Take a deeper look at the composers presented by Cuarteto Latinoamericano and the history that shaped their unique musical languages in this creative process conversation between composer Gabriela Ortiz, first violinist Saúl Bitrán, UW professor Anthony Geist and Meany Center Executive and Artistic Director Michelle Witt.
Martha Graham Dance Company’s artistic director Janet Eilber and dancer Natasha Diamond-Walker in conversation with Meany Center Executive and Artistic Director Michelle Witt and David Rahbee (Senior Artist-In-Residence, Director of Orchestras and Chair of Orchestral Conducting at UW), to discuss the collaboration between Martha Graham and Aaron Copland — one of the greatest artistic relationships of all time — and what their partnership teaches us about the interdependence of creative collaboration.
In this Meany On Screen Creative Process Conversation, Meany Center Artistic Director Michelle Witt interviews Ranee Ramaswamy, the Artistic Director of Ragamala Dance Company, and Aparna Ramaswamy, co-director of Ragamala Dance Company, to explore the creative foundations of their new work-in-progress, Fires of Varanasi.
The choreographer Abby Zbikowski brings her raw, genre-bending “Radioactive Practice” to New York Live Arts after a two-year delay.
On their most recent album titled “Momma Exposed,” Seattle-based Haitian American artist Momma Nikki pays tribute to their late father, Jean Bonny Etienne, and the complicated relationship they shared.
Every year on July 21, people in the US territory of Guam commemorate “Liberation Day,” the day in 1944 when American forces invaded the island, retaking it from Japan at the end of World War II. But for the Indigenous people of Guam — or Guåhan in the Chamorro Native language — Liberation Day, with its military parades and solemn speeches, is not a day to celebrate. For Seattle-based dancer and musician Dakota Camacho, Liberation Day is full of contradictions.
After large-scale anti-government protests rocked Cuba this summer, the Cuban state blocked access to WhatsApp, Facebook, and other social networking sites on the island.
It’s a strategy the Cuban government has used for decades.
Enrique “Kiki” Valera, a Cuban musician, composer and engineer born in 1966, knew from a young age that in order to gain access to musical sounds trending outside the communist country, he had to overcome these technological hurdles. His anwer: shortwave radio.
Who is called to lead a funeral? Who is summoned to help us through these burial rights? Who can gracefully usher a spirit from this realm into the next? Who is qualified to take our uncertain hands and lead us through the bardos of the afterlife? Who is equipped to ritualize loss and mourning? Who then, in this journey, also has the fortitude to direct the choir and the prayer and the procession?
A shaman.
A healer.
An artist.
A witch.
A lover.
A friend.
A daughter.
Indeed.
We gather here. Together.
The very first thing that the choreographer Faye Driscoll does in “Thank You for Coming: Space,” the final installment in a trilogy, is act out the series’s title. Standing in a slouch, barefoot in a T-shirt and jeans, she thanks her audience for showing up, acknowledging the quotidian difficulties of attending live performance. The speech is disarming, but also, as it extends in awkward silences and tangents, a little disturbing. Something is off.
The choreographer Faye Driscoll is the next recipient of New York Live Arts’ robust biennial residency award, the organization announced on Wednesday. The award, the Randjelovic/Stryker Resident Commissioned Artist, is notable for the breadth of its support, which includes a commissioning fee, a technical residency and a fully produced production as well as two years of full-time salary and health care benefits.
