Saturday, September 28, 2019, 8pm Zellerbach Hall Triptych Eyes of One on Another A Cal Performances Co-commission Produced by ArKtype/omas O. Kriegsmann in cooperation with e Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation Composed by Bryce Dessner Libretto by korde arrington tuttle Featuring words by Essex Hemphill and Patti Smith Directed by Kaneza Schaal Featuring Roomful of Teeth with Alicia Hall Moran and Isaiah Robinson
Jennifer H. Newman, associate director/touring Lilleth Glimcher, associate director/development Brad Wells, music director and conductor Martell Ruffin, contributing choreographer and performer
Carlos Soto, set and costume design Yuki Nakase, lighting design Simon Harding, video Dylan Goodhue/nomadsound.net, sound design William Knapp, production management Talvin Wilks and Christopher Myers, dramaturgy ArKtype/J.J. El-Far, managing producer William Brittelle, associate music director Kathrine R. Mitchell, lighting supervisor Moe Shahrooz, associate video designer Megan Schwarz Dickert, production stage manager Aren Carpenter, technical director Iyvon Edebiri, company manager Dominic Mekky, session copyist and score manager Gill Graham, consulting producer Carla Parisi/Kid Logic Media, public relations
Cal Performances’ 2019 –20 season is sponsored by Wells Fargo.
ROOMFUL OF TEETH Estelí Gomez, Martha Cluver, Augusta Caso, Virginia Kelsey, omas McCargar, ann Scoggin, Cameron Beauchamp, Eric Dudley
SAN FRANCISCO CONTEMPORARY MUSIC PLAYERS Lisa Oman, executive director ; Eric Dudley, artistic director Susan Freier, violin ; Christina Simpson, viola ; Stephen Harrison, cello ; Alicia Telford, French horn ; Jeff Anderle, clarinet/bass clarinet ; Kate Campbell, piano/harmonium ; Michael Downing and Divesh Karamchandani, percussion ; David Tanenbaum, guitar
Music by Bryce Dessner is used with permission of Chester Music Ltd.
“e Perfect Moment, For Robert Mapplethorpe” by Essex Hemphill, 1988. Courtesy of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, reprinted by permission of e Frances Goldin Literary Agency.
“American Wedding” by Essex Hemphill, from Ceremonies , Cleis Press, 1992, reprinted by permission of e Frances Goldin Literary Agency.
“e Boy Who Loved Michelangelo,” by Patti Smith, from e Coral Sea , 2012.
“Untitled,” by Patti Smith, June 1988, from e Perfect Moment Exhibition Catalogue
Produced in residency with and commissioned by University Musical Society, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.
Co-produced by Los Angeles Philharmonic, Gustavo Dudamel, music and artistic director.
Triptych was co-commissioned by Cal Performances; Luminato Festival, Toronto, Canada; BAM; Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center as part of the Nostos Festival, Athens, Greece; Cincinnati Opera, Cincinnati, OH; Stanford Live, Stanford University, Stanford, CA; Adelaide Festival, Australia; John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for performance as part of DirectCurrent 2019; ArtsEmerson: World on Stage, Emerson College, Boston, MA; Texas Performing Arts, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX; Holland Festival, Amsterdam; Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH; the Momentary, Bentonville, AR; Celebrity Series, Boston, MA; and developed in residency with MassMOCA, North Adams, MA.
Our deepest thanks to Joree Adilman and e Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation for their care and support in bringing this work to life.
Very special thanks to the commissioning partners who made this project possible, Jeremy Geffen, Robin Pomerance, the Cal Performances team, Joseph V. Melillo, Michael Kondziolka, Josephine Ridge, Gill Graham, James Rushton, Rob Bailis, Mary Hickson, Daniel Fish, Ashley Tata, Jim Findlay, Robert O’Hara, David Lang, Ashton Muñiz, Shanta ake, Rachel Chanoff, Sue Killam, Curt Leclair, Jesse Ontiveros, Sunny Cyr, Victoria Nassif, Trevor Litsey, Daniel Alexander Jones, Jeff Miller & Williams College, Beth Given, Ted Pallas, Val Migoulia, Ryan Gohsman, Heather Englander, Mily Paschali, Ad Van der Koog, Nat Trottman, and e Guggenheim.
ArKtype omas O. Kriegsmann, president J.J. El-Far, managing producer P.O. Box 180241 Brooklyn, NY 11218 arktype.org
PLAYBILL PROGRAM NOTES
here is a stream of thinking in the West are no disinterested pleasures, that the white that associates “the beautiful” with, as marble figures that Mapplethorpe referenced TKant calls it, a “disinterested pleasure.” so cleanly in his photographs were originally “Interested” pleasures like pornography and splashed with vibrant color, that the valoriza - propaganda were contrasted with more noble tion of Greco-Roman bronzes or nearly grain - pursuits, for example, the nude or classical less black and white photography is as culturally dramas. is disinterest lays the foundations for specific as saying that the only real music high modernism, its formalisms, its universal - was written by Beethoven. Artists like Glenn ist fallacies, the abstractions that purport to be thin as the can - vases they are painted on, the movement vocabularies that pretend to come from the deep - est recesses of the human soul, the radical borrowings that see all forms as somehow “neutral.” ough several generations of artists and thinkers have made clear that there is no such thing as “disinterested pleasure,” for a certain era of makers who lived on the cusp of the transi - tion from high modernism to the hydra of forms that have followed, they discovered in the double-speak of modernist “universalities” a certain libera - tion. Robert Mapplethorpe was one such artist who photo - graphed bodies, practices, and selves that were considered ab - ject or taboo at the time but was able to do so with the assurance that his interest in these forms was “disinterested.” He said, about the work he showed in his 1986 solo exhibition “Black Males,” “I’m photographing Self-Portrait, 1988 © e Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. them as form, in the same way Used by permission. I’m reading the flowers.” Mapplethorpe’s work, its beauty and its con - Ligon, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, and less directly, troversies, its legal challenges, most notably Catherine Opie, have addressed some of the the obscenity trial in Cincinnati surrounding complications of Mapplethorpe’s oeuvre. Essex the exhibit e Perfect Moment , all spun on the Hemphill, Mapplethorpe’s contemporary, who question of this “disinterested” beauty. Were along with Marlon Riggs delineated a set of these photographs pornography or were they African-American gay sensibilities, provides nudes? an alternative way of viewing some of the same But what are we to make of the work in our bodies Mapplethorpe depicts, and forms one current moment of understanding, that there cornerstone of the present oratorio, Triptych
PROGRAM NOTES
(Eyes of One on Another) . But still the question scape of viewerships. e artists ask questions lingers: How do we as contemporary viewers of the work and of themselves within the work. acknowledge and embrace all of the ways, all Is it possible to imagine these men who are of the vantage points, from which we can see photographed with the impersonal intimacy this work? of flowers, or bronze sculptures, as full human In Triptych (Eyes of One on Another) , Bryce beings, with desires and pleasures of their own? Dessner and korde arrington tuttle, in collab - Can we read the desire of the photographer, oration with Kaneza Schaal, Roomful of Teeth, his conflicts and self-denials, in his steadfast and produ cer ArKtype, and with texts from commitment to a classical language that recasts Essex Hemphill, Patti Smith, and the Cincinnati leather daddies and daddy’s boys into upper- obscenity trial, rethink Mapplethorpe’s work middle class living room fantasies? Where in as not only an intersection of the photographer’s this thorny bramble of gazes, objectification, interests and multiple positionalities, but also outrage, and intimacy do our own wants and to imagine the work itself as a locus around expectations as an audience live? which various communities find themselves When Martell Ruffin, the classically trained both included and alienated by the work itself, dancer who functions as a kind of ghost of oen at the same time. both Mapplethorpe’s subjects and invisible e work and its collaborators, who bring audiences, enters he literalizes the sense of mul - to bear performance languages as diverse as tiple viewerships and makes us aware that as Tuvan throat singing techniques, pop, folk, film, we take in this work and Mapplethorpe’s work and experimental music, 1980s down town per - there are and will be other eyes, other ways of formance, Ailey and classical ballet, inhabit the engaging with these bodies, these sounds, these space between the photographic work and its hearts. Beauty is never “disinterested”—it is audiences. Much like the fable of e Blind Men made of a thousand overlapping interests and and the Elephant , they cobble together a land - wants and cares. —Christopher Myers
the work of the eyes is done. go now and do dominating races, genders, sexual practices the heart-work on the images imprisoned affirm their power-over in intimate relations within you. with the other. —rainer maria rilke —bell hooks
when i work, and in my art, i hold hands the texture of black skin excites me photo - with god. graphically, maybe as well as other ways… —robert mapplethorpe there is a reason that bronzes are bronze. —robert mapplethorpe we liked each other and understood passion and good form as a constant source of grat - holy mary, mother of god, pray for us sinners ification. now and at the hour of our death —ntokaze shange —hail mary (on robert mapplethorpe) i am obsessed with beauty. i want everything when race and ethnicity become commodi - to be perfect, and of course it isn’t. and that’s fied as resources for pleasure, the culture a tough place to be because you’re never sat - of specific groups, as well as the bodies of isfied. individuals, can be seen as constituting an —robert mapplethorpe alternative playground where members of
PLAYBILL ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Robert Mapplethorpe was born in 1946 in anthropic mandate, Mapplethorpe targeted the Floral Park, Queens. In 1963, he enrolled at the two areas of his greatest concern: support of Pratt Institute in nearby Brook lyn, where he medical research in the area of HIV/AIDS, and studied drawing, painting, and sculpture. the promotion of photography as a fine art form Mapplethorpe also experimented with mixed- deserving the same prominence as painting media collages, using images cut from books and sculpture. and magazines. He was gied a Polaroid cam - In keeping with its founder’s wishes, the era in 1970 and began producing his own Mapplethorpe Foundation has given millions photographs to incorporate into the collages. of dollars to fund medical research in the fight In 1975, he acquired a Hasselblad camera and against AIDS and HIV by establishing research began photographing his circle of friends and and care centers at major medical facilities acquain tances—artists, musicians, celebrities, such as Harvard University and Beth Israel in and the S & M underground. New York. It has also supported the American roughout the 1980s, Mapplethorpe pro - Foun dation for AIDS Research (amfAR) and duced images that simultaneously challenged the AIDS Community Research Initiative of and adhered to classical aesthetic standards: America (ACRIA), among others. stylized compositions of male and female In the field of photography, the foundation nudes, delicate flower still lifes, and studio has funded publications, supported exhibitions portraits of artists and celebrities. He intro - and acquisitions, and provided grants in the duced and refined different techniques and form of funding or gis of original Mapple- formats, including photogravures, platinum thorpe works, to art institutions ranging prints on paper and linen, Cibachrome, and from the world’s major art museums to small dye-transfer color prints. university galleries. In 1993, the foundation In 1986, Mapplethorpe was diagnosed with provided a major gi to the Solomon R. AIDS. Despite his illness, he accelerated his Guggenheim Foundation to create the Robert creative efforts, broadened the scope of his pho - Mapplethorpe Gallery and inaugurate the tographic inquiry, and accepted increasingly Guggenheim’s photography department and challenging commissions. e Whitney Mu - program. seum of American Art mounted his first major In 2011, the foundation made a gi to and Amer ican museum retrospective in 1988, one facilitated an acquisition by the J. Paul Getty year before his death in 1989. Museum and the Los Angeles County Mu seum Mapplethorpe’s vast, provocative, and pow - of Art (LACMA) of over 2,000 works of art by erful body of work has established him as one the artist; the most extensive archive of his ca - of the most important artists of the 20th cen - reer will reside at the Getty Research Institute. tury. Today Mapplethorpe is represented by In addition to its charitable work, the foun - galleries in the Americas and Europe and his da tion maintains Mapplethorpe’s artistic legacy work can be found in the collections of major by organizing and/or lending to exhibitions museums around the world. Beyond the his - around the world, preserving its collection of torical and social significance of his work, Mapplethorpe artworks, strictly maintaining his legacy lives on through the work of the the editions he established, and placing his work Robert Mapple thorpe Foundation, which he in important collections. established in 1988 to promote photography, support museums that exhibit photographic Patti Smith (born December 30, 1946, Chicago, art, and fund medical research in the fight IL), in full Patti Lee Smith, is an American poet, against AIDS and HIV. rock songwriter, and singer. Growing up in New Jersey, Smith won an art scholarship e Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation was to Glassboro State Teachers College. In 1967, established by the artist in 1988, a year before she moved to New York City, where she became his death. In determining the foundation’s phil - active in the downtown Manhattan arts scene,
ABOUT THE ARTISTS writing poetry and living with the photogra - successful album, Easter , in 1978. It included pher Robert Mapplethorpe. Her performance- a hit single, “Because the Night,” written with driven poetry readings soon took on a musical Bruce Springsteen. Fol lowing the album Wave component, and from 1971 she worked regu - in 1979, Smith disbanded her group and re - larly with the guitarist and critic Lenny Kaye. tired to Detroit, Michigan, where she raised By 1973, they had formed a band and began a family with Fred (“Sonic”) Smith, founder of performing widely in the downtown club the band MC5. In 2010, Smith published the memoir Just Kids , which fo - cused on her relationship with Mapplethorpe. e critically ac - claimed work won the National Book Award for nonfiction. Another memoir— M Train , which chronicles her travels and other experiences—was published in 2015. Two years later, she released Devotion , an installment in Yale University Press’ Why I Write series. In 2016, Smith accepted Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize for Litera- ture on his behalf. A pio neer in the fusion of the bohemian sen - sibility with rock, she was able to translate the incantatory power of Beat writers such as Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs into the rock main - stream. In 2007, Smith was in - ducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. France’s Ministry of Culture named her a Com- mander of the Order of Arts and Letters in 2005, and she was awarded the Polar Music Prize for her contributions to music Patti Smith, c.1973 © e Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission. and art by the Royal Swedish Academy of Music in 2011. scene. Smith’s mesmeric cha ris ma, chant-like but hoarsely compelling musical declamation, Essex Hemphill (1957–1995) was a poet, ac - visionary texts, and simple but ingenious rock tivist, journalist, and performer whose first music won her an intense cult following. collections of poems were the self-published Signed to a contract with Arista Records, chapbooks Earth Life (1985) and Conditions Smith released her first album, Horses , in 1975; (1986). His first full-length collection, Cere - it was produced by John Cale, the Welsh avant- monies: Prose and Poetry (1992), won the gardist and cofounder (with Lou Reed) of the Na tional Library Association’s Gay, Lesbian, Velvet Underground. Aer Radio Ethiopia and Bisexual New Author Award. His work is (1976) she released her most commercially included in the anthologies Gay and Lesbian
PLAYBILL ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Poetry in Our Time (1986) and Life Sentences: Bryce Dessner (composer ) is one of the most Writers, Artists, and AIDS (1993). Hemphill sought-aer composers of his generation, with studied English at the University of Maryland; a rapidly expanding catalogue of works com - in 1978, with a fellow student, he helped found missioned by leading ensembles across the and run the Nethula Journal of Contemporary world. A curator and vital force in the flourish - Literature . His later editing credits include the ing realm of new creative music, he is known to anthology Brother to Brother: New Writing by many as a guitarist with e National. Dessner’s Black Gay Men (1991), which won the Lambda Literary Award. In 1983, Hemphill par - ticipated in the performance poetry group Cinque with Way- son Jones and Larry Duckette; their work was later featured in the documentaries Tongues Untied (1989) and Black Is… Black Ain’t (1994). Hemphill’s poetry was also included in the film Looking for Langston (1989). Known for his political edge, Hemphill openly addressed race, identity, sexuality, HIV/ AIDS, and the family in his work, voicing issues central to the African-American gay community. His aversion to the work of Robert Map plethorpe and criticism of the art world’s embracing of his work were well-known and articulated in his famous essay “Does Your Mama Know About Me?” “What is insulting and endan - gering to Black men,” he wrote, “is Mapplethorpe’s conscious determination that the faces, the heads, and by extension, the Essex Hemphill minds and experiences of some of his Black subjects are not as important as close-up shots of their cocks.” orchestral, chamber, and vocal compositions Hemphill received fellowships from the have been commissioned by the likes of the National Endow ment for the Arts and grants Los Angeles Philharmonic, Ensemble Intercon - from the Pew Charitable Trust Fellowship in temporain, Metropolitan Museum of Art (for the Arts and the DC Commis sion on the Arts the New York Philharmonic), Kronos Quartet, and Humani ties. He was a visiting scholar at BAM’s Next Wave Festival, Barbican Centre, the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Edinburgh International Festival, Carnegie Humanities in 1993 in Santa Monica, Califor - Hall, Sydney Festival, eighth blackbird, Sō nia. Hemphill died of complications from Percussion, New York City Ballet, and many AIDS in 1995. others. He collaborates across art forms with
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Grammophon, featuring the lyrical title work and two other Dessner compositions per - formed by the Copenhagen Philharmonic under André de Ridder. May of 2015 marked the release on Brassland of Music for Wood and Strings, an album- length work performed by Sō Percussion on custom-built “chord sticks” that convey a shimmering, hammer dulcimer- like quality. In 2015, Music - NOW, the Cincinnati-based contemporary music festival he founded, celebrated its tenth an - niversary. Dessner is also co- curator of HAVEN, Copenha - gen’s annual festival “for the senses, merging experiments in art, music, beer and food,” which launched in 2017, and PEOPLE, which debuted offi - cially in Berlin in 2018. Other notable recent projects in - e o d n i clude Quilting , a 17-minute score c a M
co-com mis sioned with the BBC m a h Symphony Orches tra; e Most a r G Incredible ing , a ballet created Bryce Dessner by Dessner, Justin Peck, and Marcel Dzama; and Dessner’s some of the world’s most creative and respected Concerto for Two Pianos, written for Katia and artists, including Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Marielle Labèque, recently released by Deutsche Ale jandro Iñárritu, Paul Simon, Suan Ste - Grammophon. Further commissions include vens, Caroline Shaw, Johnny Greenwood, Bon Voy a Dormir (2018), written for mezzo-soprano Iver, Justin Peck, Ragnar Kjartansson, Jen nifer Kelley O’Connor and St. Luke’s Orchestra; Skrik Koh, Kelley O’Connor, and Nico Muhly. Des- Trio , commissioned by Steve Reich and Carne - sner’s work Murder Ballads , featured on eighth gie Hall for the ree Genera tions Series; blackbird’s album Fila ment, won the 2016 No Tomorrow (a ballet created with Rag nar Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music/ Kjartansson and Mar grét Bjarnadóttir), winner Small Ensemble Performance. He also co-wrote of Iceland’s Griman Award; and the soundtrack (with Ryuichi Sakamoto and Alva Noto) the for Death of Marsha P. Johnson , the Netflix doc - score and was nominated for a Grammy and umentary about the LGBT rights activist. Golden Globe for Iñárritu’s Academy Award- Dessner earned his bachelor’s and master’s de - winning film e Revenant . Aheym , commis - grees from Yale University and resides in Paris. sioned in 2009 by Kro nos Quartet, served as the centerpiece of a 2013 Kronos disc devoted korde arrington tuttle (librettist ) is a multi- to Dessner’s music on the Anti- label. St. Caro - disciplinary artist from Charlotte, NC. A writer lyn by the Sea followed in 2014 on Deutsche for the forthcoming series Mixtape (Net flix)
PLAYBILL ABOUT THE ARTISTS
and THEM: Covenant Center New Orleans; Cairo International Con - (Amazon), and a recip - temporary eater Festival in Egypt; and at her ient of New York Stage alma mater Wesleyan University, CT. Schaal’s and Film’s 2 018 Found- new piece, CARTOGRAPHY , premiered at the ers’ Award, the 2018 Kennedy Center and will be seen at the New Falco/ Steinm an Com - Victory eater in January 2020. Her work has y l mission Award at Play - also been supported by the Baryshnikov Arts e G l a wrights Horizons, and Center, Nathan Cummings Foundation, Foun - c s a
P the 2018 Play wrights dation for Contemporary Arts, Joyce Founda - Initia tive Fellow ship at the Djerassi Resident tion, and eater Communications Group. Artists Program, he was selected as a finalist Kaneza Schaal’s work with the Wooster Group, for both the 2017 Alli ance/ Kendeda National Elevator Repair Service, Richard Maxwell/New Gradu ate Play writing Contest and the City York City Players, Claude Wampler, and Dean eatre National Award for Short Playwriting Moss has brought her to venues including Contest. He is a playwright-in-residence at Paris’ Centre Pompidou, the Royal Lyceum Lincoln Cen ter eater, resident artist at Ars eater Edinburgh, the Whitney Museum, and Nova, and Middle Voice eatre Company MoMA . member at Rattlestick Play wrights eatre, and his debut collection of haiku and photography, Brad Wells (music direc - falling is the one thing i , was published by tor and conductor ) is the Can dor Arts in May 2018. tuttle completed his founder and artistic undergraduate studies at UNC Chapel Hill and director of the Grammy received his MFA in play writing at the New Award-winning new- School. Follow his work on Instagram via music vocal group y @heykorde. l Room ful of Teeth. Wells e G
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a has led the ensemble in c s a
Kaneza Schaal (director ) P premieres of over 75 is a New York City- works by many of today’s leading composers, based theater artist. Her including Judd Greenstein, Caroline Shaw, recent work JACK & Rinde Eckert, Caleb Burhans, William Brittelle, showed in the 2018 Sarah Kirkland Snider, Missy Mazzoli, Michael s r e BAM Next Wave, Mu - Harrison, Glenn Kotche, Ambrose Akinmusire, y M r
e seum of Contemporary Anna Clyne, Terry Riley, Ted Hearne, Julia h p o t Art Chicago, and with Wolfe, and Tigran Hamasyan. is new-music s i r h
C its co-commissioners th e “vocal band,” praised by WQXR as “the future of Walker Arts Center, REDCAT, On the Boards, vocal music,” performs regularly in festivals, on Center for Con tempo rary Art Cincinnati, concert stages, and in educational residencies and Portland Insti tute for Contemporary Art. around the world. Roomful of Teeth’s 2012 Schaal received a 2019 United States Artists debut recording, directed by Wells and praised Award, 2019 Soros Arts Fellowship, 2018 Ford as “sensually stunning” by the New York Times , Foundation Art for Justice Bearing Witness included the Pulitzer Prize-winning composi - Award, 2017 MAP Fund Award, 2016 Creative tion Partita for 8 Voices, written for the group Capital Award, and 2008 Prin cess Grace George by ensemble member Caroline Shaw. His own C. Wolfe Award, and was an Aetna New Voices compositions— featured on Render (2015) , the Fellow at Hartford Stage. Her last project, GO group’s Grammy- nominated second album— FORTH, premiered at PS 122’s COIL Festival have been described as “objectively and subjec - and then showed at the Genocide Memorial tively gorge ous” (I Care If You Listen), and his Amph itheater in Kigali, Rwanda; LMCC’s title work for the album was selected as one of River-to-River Festival; Contemporary Arts NPR’s Favorite Songs of 2015. Wells has com -
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
posed and arranged vocal and instrumental Estonian choral music, he has led the US pre - works that have been performed throughout mieres of works by numerous Estonian com - the US and Europe. His permanent sound in - posers, including Raimo Kangro, Jüri-Ruut stallation Silo Songs, featuring the earliest vocal Kangur, and Lembit Veevo. Wells has lectured music of the Shakers, opened at Hancock Shaker and published articles on the physiology and Village in 2018. acoustics of non-classical vocal styles and the Since 1999, Wells has been an artist-in- role of singing in film. As a singer, he has per - residence in vocal music at Williams College, formed and recorded with such ensembles where he directs the choral program and leads as eatre of Voices and Philharmonia Baroque courses in conducting, voice science and style, Orchestra (under Nicholas McGegan and and sound art. He has held conducting and Philip Brett). Wells holds music degrees from teaching positions at Yale University, Trinity Yale University, the University of Texas at Aus - College, UC Berkeley, and California State tin, and Principia College. University, Chico. Wells’ ensembles have per - formed throughout North and South America, ArKtype/omas O. Kriegsmann (producer ) is South Africa, and Europe. A champion of a management and production company spe -
e Perfect Moment, Untitled For Robert Mapplethorpe It is the Artist’s desire to permeate existence Aesthetics can justify desire, He does so by the power of his own presence but desire in turn And by will alone he breathes a work into art. can provoke punishment. As pumping air into a balloon, that when let go, Under public scrutiny permeates the sky. the eyes of one man are focused on another. He sees perfection in a leaf or another man’s Is it desire, equality, psyche. He is a city of veins and lead; disgust, or hatred? building and rebuilding the same chapel, Is the quality of loneliness the same marble stairway. present or overlooked? Is it diminished As one walks these stairs and looks around by the breaking of taboos? one notes a gallery of light wars. at is all. Is the passion mutual A ship dissolving into an atmosphere, into sea. or is one wary of And when night falls—the light as well. the other? And all disappears into walls. No more Does fear haunt the edges luminous than a moon. Composed of love of the photographs? and will alone. Does it blaze inside the cornea or lurk like men in shadows And the artist does indeed love. posed for the perfect moment In love with his own process. to snap or strike or sigh? It reaffirms his mastery, his mystery. —Essex Hemphill, 1988 A testament of his own life force and also his gi to humanity.
Certain gis are chosen and arranged in retrospect. e Artist machetes a clearance. Here one can be spared
PLAYBILL ABOUT THE ARTISTS
cializing in new work de - Ashley Fure, Yael Farber, Daniel Fish, Annie-B velopment and touring. Parson & Paul Lazar, John Cameron Mitchell, Over the past 14 years, Lisa Peterson, Kaneza Schaal, Peter Sellars, ArKtype’s work has Tony Taccone, and Julie Taymor. He produced grown to encompass three seasons of the Ringling Interna tional Arts renowned artists from Festival in Sarasota, FL, in partnership with 30 different countries, the Baryshnikov Arts Center; was director of multiple genres, and programming for Spiegelworld’s South Street commercial and non- Seaport seasons; and most recently served as profit support structures resulting in new work director of programs at New York Live Arts. for a variety of spaces. His acclaimed projects Kriegsmann recently premiered Sam Green, as a producer have been seen worldwide and Joe Bini, and Kronos Quartet’s A ousand include production, development, and touring oughts and John Cameron Mitchell’s e of emerging ensembles. Kriegsmann’s work in - Origin of Love Tour (both of which will be seen cludes projects with Mikhail Barysh nikov, Peter here at Cal Performances in February 2020); Brook, Victoria ierrée-Chaplin, Josh Fox, Nora Chipaumire’s #PUNK100%POP*N!GGA ;
the pain and the extravagance of the looting the land entire body and to watch us. be transported by snaking through ey don’t know a glittering fraction. we need each other critically. His gis, his children, traveled beyond ey expect us to call in sick, the eye watch television all night, and hand that spun them into existence. die by our own hands. A lifetime of work letting go ey don’t know of one who has weathered innocence. we are becoming powerful. Pressed laurels upon intelligence Every time we kiss All with the generosity we confirm the new world coming. of a transforming smile. What the rose whispers —Patti Smith, 1988 before blooming (from e Perfect Moment I vow to you. Exhibition Catalogue ) I give you my heart, a safe house. American Wedding I give you promises other than In america, milk, honey, liberty. I place my ring I assume you will always on your cock be a free man with a dream. where it belongs. In america, No horsemen place your ring bearing terror, on my cock no soldiers of doom where it belongs. will swoop in Long may we live and sweep us apart. to free this dream. ey’re too busy —Essex Hemphill, 1992
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Byron Au Yong and Aaron Jafferis’ Trigger, Philharmonic, Har lem Chamber Players, and based in communities nationwide in recogni - Grant Park, among others. She made her tion of the 10th anniversary of the Virginia Tech Broadway debut in the Tony-winning revival massacre; Kaneza Schaal and Christopher e Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess , starring as Bess Myers’ CARTOGRAPHY; Big Dance eater on the successful 20-city American tour. “Moran and Mikhail Baryshnikov’s Man in a Case ; finds the truth of the character in her magnifi - the US premiere of Nalaga’at Deaf-Blind cent voice” ( Los Angeles Times ). www.alicia - eater’s Not by Bread Alone ; the Freedom hallmoran.com. eatre of Jenin’s e Siege ; and Shara Worden and Andrew Ondrejcak’s You Us We All . Isaiah Robinson (per - Ongoing collaborations include work with former ), tenor, is a John Cameron Mitchell, 600 HIGHWAYMEN, multi-talented musician Big Dance eatre, Scott Shepherd, Ethan who was born in Chi - Lipton & His Orchestra, Brent Green, Rude cago into a musical fam - Mechs, Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen, Nora ily of singing parents. Chipau mire, Adrien M. and Claire B., and As an actor, he was fea - Compagnia T.P.O. More information at ark - tured in Steven Spiel- type.org. berg’s 1991 film Hook, playing the role of Pockets, and he has also ap - Alicia Hall Moran (per - peared in several radio and television com - former ), mezzo-soprano, mercials. As a vocalist, Robinson was primarily is a critically acclaimed trained singing in church by his parents and his recording artist who siblings, which lead to his performing on sev - also com poses in the eral jingles and voiceovers for various products gen res of opera, the - and companies. He has performed with the ater, and jazz. Praised Barrett Sisters, Darius Brooks, Aretha Franklin, by celebrated artists R-Kelly, Pattie Labelle, Rascal Flatts, Twinkie including Carrie Mae Clark Terrell, Kelvin Lenox, Mavis Staples, Weems, Adam Pendleton, Suzanne Bocanegra, Janis Siegel, Chaka Khan, Yo-Yo Ma, Chance Joan Jonas, Charles Gaines, and Ragnar Kjar - the Rapper, Angela Davis, Candy La Flore, Jeff tansson; curator Okwui Enwezor; Bill T. Morrow, and Dennis DeYoung. Robinson is Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company; musicians currently a teaching artist for the Lookingglass Bill Frisell, Charles Lloyd, Jason Moran (her eater, City of Chicago Aer School Matters husband), and Jessye Norman; and diverse Program, Urban Gateways, and works with writers ranging from Simon Schama to Carl private students in the Chicago area. He also Hancock Rux, her commissions include Two performs with the Stu Hirsh Orchestra and Wings for Carnegie Hall, Work Songs for the Silent eater. Robinson was the featured vo - Venice Biennial, Bleed for the Whitney Bien - calist at the inauguration of Rahm Emanuel as nial, Breaking Ice for Prototype Festival/ mayor of Chicago. He performs with and facil - MASSMoCA, Black Wall Street (Tulsa Race Riot itates workshops for the Chicago Children’s of 1921) for River to River Festival, the motown Choir, and is on staff as a musician/organist project for e Kitchen, and Jazz Goes to the and choirmaster at the Life Center COGIC Opera for Opera Southwest. She has enjoyed in Chicago, where he has served for more than residencies at Yale University, National Sawdust, 16 years. and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and engagements with the Oregon Symphony and Roomful of Teeth is a Grammy-winning vocal Louisville Orches tra (Gabriel Kahane’s emer - project dedicated to reimagining the expressive gency shelter intake form ), Dayton Philhar - potential of the human voice. rough study monic, NSO Pops, Austin Symphony, Chicago with masters from vocal traditions the world
PLAYBILL ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Roomful of Teeth over, the eight-voice ensemble continually ex - place in the all-city NAACP ACT-SO Compe - pands its vocabulary of singing techniques and, tition in 2011. He trained at the Ailey School by way of an ongoing com mis sioning process, as a scholarship student and has performed forges a new repertoire without borders. works by Lisa Johnson-Willingham, Earl Mos - Founded in 2009 by Brad Wells, Roomful of ley, George Faison, Darrell Grand Moultrie, Teeth gathers annually at the Massachusetts Matthew Rushing, Jae Man Joo, Robert Battle, Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) and Alvin Ailey. Ruffin has also been seen in the in North Adams, MA, where the group’s “poison girl” Christian Dior commercial and an members have studied with some of the world’s Urban Outfitters commercial for music artist top performers and teachers in Tuvan throat Samantha Urbani. He recently completed two singing, yodeling, Broadway belting, Inuit years with Ailey II and currently freelances throat singing, Korean P’ansori , Georgian around the world. singing, Sardinian cantu a tenore , Hindustani music, Persian classical singing, and Death Carlos Soto (set and costume design ) is a direc - Metal singing. Commissioned composers in - tor, designer, and performer based in New York clude Rinde Eckert, Fred Hersch, Merrill City. He has presented performances at the Gar bus (of tUnE-yArDs), William Brittelle, Gug genheim Museum, Columbia University, Toby Twining, Missy Mazzoli, Julia Wolfe, Ted Kampnagel Hamburg, Pace Gallery, Palais de Hearne, and Ambrose Akinmusire. Tokyo, and Performa 09, and has been an artist- in-residence at the Willem de Kooning Studio, Martell Ruffin (con - Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York tributing choreographer Live Arts, and the Watermill Center. Soto has and performer ) began collaborated with recording and performance his formal dance train - artist Solange as associate director and costume ing at the Joffrey Ballet designer on multiple projects, most recently on in Chicago in 2009. He the film and festival tour accompanying her attended Chicago High album When I Get Home ; the short film and School for the Arts installation-performance metatronia (metatron’s under then-director Lisa cube) at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Johnson-Willingham, formerly a dancer with the performance work Scales at the Chinati the Alvin Ailey American Dance eater. Foundation in Marfa, TX; and Solange’s multi- Ruffin has been awarded dance scholarships to city concert tour, Cosmic Journey/Orion’s Rise. intensives at Joffrey Ballet, Dance eatre of Recently, Soto designed costumes for Hans Harlem, and Complexions, and received first Werner Henze’s El Cimarrón with bass-baritone
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Davóne Tines, directed by Zack Winokur; Perle formance that create a living space between ob - Noire: Meditations for Joséphine by soprano Julia jects and the body. He has designed nationally Bullock, Claudia Rankine, Tyshawn Sorey, and and internationally for theater, dance, and per - Peter Sellars, directed by Zack Winokur ; sets formance artworks. Upcoming/recent projects: and costumes for e Black Clown by Davóne Custodians of Beauty (Palissimo), e Echo Tines, Michael Schachter, and Zack Winokur Dri (Beth Morrison Projects), Distant Star at American Repertory eater, Cambridge; (Caboca), Strangers in Paradise (Opera Oma - costumes for UR by Sulayman al Bassam at the ha), Shadow Play (Trusty Sidekick/Touring), Residenztheater, Munich; Mile-Long Opera , a Jack Spicer’s Billy the Kid (3 Headed Calf), collaboration with Anne Carson, Claudia Ran - Up and Away (Trusty Sidekick), and e Iceman kine, David Lang, Ragnar Kjartarsson, and Cometh [Act IV] (Target Margin Labs). Diller Scofidio + Renfro; and Robert Wilson’s Oedipus Rex . Lilleth Glimcher (associate director/develop - Soto has collaborated with American artist ment ) creates performance, experiential instal - and director Robert Wilson since 1997 as a per - lation art, film/video, objects, paintings, and former and designer on productions includ - music. She is the founder and artistic director ing John Adams’ Passion and Einstein on the of YOU ARE HERE (@yah.world), presenting Beach , and e Life and Death of Marina and supporting interdisciplinary art that creates Abramovic . He has collaborated with artists space for community building and healing, Kembrah Pfahler and the Voluptuous Horror specifically for queer, trans, and non-binary of Karen Black, Dan Graham, Tony Oursler, artists of color. Glimcher’s work and direction and Terence Koh, among others. has been shown at the New York Philharmonic, Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, the Yuki Nakase (lighting designer ). Recent design Abrons Art Center, the American Academy credits include eo, e Bridge of San Luis Rey, in Rome, P-E-O-P-L-E 2018, DAAD Galerie e Importance of Being Earnest , e Women Berlin, National Sawdust, the Capri Marfa, Pace of Padilla (Two River eater) , Tiny Beautiful Gallery, Dixon Place, Ars Nova, the Westbeth ings ( Long Wharf eatre ), Hope (Wild Artist Building, the Flea eater, the Future of Project), Queen of Basel (Colony eatre), Storytelling, and at myriad site-specific loca - Octavia (University of Rochester), Blue Win - tions. Glimcher has also associate and assistant dow (Columbia Stages/CSC), the Hartt School directed for Ashley Fure, Ivo van Hove, Lila Dance Division Fall Concert (University of Neugebauer, Niegel Smith, Robert Whitman, Hartford) , Apparition (Stony Brook Univer - André Gregory, César Alvarez, 600 Highway- sity), Un Yamada’s Kaya (Japan), Chanel Haute men, Lily Whitsitt, Shira Milikowksy, Teddy Couture Presentations FW 17/18 (Venue57), Bergman, and other artists across various Circling the Center (3LD), Decoder 2017 disciplines. Glimcher graduated from Harvard (Agnes Varis PAC) , No One Asked Me (SoHo University with a BA in psychology and a Play house), Bastards of Strindberg (eatre secondary degree in dramatic arts. lillethglim - Row), Black Milk ( East 13th Street eatre), cher.com/@lilglim. and e Golem Of Havana (La MaMa). She was born in Tokyo, grew up in Kyoto, and cur - Jennifer Harrison Newman (associate direc - rently lives north of New York City in the tor/touring ), a New York-based theater artist, woods. BA in dance: JWCPE, MFA in lighting works extensively with artists across disciplines, design: NYU. For more information, visit pushing the boundaries of dance, opera, and yukinakase.com. theater. She has worked with Michael Jackson, Julie Taymor, Franco Dragone, Donald Byrd, Simon Harding (video designer ) is an award- David Rousseve, Ronald K. Brown, Charlotte winning set and video designer for live Brathwaite, Michael Joseph McQuilken, and the per formance, interested in modalities of per - Radio City Rockettes, and has performed on
PLAYBILL ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Broadway in Saturday Night Fever and Disney’s the band Wye Oak, the Metropolis Ensemble, e Lion King . and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus; Love Letter for Recent site-specific and theatrical work in - Arca for synthesizer and orchestra with the cludes We Were Everywhere (Princeton Univer - Seattle Symphony; Oh Albert: An LSD Oratorio sity), e Infinite Hotel (Prototype Festival), for the Basel Sin fonietta; Psychedelics for Room - Angel’s Bone (Hong Kong New Visions Festival), ful of Teeth and full concert choir; and a col - Place (BAM/Next Wave Festival), If Pretty Hurts laborative project with Wild Up and Zola Jesus Ugly Must be a Motherfucker (Yale School of for the Ecstatic Music Festival. Past collabo - Drama), an installation/walking tour of Seneca rative works include orchestral arrangements Village in Central Park (Bard Graduate Center for the bands Lower Dens and WRAY and elec - for Material Culture’s Focus Festival: Ritual and tronic artists Oneoh trix Point Never and Son Capital), la ronde (International Festival of Arts Lux. Amid the Mino taurs , a piece commis - & Ideas), e Children (Yale School of Drama), sioned and premiered by Roomful of Teeth, was ree Women (Ojai Playwrights Conference), featured on the group’s Grammy-winning debut e Geneva Project (Yale University, Central album. Along with composers Judd Greenstein Arts Festival in Seoul, Korea, JACK NYC, and and Sarah Kirkland Snider, he cofounded and Bronx Academy of Art and Dance), and Bul - co-artistic directs New Amsterdam. rusher (New Georges). Newman has been an artist-in-residence at Moe Shahrooz (video engineer ) is a video artist Princeton University, Yale University, Central based in New York City. He specializes in pro - Connecticut State University, e Field, Ma- jection design, video operation, animation, bou Mines, Baryshnikov Arts Center, 651 Arts, and interactive video design. His work has been and Sisters Academy Inkost, and has led work - showcased in over 100 venues across the world, shops across the United States, Sweden, South including Lincoln Center, Grand Central Sta - Africa, China, and Mexico. She received her tion, Teatro Nacional D’Maria II (Lisbon, Port - BA from UCLA and her MFA from the Yale u gal), and the Stanislavsky Ballet and Opera School of Drama. (Moscow, Russia). Shahrooz holds a master’s degree from NYU’s interactive telecommuni ca - William Brittelle (associate music director ) is tions program. Recent clients and collaborators a North Carolina-born, Brooklyn-based com - include PBS, Adidas, and Christian Dior. poser of genre-fluid electroacoustic music. Brittelle’s compositions have been presented Dylan Goodhue (sound designer ) is a front- at venues around the world, including at the of-house audio engineer and musician. He Holly wood Bowl, the Kennedy Center, Teatro has worked with Grammy winners Roomful of Colon in Buenos Aires, the Metropolitan Mu - Teeth, Grupo Fantasma, Bela Fleck, and Willie se um of Art, Da Camera in Houston, Seattle’s Nelson. Goodhue has mixed festivals including Town Hall, the Ecstatic Music Festival in New SXSW, Edinburgh Fringe, Calgary Stampede, York, the Kahserne in Switzerland, the Gothen - Herzberg, and Luminato. A native of Toronto, burg Symphony Chamber Series in Sweden, he now lives in Austin, TX. ere he plays the Freemantle Arts Center in Perth, and the guitar in a hip-hop cover band called Classic Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. His music Hiphop Live, operates a farm in his backyard, has been commissioned by the Seattle Sym - teaches live audio, does yoga, and loves his cat phony, the Indianapolis Symphony, the Balti - Leonardo Trouserpants III. more Symphony, the North Carolina Symphony, the Walker Art Center, the Liquid Music Series, William Knapp (production manager ) has the Alabama Symphony, Mass MoCA, and the worked in the New York art and performance Basel Sinfonietta, among others. Recent com - worlds since 1984. He has mounted perform - missions include Spiritual America , a series of ances in over 40 countries with MacArthur fel - electroacoustic orchestral art songs featuring low artists Martha Clarke, Merce Cunningham,
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Richard Foreman, Mimi Lien, Meredith Monk, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players is Michael Moschen, Lynn Nottage, Elizabeth the West Coast’s most longstanding and largest Streb, Twyla arp, Jennifer Tipton, and Shen new-music group, comprised of 22 highly Wei. He has also worked with Robert Wilson, skilled musicians. One of the most active Mikhail Baryshnikov, Robert Whitman, Ben - ensembles in the United States dedicated to jamin Millepied, Emanuel Gat, Sidi Larbi contemporary music, the group has created in - Cherkaoui, and Justin Peck. Knapp has facili - no vative and artistically excellent music for tated collaboration between these live artists nearly 50 years. Holding an important role in and fine artists such as Robert Gober, Olafur the regional and national cultural landscape, Eliasson, Robert Rauschenberg, Charles Long, the Contemporary Music Players are a 2018 Christopher Wool, Barbara Kruger, Terry recipient of the esteemed Fromm Foundation Win ters, Catherine Yass, Christian Marclay, Ensemble Prize, and a 10-time winner of the Ernesto Neto, Liam Gillick, Ruby Sterling, CMA/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Pro - Gabriel Orozco, Jackie Matisse Monnier, and gramming. e group has performed more Richard Hamilton. than 1,200 works by over 600 composers; over 300 of these performances have been premieres, Megan Schwarz Dickert (stage manager ). New and the organization has commissioned over York: Lincoln Center/LCT3, Atlantic, the Vine- 80 major works, including pieces from com - yard, Playwrights Horizons, TFANA, NYTW, posers including John Adams, John Cage, Earle Page 73, e Public, WP eater, Playwrights Brown, Olly Wilson, Michael Gordon, Du Realm, Play Company, Juilliard, Rattlestick, Yun, Myra Melford, and Julia Wolfe. e en - Foundry, Bed lam, CSC, Working eater, 13P, semble has been presented by leading cultural Civilians, Flea, Builders Association, New festivals and concert series including San Georges. Regional: Kennedy Center, NYSAF, Francisco Performances, Los Angeles Monday Westport, Bard Sum merScape, Hartford Stage, Evening Concerts, the Stern Grove Festival, Williamstown, Long Wharf, Actors eatre of the Festival of New American Music at CSU Louisvillle, Trinity Rep, Adirondack eatre Sacramento, the Ojai Festival, and France’s pres - Festival, Big Apple Circus, Capital Rep, and tigious MANCA Festival. e San Francisco Idaho, North Carolina, Utah, and Nebraska Contemporary Music Players nourish the cre - Shakespeare Festivals. Dickert is an advanced ation and dissemination of new works through open-water scuba diver and has run five world-class performances, commissions, and marathons. www.megandickert.com. community and education programs. e en - semble performs the music of composers from Aren Carpenter (technical director ) is excited across cultures and stylistic traditions who are to join Triptych (Eyes of One on Another) and to creating a vast and vital 21st-century musical celebrate the life and work of Robert Mapple - language featuring the work of iconic and thorpe. Carpenter is a New York City-based emerging composers while shining a spotlight scenic and lighting designer, working primarily on works for large ensemble and California in theater and dance. He is a former production artists. For more information and booking, apprentice at New York Live Arts, home of visit SFCMP.org. the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company. Recent credits include Alice Sheppard’s Wired resi - dency (technical assistance), How to Separate Additional inquiries and Your Soul From Your Body (scenic design), exclusive worldwide touring: Rose’s War (properties design), and Melancholy ArKtype Play (scenic design). Carpenter is also a free - omas O. Kriegsmann, president lance 3D drasman, programmer, and electri - Tel: (917) 386-5468 cian. His work can be explored further at Email: [email protected] arencarpenter.com. www.arktype.org
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