Theater & Music Go Beyond at the FERUS Festival

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Parent Category: Other Festivals

Category: Theater

Published on Thursday, 17 December 2020 20:24

Written by Brad Balfour

National Sawdust's FERUS Festival, the showcase for cutting-edge audio, novel multimedia performances and provocative creative discussion has its 2021 installment coming January 7 to the 9th. Streaming at https://live.nationalsawdust.org/,  lineup includes Ash Koosha and his anthropomorphized artificial intelligence YONA independently collaborating for a uniquely futuristic duet concert. The presentation Active Hope brings together  a Broadway director, a poet and TED Global Fellow, and an award winning composer to articulate how artists and arts workers can shape this transformational, historical, and polarizing moment. Featuring artistic leaders from The Apollo Theater, The Kennedy Center, and National Sawdust - Kamilah Forbes, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, and Paola Prestini - in a public conversation about applying creative intelligence to how we cross borders, disciplines, and outlooks as we build a path for healing and the future.

Choreographer and MacArthur Fellow Kyle Abraham and pioneering producer Jlin have come together to create a new commission exploring death, folklore, and reincarnation through a reimagining of Mozart’s Requiem in D minor. While Abraham’s work is typically performed in proscenium, for FERUS he has reconceptualized an excerpt from an evening length work, exploring abstracted movement for the digital landscape. The duet features Keerati Jinakunwiphat and Jae Neal from A.I.M by Kyle Abraham, costumed by highly noted designer Giles Deacon with musical excerpts by producer Jlin. Choreography created in collaboration with A.I.M. dancers Keerati Jinakunwiphat and Jae Neal. A short live discussion with the artists will follow the screening.

National Sawdust's co-founder and Artistic Director Paola Prestini says, "Our sixth annual FERUS Festival is emblematic of the core values we're stressing for National Sawdust's 2021 season: encouraging innovation in form and approach, emphasizing financial and professional mentorship for artists, expanding our work with movement and dance, and intensifying our commitment to spotlight the experience and creative work of a gender-diverse and racially-diverse roster of performers and composers."

To learn more, go to: https://nationalsawdust.org/festivals-and-series/ferus/

National Sawdust's FERUS Festival
January 7 - 9, 2021

Irish Arts Center 12th Annual PoetryFest

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Parent Category: Other Festivals

Category: Theater

Published on Thursday, 05 November 2020 10:13

Written by Brad Balfour

The Irish Arts Center of NYC is holding their 12th annual—and first digital— PoetryFest, with curator Nick Laird convening five poets from Ireland and North America for a virtual celebration of verse. See readings of the Center’s Favorite Irish Poems, the opening night tradition of special guests and festival participants sharing the Irish verses they love most, followed by online readings and conversations. Readers include Emma Dabiri, Ailbhe Darcy, Kit de Waal, Miriam Gamble, Terrance Hayes, Nick Laird, Ada Limón, Belinda McKeon, Paula Meehan, Graham Norton, Katie Raissian, Leanne Shapton and Zadie Smith, plus Ciaran O'Reilly and Charlotte Moore of the Irish Repertory Theatre, John Waters of Glucksman Ireland House, Brendan Costello of Irish American Writers & Artists, and George Heslin of the New York Irish Center.

To learn more, go to: https://irishartscenter.org/event/at-home-with-irish-arts-center-12th-annual-poetryfest

At Home With Irish Arts Center: 12th Annual PoetryFest
November 6 - 7, 2020

2020 Voices International Theatre Festival: Performances from Around the World

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Parent Category: Other Festivals

Category: Theater

Published on Tuesday, 13 October 2020 15:16

Written by Brad Balfour

The 2020 Voices International Theatre Festival, produced by the Jersey City Theater Center, brings theatre from around the world to streaming audiences. Running October 15 to the 25th the VITF will feature 24 productions, many of which will have talk-backs with the artists immediately following the broadcast of their productions.  Among the livestreamed events of drama, dance, one person shows and more, is an interactive presentation (on Fri Oct 23 at noon) led by the Institut Ramon Llull for Catalan Language and Culture, and Nau Ivanow, the Barcelona-based arts center and lab which had a hand in the Festival’s four Spanish-Catalonian entries – “Tuberias,” “The Legend of the Faun,” and “The Journey” from Los Escultores del Aire and “I Was Prospero (or remembering ‘The Tempest’)” from Projecte Ingenu. 

Joining these participants will be the chamber dance-music duo Les Impuxibles sharing their work “Des-espera,” and GNIMC Guy Nader I Maria Campos showing “Set of Sets” (both supported by the Institute Ramon Llull). Also participating in this interactive presentation-demonstration are Laia Cabrera, an award-winning filmmaker and multimedia creator and Isabelle Duverger, an award winning Jersey City-based French animation and projection mapping artist.

Along with performances there are also panels and workshops including “Diving Deep Into Critical Group” led by Stephanie Chaiken, director of the New Jersey City University Center for the Arts, which explores the variety of relationships and structures of criticism playwrights can leverage in receiving feedback, criticism or during the collaborative process.

To learn more, go to: https://www.jctcenter.org/2020

Voices International Theatre Festival
October 15 - 25, 2020