Institute of Contemporary Art Boston
2011 Dance, Music and Film
By: ICA - Jan 13, 2011
The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) presents ambitious performing arts programming for Winter/Spring 2011, including world-premiere dance, revolutionary theater and a vaudevillian spectacular. The New Music Now series returns with three exciting concerts of adventurous music, and the ICA presents its first "live documentary," narrated by filmmaker Sam Green alongside live performances by sound artist David Cerf and band The Quavers (featuring special guest Brendan Canty of Fugazi). Tickets for these programs go on sale to ICA Associate Members on Friday, Jan. 14, and to the general public on Tuesday, Jan. 18, and can be purchased at www.icaboston.org or by calling (617) 478-3103.
DANCE
Body Against Body
Bill T. Jones /Arnie Zane Dance Company
Friday, Feb. 4, 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, Feb. 5, 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, Feb. 6, 2 p.m.
One of the most innovative voices in contemporary dance and theater, Bill T. Jones returns to the ICA fresh off the Kennedy Center Honors and a Tony Award for Best Choreography for the Broadway musical FELA! With Body Against Body, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company returns to Jones’s roots in the avant-garde with a program that revives and reconsiders the groundbreaking works that launched Jones and his late partner and collaborator of 17 years, Arnie Zane, on the downtown New York dance scene of the 1980s. These works are now considered among the most significant examples of the postmodern aesthetic, challenging both performers and viewers with athletic, task-based movement and non-narrative structure. With these works, Jones and Zane redefined the duet form and changed the face of American dance. Body Against Body reveals the roots of a modern dance master and offers a rare look at the core of the Jones/Zane style.
This world premiere reconstruction, commissioned by the ICA, includes “Continuous Replay” (1978), “Blauvelt Mountain” (1980), and “Monkey Run Road” (1979), a Jones/Zane duet not seen since its original performances over two decades ago. These seminal pieces take on new life and raise new questions when performed by the diverse, highly skilled dancers of Jones’s company.
This project has been made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts as part of American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius.
TICKETS: $45 nonmembers, $40 members and students
THEATER
Chautauqua!
The National Theater of the United States of America
Friday, April 1, 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, April 2, 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, April 3, 2 p.m.
Step right up for an event that is part history lesson, part variety show, and pure entertainment. The National Theater of the United States of America, one of the most exciting experimental theater troupes around, presents Chautauqua!, inspired by the Chautauqua Circuit, a wildly popular traveling lecture series that flourished from 1874 to the Great Depression. Scholars, scientists, magicians, jugglers, and dancers gathered under tents across the country in an effort to educate and uplift the common man.
NTUSA’s Chautauqua! brings this tradition into the 21st century, straddling “high” and “low” culture as it combines informative lectures with Broadway-style song-and-dance numbers, joke telling, and feats of strength. The program is revamped for each new venue, with lectures that draw on the history of that place, so Boston will be a special guest star in this show. Guest speakers and performers (TBA), including local artists, lecturers, and the Second Line Social Aid Pleasure Society Brass Band, will join the company each night at the ICA for an unforgettable experience of information, entertainment, and spectacle.
TICKETS: $25 nonmembers; $22 members and students
Funded in part by the Expeditions program of the New England Foundation for the Arts, made possible with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, with additional support from the six New England state arts agencies.
Bellona, Destroyer of Cities
Adapted and directed by Jay Scheib, based on Samuel R. Delaney’s Dhalgren
Friday, May 13, 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, May 14, 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, May 15, 2 p.m.
Jay Scheib, named one of 25 artists who will shape the next 25 years of theater by American Theater Magazine, returns to the ICA stage. His video-infused This Place is a Desert, the first theater piece ever presented in our waterfront theater, thrust him into the critical spotlight. This new work, based on Samuel R. Delaney’s epic science fiction novel, is part two of Simulated Cities/Simulated Systems, Scheib’s trilogy of multimedia performance works.
Bellona, a once illustrious city, has been decimated by a mysterious cataclysmic event, leaving it all but forgotten. Its people try to understand why buildings repeatedly burst into flames and city streets appear to rearrange themselves, citing race-related violence and a social experiment gone wrong. A parable of the dangers facing the modern American city, Bellona, Destroyer of Cities explores the shaping of space to express complex issues of race, gender, and sexuality. The production combines passages from Delaney’s novel with original material and video and photography by Scheib and artist Carrie Mae Weems. Bellona, Destroyer of Cities premiered at The Kitchen in New York in April 2010.
TICKETS: $25 nonmembers; $22 members and students
Support provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Office of the Associate Provost; Agnes Gund; and the Lucius and Eva Eastman Fund. This presentation is in conjunction with FAST/MIT 150: a festival celebrating MIT’s confluence of Art, Science and Technology.
MUSIC
New Music Now
The series returns, guided by composer Ned Rothenberg, with three exciting concerts of adventurous music.
Celestial Septet: Rova and Nels Cline Singers
Friday, Feb. 25, 7:30 p.m.
The Celestial Septet brings together two forward-looking groups—Wilco guitarist Nels Cline’s trio of guitar, bass, and drums, and the Rova Saxophone Quartet of saxophones ranging from baritone to soprano. The Septet blurs the boundaries between jazz, rock, late 20th-century European modernism and American minimalism, and 21st-century postmodern fusions. Defying categorization by taking composition as seriously as they take improvisation, the Celestial Septet includes Larry Ochs, Jon Raskin, Steve Adams, and Bruce Ackley, saxophones; Nels Cline, guitar; Trevor Dunn, bass; and Scott Amendola, percussion/electronics.
TICKETS: $20 nonmembers; $18 members and students
Washed By Fire
Either/Or performs the music of Keeril Makan
Thursday, March 17, 7:30 p.m.
This concert presents the U.S. premiere of two of Keeril Makan’s works for string quartet, The Noise Between Thoughts and Washed By Fire, performed by Either/Or. Declared a “first-rate new music ensemble” by The New York Times, the group was founded in 2004 by pianist/composer Richard Carrick and percussionist David Shively. Either/Or focuses on new works for unconventional chamber ensembles and soloists rarely heard elsewhere. A third work for percussion, Resonance Alloy, will be performed by David Shively.
TICKETS: $20 nonmembers; $18 members and students
Terminals
Performed by SO Percussion and Bobby Previte with special soloists Zeena Parkins, DJ Logic, John Medeski and Jen Shyu
Friday, May 27, 7:30 p.m.
The latest work from Bobby Previte, inspired by airport architecture, consists of four concertos for improviser and percussion ensemble, featuring the SO Percussion group. Each piece will feature a different improviser in a setting composed specifically for him. Previte grew up playing soul and rock before studying formally with such music pioneers as John Cage, Morton Feldman, and Jan Williams. A fixture on New York’s downtown music scene since 1979, Previte is widely hailed for his electrifying drumming and “unclassifiable” music. “Experimental powerhouse” (Village Voice) SO Percussion works with today’s most exciting composers, while their own original music has helped them forge a unique and diverse career.
TICKETS: $20 nonmembers; $18 members and students
FILM
48th Annual Ann Arbor Film Festival
The Ann Arbor Film Festival, North America's longest-running independent and experimental film festival, presents two programs at the ICA.
Program One
Saturday, Jan. 29, 5 p.m.
This program of memorable and award-winning short films from artists around the world includes stunning new works by established experimental filmmakers Lewis Klahr, Semiconductor, and Inger Lise Hansen. Emerging Spanish filmmaker Chema Garcia Ibarra's narrative portrait reveals a story both funny and tragic, while acclaimed animators Joanna Priestly and David O'Reilly share their latest dynamic creations. Films by Stephen Wetzel, Duke & Battersby, and Kent Lambert offer provocative visions through sampling, song and hybrid styles that defy classification. (91 minutes)
Program Two -- 16mm Program
Saturday, Feb. 12, 5 p.m.
It's rare to experience a full program of new short films presented exclusively on 16mm, and this lineup features nine stunning new works that cut across experimental, animation, narrative and documentary film. Most premiered or won awards at the Ann Arbor Film Festival.
Steve Cossman's Tusslemuscle incorporates more than 7,000 recycled view-master cells to explore humanity's ecological relationship and the ritual of restoration. Avant-garde legend Peter Herwitz presents his first piece in over a decade: the vivid, double-sided, hand-painted silent film Gesturings. Alexandra Cuestra documents the beauty and nuanced landscapes of Los Angeles from the marginalized viewpoint of its public transportation system. (80 minutes)
TICKETS: $10 nonmembers, $8 members and students.
The Ottawa International Animation Festival
Sunday, Jan. 30, 2 and 4 p.m.
The Ottawa International Animation Festival is the largest festival of its kind in North America and one of the most respected animation festivals in the world. This competitive film festival features cutting-edge programming, catering to industry executives, trendsetting artists, students and animation fans.
TICKETS: $10 nonmembers; $8 members and students
Double Take (Boston Premiere)
Directed by by Johan Grimonprez
(2009, Belgium/Germany/The Netherlands, 80 min)
Sunday, Feb. 13, 3 p.m.
Q & A with the artist
Belgian artist Johan Grimonprez’s intriguing film blends fiction and documentary in a meditation on identity, filmmaking, power, and paranoia. Double Take was written by British novelist Tom McCarthy and based on Jorge Luis Borges’s short story “August 25, 1983,” in which legendary film director Alfred Hitchcock encounters his doppelganger. The film looks at Hitchcock’s late 50s and early 60s films against the backdrop of the escalating cold war and incorporates archival footage including television news reports of the Cuban missile crisis, U.S. and Soviet satellite launches, atomic bomb tests, and Nixon and Khrushchev’s 1959 “kitchen debate.” Grimonprez has received best director awards at the San Francisco and Toronto International Film Festivals for his film Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y (1997), which eerily foreshadowed the events of September 11, 2001.
TICKETS: $10 nonmembers; $8 members and students
Sam Green and Dave Cerf: Utopia in Four Movements
Live music by The Quavers, with special guest Brendan Canty of Fugazi
Saturday, Feb. 26, 8 p.m.
Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Sam Green (The Weather Underground) and sound artist Dave Cerf create a “live documentary” which draws from the collective experience of cinema and the intimate immediacy of live performance to explore the utopian impulse of a bygone era and its battered state at dawn of the 21st Century. Green live narrates a poetic, entertaining, and poignant original text that accompanies his stunning cinematic collage of projected vignettes, stills, and moving images. Green is joined on stage by Brooklyn-based band The Quavers, who perform while Cerf weaves together the soundtrack. Together, they sift through a 20th century history of bold and giddy idealistic dreams, searching for insights about the way to build a vision of the future based on humankind’s noblest impulses.
TICKETS: $20 nonmembers; $18 members and students
2010 Academy Award-Nominated Short Films
Feb. 21, 24, 27, March 3, 5, 6
See Oscar-nominated shorts in animation and live action. Log onto www.icaboston.org
for upcoming program and screening information.
Tickets: $10 nonmembers; $8 members and students
The International Experimental Cinema Exposition (TIE)
Saturday, March 5, 6 p.m.
TIE is an internationally recognized cultural organization that is dedicated to experimental film and the inherent artistry of cinema. An all new 2011 edition of TIE consists of a special two-part program, highlighting the work of internationally renowned artists’ experimental films in beautiful 35mm and 16mm that also includes a section of new work by Boston filmmakers, each investigating complex themes and ideas through innovative and poetic work.
With an illustrious assemblage of avant-garde artists and films, TIE’s 2011 program undoubtedly provides insight into the enlightening experience that is experimental cinema.
Several of the filmmakers and TIE curator and founder Christopher May will be in person to present and answer questions. Complete program information TBA.
New England Animators
Saturday, May 7, 3 p.m.
Sunday, May 8, 3 p.m.
The ICA continues to present work from New England Animators who explore the medium as a method of personal and cultural expression. This bi-annual event features all new work by nationally and internationally renowned filmmakers such as Ruth Lingford, Steven Subotnick, Gina Kamentsky, as well as animation work by an emerging generation of animators.
TICKETS: $10 nonmembers, $8 members and students
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