Sider
A work by William Forsythe and The Forsythe Company
Music by Thom Willems
For choreographer William Forsythe, the stage is a large-scale laboratory for boundless theatrical and linguistic investigation. In Sider, the knotty speech rhythms of late-16th-century Elizabethan tragedy form the unlikely point of departure. Dancers, equipped with earphones that play a recording unheard by the audience, deliver fragmented, enigmatic movements based on the cadences and meanings of the sumptuous Elizabethan text. Wielding giant sheets of cardboard, the dancers conjure an array of kinetic imagery and sounds—deepening this beguiling translation and evoking a world in which one language is withheld while another rises to the surface.
Not What Happened
Pick Up Performance Co(s)
Conceived and written by Ain Gordon
Directed by Ken Rus Schmoll
Two seemingly identical women appear on stage: one is a historical reenactor nearing the end of her career, theatrically channeling a bygone 1804; the other is her doppelganger, the 19th-century subject she “recreates.” Amid projected images of cast-off farm tools and other ruins of rural life, we follow the reenactor’s crafted narrative alongside that of her ghostly double. History lived vies with history told, leaving us to wonder: can we ever know what really happened?
Nosferatu
Inspired by Bram Stoker’s Dracula
TR Warszawa and Teatr Narodowy
Written and directed by Grzegorz Jarzyna
Terrifying, yet seductive. Blood-thirsty harbingers of death who extend a twisted promise of immortality. The vampire figure has long been defined by Bram Stoker’s classic interpretation, Dracula. In Nosferatu, Poland’s TR Warszawa and Teatr Narodowy dig beneath that veneer to deliver a deeply hypnotic, visually sumptuous new take on the vampire legend. Set to an unnerving score by downtown fixture John Zorn, director Grzegorz Jarzyna’s production suspends us in a liquid-green world of shadowy set pieces, brimming with eroticism, while returning to the legend’s deep reflections on fear and the human need for transgression.
Bodycast
An Artist Lecture by Suzanne Bocanegra starring Frances McDormand
Directed by Paul Lazar
In this inventive performance work, Academy Award-winning actress Frances McDormand embodies visual artist Suzanne Bocanegra, spinning a lively biographical narrative of the pains of growing up: from Texas drill teams and Rose Bowl queens to art-making and orthopedic surgery. Inspired by two years that the teenage Bocanegra spent in a body cast, this experiment in self-portraiture explores how that confining experience shaped her self-image and aesthetic on the way to becoming a Rome Prize-winning artist.
A Piece of Work
A machine-made Hamlet by Annie Dorsen
In this daring marriage of live acting and artificial intelligence, Obie Award-winning director Annie Dorsen delivers a provocative parsing of Shakespeare’s work. Based on a sophisticated algorithm that generates a new version of the play nightly—words, visuals, lighting, music, and all—A Piece of Work features one actor, alternating between Obie winner Scott Shepherd (Elevator Repair Service’s Gatz, The Wooster Group’s Hamlet) and theater legend Joan MacIntosh, a looming computer screen, and a chorus of synthesized voices channeling this uncanny text, refashioned in the automated image of our digital times.
A Rite
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company + SITI Company
Conceived, directed, and choreographed by Anne Bogart, Bill T. Jones, and Janet Wong
Since its riot-inciting Parisian premiere a century ago, The Rite of Spring has taken on near-mythic status as a symbol of artistic insurrection and a cornerstone of the avant-garde. In A Rite, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and Anne Bogart’s SITI Company—two ensembles with rich histories at BAM—join minds, bodies, and voices to offer this dance-theater celebration of Stravinsky’s incendiary work and its tremendous cultural resonance.
Play/Pause
Susan Marshall + Company
Choreography by Susan Marshall
Music by David Lang
In an electric guitar-fueled evening of postmodern dance-theater, Susan Marshall couples her intimate, structured choreography with the seductiveness of pop culture to explore our complex relationship to the media we consume. Referencing the dance moves and sleek production values of popular music videos, Marshall’s choreography adds nuance to that high-gloss aesthetic while stripping away its context, rendering it both more profound and strange.
Anna Nicole
Composed by Mark-Anthony Turnage
Libretto by Richard Thomas
Directed by Richard Jones
Conducted by Steven Sloane
In a brilliant marriage of lowbrow bawdiness and highbrow operatic craft, British composer Mark-Anthony Turnage and librettist Richard Thomas (Jerry Springer: The Opera) immortalize the tumultuous life of Anna Nicole Smith—stripper, playmate, and formidable tabloid queen.
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Tickets for Anna Nicole go on sale Monday, August 12th. All other tickets go on sale to the general public on Tuesday, September 3rd - earlier for Friends of BAM.
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