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WINTER/SPRING
MCA STAGE SEASON
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Hubbard Street Dance Chicago: danc(e)volve: New Works Festival
January 19-22 (for Hubbard subscribers) and 26-29, 2012
Co-presented with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago
The highly acclaimed contemporary dance companies Hubbard Street Dance Chicago and Hubbard Street 2 (HS2) perform new works created by developing choreographers. The program features dance choreographed by Hubbard Street dancers and directors, along with a guest artist. The two-week long festival features nine new works in two distinct programs, including a new work for HS2 by Alejandro Cerrudo. danc(e)volve is curated by Hubbard Street Artistic Director Glenn Edgerton and highlights the MCA and Hubbard Street's commitment to support emerging artists in the contemporary field. |
 ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble):
George Lewis and Friends on the MCA Stage
February 5, 2012
As the second of three ICE concerts as part of their 2011-2012 MCA Stage ensemble-in-residence series, ICE features music by George Lewis, the iconic trombonist and composer, alongside works of three other composers and performers -- saxophonist Steve Lehman, flautist Nicole Mitchell, and multi-instrumentalist Tyshawn Sorey. Lewis is a leader of jazz experimentation, improvised and computer music, and trombone performance and has greatly influenced the three young composers. Steven Schick is featured as conductor and percussionist in this performance of six Chicago premieres, including Lewis' Will to Adorn, written for ICE in 2011.
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 Diamanda Galás: Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?
February 23 and 25, 2012
This distinctive vocalist, known for her haunting operatic voice with a three-and-a-half octave range, returns to the MCA Stage. Galás has a strong presence during her live performances and is known for addressing themes of suffering, condemnation, injustice, and loss of dignity. She performs a selection of songs for voice and piano, including blues covers and songs from her Masque of the Red Death trilogy. She originally performed and recorded this music to bring attention to the daily struggles of people living with AIDS. The concerts are programmed in conjunction with the MCA exhibition This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s.
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 eighth blackbird: The Music of Less/The Music of More
March 22 and 24,2012
MCA Composers Stage series
The acclaimed Chicago-based chamber music ensemble returns to the MCA Stage for two concerts presented with the MCA exhibition, the Language of Less (Then and Now) that feature contemporary visual art with themes of minimalism. Both concerts feature music by esteemed older composers as well as talented younger composers. The March 22 concert explores what "less" can mean when translated to music - with stark, otherworldly landscapes by Alvin Lucier and Morton Feldman, contrasted with calm beautiful works by younger composers Timo Andres and Caleb Burhans. Music by Philip Glass and David Lang round out the concert. The "more" concert on March 24 features more of everything - more notes, more wild humor and complexity that pushes the virtuoso ensemble to its limits. Two of the composers, Philippe Hurel and Bruno Mantovani, are renowned in their native France, but little-known in America. Eclectic music by young composers Fabian Svensson (Sweden) and Americans Dan Visconti and Amy Kirsten complete the program.
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 Story Week Festival of Writers: Chicago Classics
March 23, 2012
Presented by Columbia College Chicago Fiction Writing Department in association with MCA Stage. Story Week Festival has been called the "Lollapalooza of literary events" and takes place throughout Chicago over the course of six days of readings, conversations, panels, performances, and book signings with acclaimed authors. Chicago Classics, the festival's blockbuster reading party by some of Chicago's luminaries reading each other's words, takes place at the MCA and is hosted by Rick Kogan from the Chicago Tribune and WGN Radio. The event is co-sponsored in part by the Chicago Public Library and Metro. |
 Teatr ZAR: The Gospels of Childhood Triptych
March 29 - April 1, 2012
MCA Global Stage series
Presented by MCA Stage in association with Goodman Theatre Poland's Teatr ZAR uses song, chanting, and movement in this ritualistic work of theater and music that examines birth, death, pleasure, and pain. The performance is staged in three different installations: the first and third take place in the MCA Theater, with the audience on stage; and the second takes place in the MCA second-floor atrium. Inspired by ancient sacred music from the Caucasus and based on texts from the little-known apocryphal gospels and a poem by Polish Romantic poet Juliusz Slowacki, Poland's Teatr ZAR uses song, chanting, and movement in this ritualistic work of theater and music. The work is the culmination of artistic director Jaroslaw Fret and the company's more than ten years of investigative research. |
 Marc Bamuthi Joseph/The Living Word Project with Theaster Gates: red, black and GREEN: a blues
April 12-14, 2012
Oakland-based spoken word and dance artist Marc Bamuthi Joseph, and Chicago visual artist and activist Theaster Gates collaborate to create a multimedia performance and visual installation addressing environmental issues from the perspective of communities of color. The stage is set as an installation, open for public viewing during museum hours. The installation and performance have four inter-related parts representing the four seasons, four cycles of life, four rooms of a house, and the four cities with the Life is Living festivals Bamuthi convened: Chicago, Houston, New York, and Oakland. The audience moves through the stage set before taking their seats. |
 Armitage Gone! Dance: Drastic-Classicism and Three Theories
April 26-28, 2012
Choreographer Karole Armitage, dubbed the 'punk ballerina' by Vanity Fair magazine, creates work inspired by physics, sixteenth-century Florentine fashion, pop culture, and new media. Drastic-Classicism (1981), one of her first works, features a strong 1980s aesthetic with dancers in ripped, black costumes and a rock score by Rhys Chatham, performed onstage by a drummer and fourelectric guitarists. Three Theories, a new work, is inspired by physicist Brian Greene's bestselling book, The Elegant Universe. Armitage translates concepts of contemporary physics into fast-paced duets, sensual moves, and shape-shifting formations. The score is by John Luther Adams, Sangeeta Shankar, and Rhys Chatham. The project is programmed in conjunction with the MCA exhibition, This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s.
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 Vélo Théâtre and DynamO Théâtre
May 2-12, 2012
Presented by the Chicago Humanities Festival (CHF) in association with MCA Stage. The renowned Montreal-based DynamO Théâtre debuts at MCA Stage with Mur-Mur, an air-bound acrobatic ballet set in a playground refuge. Also presented is a new play by France's Vélo Théâtre called The Postman in which a letter carrier goes on his daily rounds by bicycle and opens one of the packages and discovers a magical world inside. This wordless play features a living postcard full of imagination, humor, and the wonder of discovery. Vélo Théâtre returns to CHF's Stages, Sights & Sounds, having performed There's a Rabbit in the Moon in the 2010 festival. The performances are family friendly. |
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 John Jota Leaños: Imperial Silence: Una Ópera Muerta
May 17-19, 2012
Cultural taboos around silence, death, and dissent are presented through a multimedia performance that fuses dark, humored animation with Mexican folklore dance, Mariachi music, hip-hop, bossa nova, and blues. The work is created by San Francisco-based director, John Jota Leaños; Chicago-based choreographer Joel Valentin-Martinez; DJ/composer Cristóbal Martinez; and the Tucson Mariachi ensemble, Los Cuatro Vientos. The opera's four acts are Act I: animated primer on war and empire; Act II: animation that re-examines Mother Goose children's rhymes and culminates with the great fall of Humpty Mariachi Dumpty; Act III: live performance and animation of a skeleton traveling the road to Mictlan (the Aztec underworld); and Act IV: a dead animated newscast exploring the silencing of dissent and "spin" in the corporate news media.
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 ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble: Georges Aperghis and the New Generation
May 26, 2012
The final ICE performance of this MCA Stage season features new music commissioned by three composers now living in Paris: Georges Aperghis, Juan Pablo Carreno, and Patricia Alessandrini.
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 Luna Negra Dance Theater: Luna Nueva
June 7-10, 2012
Co-presented with Luna Negra Dance Theater
This festival of three new works by Chicago-based Luna Negra Dance Theater (LNDT) is choreographed by Gustavo Ramírez Sansano, LNDT artistic director; Mónica Cervantes Rodriguez, LNDT dancer and choreographer; and guest artist Diana Szeinblum. The company celebrates the richness and diversity of Latino culture through choreographing new works by contemporary Latino choreographers and leading hands-on education programs that encourage the exploration of personal and community identity.
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| | | email: ebird@mcachicago.org
voice: 312.397.3828
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