrase crystallizes Hay’s ongoing inquiry to focus on these questions in rehearsal and in into the relationship between perception and performance, Hay deviates radically from con - consciousness. ventional models of performance in which e directive is first and foremost an invita - movement is presented as something to execute tion simply to look in a different direction in “well,” “with confidence and clarity,” or “with order to see. Over the years of her work with feeling.” Instead, the practicing of dancing be - trained and untrained performers, Hay wit - comes a site of interrogation and reflection, one nessed dancers succumbing to a fixedness in without resolution. terms of their experience of movement and Although “turn your f**king head” indicates their motivation for dancing. Habitualized an insistence, even an anger about the need to through years of technical training as well as the do something differently, the directive simply socialization entailed in subject formation, this to change the visual array of what one can see fixedness manifests as a repertoire of standard does not deny old habits but rather steps to responses to the world and also as a perceptual the side of them. As dancers both devise and dullness, an inability to see what is in front of perform the sequences of images that compose one while dancing. Turning one’s head literally Hay’s dance, they are invited to re-perceive what affords an opportunity to look at the world they are doing and thereby make it new. By con - anew. It invites a rich inpouring of information, tinually asking oneself to turn one’s “f**king an energizing of one’s physicality, and the pos - head,” the dancer becomes aware of the fixed - sibility to remake one’s world. ness of perception at the same time that s/he Beginning with her earliest choreographic apprehends something unique. For Hay this projects, Hay has experimented with the use tool enables the dancer not to deny old habits of spoken and written instructions designed but rather to keep them at bay, to keep them to guide the dancers’ perceptual activity while from functioning in their routinized way. dancing. Oen times addressing the body as And “turn your f**king head” serves a fur - an aggregate of individually conscious cells, ther and perhaps most important function: it Hay asks: provides dancers with a focus for the practice of continually renewing their relationship to • What if every cell in my body at once has dancing, which, finally, is what the dance itself the potential to perceive time passing? is about.