This month’s 20th Next Wave Festival performances
are appropriately dominated by innovative 20th-century music,
often paired with video imagery.
American composer Steve Reich is no stranger to BAM – his seminal
percussion piece "Drumming" was danced to by a Belgian
troupe last season.
Reich and video artist Beryl Korot have teamed up this season
for "Three Tales," a cautionary tale about the dangers
of technology, demonstrated by the Hindenburg disaster, 1945
atomic bomb tests and cloned sheep Dolly.
"Steve’s music has many influences," says BAM executive
producer Joseph V. Melillo. "It’s contemporary, it’s electronic,
and [in ’Three Tales’] it’s beautifully enhanced by the marriage
of musicians and singers integrated into the visual material."
While "Three Tales" weds Reich’s current music with
digital video, French-Algerian choreographer Angelin Preljocaj
melds his singularly modernist dance style to two difficult works
from both ends of the 20th century: iconoclastic German composer
Karlheinz Stockhausen’s bizarre "Helikopter" Quartet
(from 1993) and Igor Stravinsky’s brash, brutal "The Rite
of Spring" (from 1913).
"He is the most exciting choreographer working today,"
Melillo says of Preljocaj. "Stockhausen’s quartet is marked
by a relentless pounding of string instruments – the helicopter’s
propellers are heard while the quartet performs. [Preljocaj’s
dance] is a marriage of video, movement and Stockhausen’s score."
And Preljocaj’s take on Stravinsky’s primal ballet? "It
is, in a word, ferocious," Melillo explains. "You will
feel threatened."
"Three Tales" will be performed at the Brooklyn
Academy of Music Howard Gilman Opera House [30 Lafayette Ave.]
on Oct. 16, Oct. 18 and Oct. 19 at 7:30 pm; tickets are $25 and
$45. There will be a BAMDialogue with Steve Reich and Beryl Korot
on Oct. 16 at 6 pm.
"Helikopter & Rite of Spring" will be performed
at the BAM Harvey Theater [651 Fulton St.] on Oct. 16-19 at 7:30
pm; tickets are $20, $35 and $50. For more information go to
www.bam.org or call (718) 636-4100.
