BRYN MAWR, PA:
BRYN MAWR COLLEGE’S 2019-2020 PERFORMING ARTS SERIES
Celebrating local and international artists who examine their forebears in global arts and politics to give contemporary form to enduring movements and messages.
BRYN MAWR, PA – September 2019 –– The Bryn Mawr College Performing Arts Series announces subscription and single tickets are now available for its 2019-2020 performances. The new season celebrates artists who dynamically engage with historic and contemporary social movements, and with the artistic legacies that have emerged and evolved alongside those political struggles.
Drawing on newly independent sub-Saharan Africa in the 1960s-70s, and the African American fight for civil rights, Baker & Tarpaga Dance Project examines what it is to build up and break down in the name of change with the new dance work When Birds Refused to Fly. Dubbed “the new princess of Nubian pop and Sudanese retro” by The Guardian, Alsarah & The Nubatones deliver heady pop updates on the rich musical traditions of the Nubian region, from Sudan by way of Brooklyn. Sister Sylvester creates genetically modified actors that are part human, part jellyfish, part bacteria in Brecht Forensics: Genetically Modified Theater. BalletX, Philadelphia's premier contemporary ballet company, returning to the Bryn Mawr College campus for the first time in a decade, commissions choreographers from around the world to expand the vocabulary of dance for all audiences. Prism Quartet with soprano Tony Arnold and pianist Arturo O’Farrill presents the world premiere of Mending Wall, a theatrically staged concert that explores the meaning of walls in contemporary society.
2019-2020 Bryn Mawr College Performing Arts Series Performance Schedule:
*All performances take place on the Bryn Mawr College campus, 101 N. Merion Ave., Bryn Mawr, PA 19010
Baker & Tarpaga Dance Project – When Birds Refused to Fly
Friday and Saturday, Oct. 4 and 5, 8 p.m.
Hepburn Teaching Theater, Goodhart Hall
Alsarah & The Nubatones
Saturday, Nov. 23, 8 p.m.
McPherson Auditorium, Goodhart Hall
Sister Sylvester – Brecht Forensics: Genetically Modified Theater
Friday and Saturday, Jan. 31-Feb. 1, 8 p.m.
Hepburn Teaching Theater, Goodhart Hall
BalletX
Saturday, Feb. 8, 8 p.m.
McPherson Auditorium, Goodhart Hall
PRISM Quartet – Mending Wall*
Saturday, March 21, 8 p.m.; and Sunday, March 22, 3 p.m.
McPherson Auditorium, Goodhart Hall
Subscriptions to the five-program series are $90 each, $75 for seniors. Tickets to individual events are $20, $18 for seniors, $10 for students and Dance Pass holders or members of dancephiladelphia.org, and $5 for children under 12. *PRISM Quartet event tickets are $10 for general admission, seniors, and students and $5 for children under 12.
Tickets, subscriptions and more information are available online through Brown Paper Tickets, at https://www.brynmawr.edu/performing-arts-series or by calling 610-526-5300.
The Season in Detail:
Baker & Tarpaga Dance Project – When Birds Refused to Fly
Set to the music of Orchestre Super Volta and performed by an ensemble of African artists, When Birds Refused to Fly is a contemporary dance theater project exploring generational transformations, both cultural and geographic. Choreographer Olivier Tarpaga, whose company is based in both Burkina Faso and Philadelphia, draws on the 1960s-70s—the post-independence fevers raging across sub-Saharan Africa and the African American fight for civil rights—to examine what it is to build up and break down in the name of change.
Alsarah & The Nubatones
Arriving in the U.S. in the mid-1990s after conflict engulfed her native Sudan, Alsarah turned to music as a living link to her homeland, both as an ethnomusicologist and as a singer with a spellbinding voice and socially conscious lyrics. With percussionist Rami El-Aasser, bassist Mawuena Kodjovi, oud player Brandon Terzic, and background vocalist Nahid, Alsarah blends East-African tunes with Arabic sounds and traditions for a one-of-a-kind style she describes as “East African retro-pop.”
Sister Sylvester – Brecht Forensics: Genetically Modified Theater
Artists: Kathryn Hamilton, Mike Perdue, Jude Traxler, Dr Mike Flanagan, Devin Burnam, Jacqueline Blaska, in collaboration with GenSpace
Based in New York and Istanbul, Sister Sylvester makes essayistic performances by using first-hand research and bringing together digital technology with non-human, living performers. Brecht Forensics is a performance lecture based on DNA extracted from a hat that was a costume for Brecht's Berliner Ensemble production of Mother Courage and Her Children. The performance features drinks made from the DNA found on the hat and genetically modified actors that are part human, part jellyfish, part bacteria.
BalletX
BalletX, Philadelphia’s premier contemporary ballet, whose dancers were named “among America’s best” by The New York Times, commissions choreographers from around the world to expand the vocabulary of dance for all audiences, forging new works of athleticism, emotion and grace. This mixed-rep program features Nicolo Fonte’s ballet Steep Drop, Euphoric, which gained critical acclaim in The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Boston Globe when it premiered in the spring of 2019.
Prism Quartet – Mending Wall*
Soprano Tony Arnold and pianist Arturo O’Farrill join the PRISM Quartet in a theatrically staged concert exploring the meaning of walls in our world. Four visionary composers—Martin Bresnick, George E. Lewis, Juri Seo, and O’Farrill—take inspiration from poetry by Robert Frost, Keorapetse Kgositsile, Waly Salomão, and Guillermo Gómez-Peña to give musical form to questions about identity, community, division, and freedom. Stage Direction by Jorinde Keesmaat, lighting design by Aaron Copp.
The 2019-2020 Bryn Mawr College Performing Arts Series receives state arts funding support through a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.
Major support for Mending Wall has been provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, with additional support from the Presser Foundation and the Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia.
The presentation of Baker & Tarpaga Dance Project’s When Birds Refused to Fly is made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
The Performing Arts Series gratefully acknowledges support for Brecht Forensics: Genetically Modified Theater from The Miriam Schultz Grunfeld '69 Fund, established by Carl Grunfeld, M.D., friends and family members in memory of Miriam Schultz Grunfeld '69. Since 1996, the Grunfeld Fund has enriched student life by supporting art history, the arts and literature.
Since 1984 the Bryn Mawr College Performing Arts Series has presented great artists and performances to audiences in the Philadelphia area, creating an environment in which the value of the arts is recognized and celebrated. Providing talks and workshops free to the public to help develop arts awareness and literacy, the Bryn Mawr College Performing Arts Series has partnered in recent seasons with such organizations as the Baryshnikov Arts Center, Bryn Mawr Film Institute, and the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival. The Series has presented performances by such diverse luminaries and visionaries as Meredith Monk, John Waters, Il Fondamento, the Khmer Arts Ensemble of Cambodia, and Urban Bush Women.
Baker & Tarpaga Dance Project – "When Birds Refused to Fly." Photo by Gery Barbot
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