Meet the Artist Performance Series and
Summer Stages’ 15th Anniversary Special Events in Concord and at the ICA/Boston for 2012!
Celebrate Summer Stages' 15 Years of Dancing!
The Meet the Artist Performance Series is celebrating our 15th Anniversary
season with a yearlong series of performances and special events.
New to our programming this summer, "Choreographer Portraits" will
premier with dance/theater maker, Jack Ferver. Ferver’s work will
be featured in a mini-festival that will include a collaboration with sculptor
Mark Swanson, some critically acclaimed dance pieces recently shown at Performa
11 and Performance Space 122 in New York City, and some new work in development. "Rumble
Ghost," an extremely funny dance that plumbs the depths of horror film "Poltergeist,” will
be presented as part of the festival, which will take place on three consecutive
evenings at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston. Ferver has been
called a "contemporary chameleon" and his work has been compared to
the brilliant video artist Ryan Trecartin in its use of fast choreographic jump
cuts and rapid-fire dialogue. His visceral work deals with questions of
identity, history, and culture. Jack is also one of the most charmingly
seductive performers in contemporary dance. You'll get to know what makes
Jack tick as he and his company introduce you to different aspects of his performance
work. In addition, Jack will introduce and speak about his favorite film,
Fassbinder's "The Bitter Tears of Petra Van Kant," in a late night
showing. We hope this Ferver Festival brings new insights into the work
of an exciting dance/theater artist.
Kyle Abraham is one of the most powerful choreographic forces to hit contemporary
dance in some time. We'll be presenting him and his company Abraham
in Motion. Kyle made some of his first choreographic work at Summer
Stages Dance as a two-season workshop participant. Kyle has developed
into an artist of incredible poignancy and depth. "Live! The Realist
MC," recently premiered at The Kitchen in New York City, crosses the story
of Pinocchio with Kyle's own personal journey towards "realness." Kyle
has developed one of the most uncannily beautiful blends of hip-hop, modern
and ballet that you will see on the contemporary stage.
Not only is this year Summer Stages 15th Anniversary, it also marks the 100th
birthday of John Cage! In celebration, we will present Sean Curran's "Left
Exit" to a late Cage score, Music for Piano #2. This work, staged
and rehearsed by Sean, along with new pieces created by Reggie Wilson and our
three Choreography Fellows will be performed by Workshop students in the Choreographers’ Project
Showcase at ICA/Boston. And don't miss Reggie's very special open rehearsal
of his work-in-progress based on Zora Neale Hurston's novel "Moses, Man
of the Mountain." The finished work will be presented at Brooklyn
Academy of Music in 2013 and at Summer Stages later that year.
And, finally, Summer Stages will plumb its Concord roots when we set off to
Walden Woods. We'll be creating a special series of performances with
Boston- based dance and music artists that will celebrate our 15th, Cage’s
100th and Henry David Thoreau's 150th at Walden Pond! This should be a
true highlight of our yearlong festivities; a season not-to-be-missed!
David Parker & The Bang Group Misters and Sisters: A Love Story in Song and Dance
January 11 and 18, 2012
8 pm, OBERON, 2 Arrow Street, Cambridge (Harvard Square)
Tickets are also available by phone at OvationTix: 866-811-4111 premium table seating: $50
general admission table seating: $35
standing room: $20
"Mr. Parker and Mr. Kazin love what they
do — and they make us love it too." –The New York Times
"Fabulous, intelligent, inspiring, and incredibly
entertaining." –Musical America
"The perfect mix of banter, singing, dancing,
sequins, gowns, fans, bow-ties, soft-shoe, no shoe, pointe-shoe, tap-shoe, and
narrative for a splendid evening's entertainment sprinkled with poignancy and
politics." –Culturebot, New York
Misters and Sisters ─ A Love Story in Song and
Dance received
raves and performed to sold-out houses
at Joe's Pub (New York) this past summer. (Misters and Sisters: Part One was
a great hit when presented by Summer Stages Dance as a work in progress
during the 2010 summer performance series.) A dance/theater
cabaret by and about David Parker and Jeffrey Kazin and their performing
alter-egos, Misters and Sisters celebrates
more than 20 years of friendship and
collaboration. Parker and Kazin,
well-known through their work with The
Bang Group are now jumping, singing, and tapping into a whole new
medium. Misters
and Sisters is a kind of autobiographical fiction inspired by
and dedicated to Parker’s late father, mystery novelist Robert B. Parker,
whose words, “Don’t look for yourself in your work, look for your
work in yourself,” Parker pays homage to here. A repertoire of classic
romantic song duets by Frank Loesser, Irving Berlin and Rodgers and Hammerstein
will be sung, danced and reclaimed, as it were, for a new generation. This is
a truly 21st Century cabaret!
Summer Stages' 15th Anniversary Open House in Concord March 25, 2012
Summer Stages' 15th Anniversary Gala June 2012
Jack Ferver
Summer Stages’ 2012 Meet the Artist Performance Series Check back in March to purchase tickets for Summer Stages acclaimed
performance series!
For directions to the Performing Arts Center, Concord Academy, click here.
For directions to the ICA/Boston, click here.
For directions to Oberon, Cambridge, click here.
Programs and artists are subject to change.
Earlier Performances from Summer
Stages' 15th Anniversary Celebration
Choreographer Trajal Harrell and visual artist Sarah Sze The Untitled Still Life Collection
A 20-Minute PerformanceIn the Exhibition ofDance/Draw at
the ICA/Boston
Thursday, November 17, 5:30 pm Friday, November 18, 6:30 and 8 pm Saturday, November 19, 1 and 3 pm Sunday, November 20, 1 and 3 pm The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston
Untitled Still Life Collection is the fourth is an on going series
of commissioned work and presentation by Summer Stages Dance and the ICA/Boston,
entitled Co Lab: Process+Performance.
Untitled Still Life Collection is an original collaboration between
visual artist Sarah Sze and choreographer Trajal Harrell, two artists who both
innately are responsive to forming work out of practices, which re-frames the
traditional site of art making. They will share their love of found objects
and movement in their respective work. Sze’s work is as architectural
in space as Harrell’s is in time. The found objects in Sze’s work
might be compared to the found movement in Harrell’s. Sze’s elaborate
structures are a direct response to the environment in which they are made,
in the same manner that Harrell has developed each work out of a re-ordering
of the space between stage and audience, conceptualized by rethinking dance
and choreographic practice in the dance studio.
“They don’t make many artists like Mr. Harrell; his sophisticated,
nuanced works are not to be missed.”—The New York Times
“Sze has long pointed the way to Whitmanesque freethinking through
her interpretations of democratic consumerism. …[H]er sculptures convey
both the epic and mundane...Sze's encyclopedic reach formulates nothing less
than the symbolic shakiness of all knowledge.”—The Village
Voice
The collaboration between Sarah Sze and Trajal Harrell is made possible
by the Contemporary Art Centers (CAC) network administered by the New England
Foundation for the Arts (NEFA), with major support from the Doris Duke Charitable
Foundation. CAC is comprised of leading art centers and brings together performing
arts curators to support the collaboration and work across disciplines, and
is an initiative of NEFA’s National Dance Project.
Illstyle & Peace Productions IMpossible, IZZpossible A Boston Debut to Kick Off Summer Stages’ 15th Anniversary
“Explosive moves to driving beats at Summer Stages… Singular talents
seemed to shoot like sparks out of the 20-member llstyle & Peace Productions
troupe…”
—Thea Singer, The Boston Globe, August 1, 2011
“[Illstyle & Peace] displayed some of the most dazzling breaking techniques
I’ve ever seen… They were fabulous.”
— Roslyn Sulcas,
The New York Times, May 30, 2010
On Thursday July 28, friends and supporters of Summer Stages Dance were dazzled
by a show the Times calls a "hip hop revue with killer dancing.” The “killer” performance
and a post performance gathering launched Summer Stages 15th anniversary and
generated support for Summer Stages’ commitment to diversity and scholarship.
Meet the Artist Performance Series and 
Choreographer Trajal Harrell and visual artist Sarah Sze 
Illstyle & Peace Productions IMpossible, IZZpossible