"Expect the unexpected," says Joseph Melillo, executive
producer of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, talking about the
2001 Next Wave Festival, BAM’s 19th annual performing arts event,
featuring 14 theater, dance and music programs from around the
world.
The unexpected will come from an international slate of emerging
artists as well as artists returning to BAM with new work never
before seen in the United States.
"I’m very much about making BAM a global cultural center,"
said Melillo. "And how new artists can give us new insights
into a work."
The 2001 season includes new renditions of classical works, such
as Charles L. Mee’s "Big Love," a modern interpretation
of Aeschylus’ 2,500-year-old tragedy, the "Suppliant Women,"
and a deconstructed production of "King Lear." There
area also triumphant returns of programs like "The Bang
on a Can Marathon," eight hours of non-stop music performed
by more than 100 artists from 11 countries.
The season kicks off Oct. 2 with Next Wave Down Under, a month-long
celebration of Australian arts and culture.
Melillo first went to Australia in 1990, and seven years later
he was invited back by the Australian government.
"It became clear to me there was something happening in
Australia that we in New York needed to see," said Melillo.
This something included "original thinking about the performing
arts" and "a maturity in dance, theater and music."
Melillo soon realized that "BAM could be the place where
New Yorkers could discover these new artists."
Next Wave Down Under opens with the U.S. debut of "Cloudstreet,"
Company B Belvoir’s acclaimed 1998 production, originally co-produced
with Black Swan Theatre. Directed by Neil Armfield, "Cloudstreet"
is a five-hour epic theater work (including an intermission and
dinner break) adapted from Tim Winton’s award-winning novel of
the same name.
Set in postwar Australia, "Cloudstreet" follows two
families that have fled the city to share a great, shuddering
house at 1 Cloud St.: the feckless Pickles and the industrious
Lambs. Featuring more than 100 scenes and 40 characters portrayed
by a 15-member cast, this story of how two utterly mismatched
families crammed under one crumbling roof learn how to live together
is an allegory for the Australian experience. It touches on subjects
as diverse as the isolation of indigenous Australians and the
sexual revolution of the 1960s. (Oct. 2-6 at 6:30 pm and Oct.
7 at 2 pm, BAM Harvey Theater.)
"Crumpled & Corrupted 2," the U.S. debut of Australia’s
Melbourne-based Chunky Move dance troupe, follows on Oct. 11.
This double-bill, choreographed by Gideon Obarzanek, features
two critically acclaimed works.
"Crumpled" is a series of what Obarzanek terms "calculated
collisions" by the dancers set to a techno score. "Corrupted
2" is Obarzanek’s physical depiction of corrupted data in
a digital age – abrupt stops and starts, tripping up and tentative
steps set to a blaring electronic score, as a huge, kite-like
metal structure looms over them. (Oct. 10-13 at 7:30 pm, BAM
Harvey Theater.)
"The Theft of Sita," written and directed by the English
expatriate Australian Nigel Jamieson with music composed by Paul
Grabowsky in association with Balinese composer I Wayan Gde Yudane,
explores an often-overlooked Australian fact. The world’s smallest
continent, which was forever changed by a British penal colony
more than 200 years ago, lies in close proximity to Indonesia
– a region very different from its own.
This retelling of the classical Indian Sanskrit "Ramayana,"
one of India’s most important Sanskrit epics, is a combination
of disparate elements, such as ancient and modern storytelling,
eastern and western music, and Australian and Indonesian culture,
brought to life through the ancient Indonesian art of shadow
puppetry. (Oct. 17, 19 & 20 at 7:30 pm and Oct. 21 at 3 pm,
BAM Harvey Theater.)
Next Wave Down Under mainstage offerings conclude with "Corroboree,"
an evening full of dances, songs and ceremonies that combine
technically sophisticated streetwise choreography with intimate
Aboriginal ceremonies and rituals. Performed by the Bangarra
Dance Theatre and directed and choreographed by Munaldjali clan
descendent Stephen Page, Corroboree takes its name from the public
sacred song and dance gatherings of indigenous Australians. (Oct.
24-27 at 7:30 pm, BAM Harvey Theater.)
But Next Wave Down Under is just the beginning of the Next Wave
festival.
"Drumming" is a vibrant piece for 12 dancers, set to
Steve Reich’s seminal 1971 work of minimalism inspired by West
African rhythms and performed by Brussels’ percussion ensemble
Ictus. Choreographed by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, "Drumming"
is a non-stop hour of shimmying, pulsating torsos, wheeling arms
and legs, and abrupt changes of direction. (Oct. 16, 18-20 at
7:30 pm, BAM Howard Gilman Opera House.)
For one night, Oct. 25 at 7:30 pm, "The Next Wave of Song"
will bring together three singer-songwriters of contemporary
pop music: Me’Shell Ndegeocello, Beth Orton and Rufus Wainwright.
Each artist will perform solo or with a single accompanist: Ndegeocello
with a sophisticated mix of rock and soul, Orton with her fusion
of classic English acoustic folk and hip-hop rhythm, and Wainwright
with his tenor vocals and opulent piano melodies rooted in Tin
Pan Alley. (Oct. 25 at 7:30 pm, BAM Howard Gilman Opera House.)
Do-it-yourself music takes over the Howard Gilman Opera House
on Oct. 28 from 2 pm to 10 pm in the all-day "Bang on a
Can Marathon." Now in its second year at BAM, "Bang
on a Can" will feature an eclectic mix of innovative new
music including the Bulgarian wedding music of Ivo Papasov, England’s
post-minimal rock band Icebreaker and the New York string quartet
Ethel.
Belgium’s Needcompany, which has an international reputation
for daring and vital productions, gives "King Lear"
a postmodern twist and universal focus. This performance work,
directed by Jan Lauwers, uses Flemish peppered with smatterings
of Shakespearean English as well as bits of French. (Surtitles
translate the entire text.) The play begins with a postmodern
dance and ends with blaring rock music and jolting sounds of
war. (Oct. 31, Nov. 2-3 at 7:30 pm and Nov. 4 at 3 pm, BAM Harvey
Theater.)
Dance-theater maverick Pina Bausch and her Tanztheater Wuppertal
return to BAM’s Next Wave Festival with the exclusive U.S. engagement
of "Masurca Fogo," a sensual, romantic piece created
for the 1998 Lisbon World Expo in celebration of the company’s
25th anniversary. Drawing from both Portugal and Brazil, Bausch’s
piece includes music, dialogue, dance and film. (Nov. 8-10 at
7:30 pm and Nov. 11 at 3 pm, BAM Howard Gilman Opera House.)
In "Once Upon a Time in Chinese America: A Martial Arts
Ballet and Music Theater Epic," composer, saxophonist, bandleader
and writer Fred Ho transposes a 17th-century Chinese martial
arts legend of betrayal, intrigue and political opportunism into
a fusion of American jazz, popular culture, Chinese opera and
martial arts. The piece features martial artists, a narrator-actor
performing text written by Ho and music performed by his sextet,
The Afro-Asian Music Ensemble. (Nov. 7, 9-10 at 7:30 pm and Nov.
11 at 3 pm, BAM Harvey Theater.)
"Giant Empty," choreographer John Jasperse’s new evening-length
project for four dancers, explores the division between inside
and outside, self and other, intimacy and distance, and present,
future and past. Commissioned by BAM and Ballett Frankfurt, the
dance investigates how our own internal and external spaces relate
to and are affected by the spaces that surround and contain us.
(Nov. 14, 15 & 17 at 7:30 pm and Nov. 18 at 3 pm, BAM Harvey
Theater.)
Rock legend Lou Reed and theater director Robert Wilson once
again join forces with Thalia Theater for a two-act 17-scene
music-theater piece drawn from the life and work of American
poet and writer Edgar Allan Poe. Robert Wilson’s hallucinatory
stage tableaux, "POEtry," capture the poet’s tormented
inner landscape, while Reed’s libretto and songs combine Poe’s
language with a variety of ambient and textured musical styles,
performed by the Time Rocker band. (Nov. 27, 29, 30, Dec. 1 &
Dec. 4-8 at 7:30 pm and Dec. 1 & 8 at 2 pm, BAM Howard Gilman
Opera House.)
"Big Love" is the first work by American playwright
Charles L. Mee presented by BAM during the Next Wave Festival.
It is a modern interpretation of Aeschylus’ "The Suppliant
Women," the sole extant play from a trilogy chronicling
the trials and tribulations of Danaus’ 50 daughters who fled
Egypt to avoid forced marriages to their cousins – or the meeting
of classical Greek tragedy and modern-day sexual politics. (Nov.
30, Dec. 1, 4-8 at 7:30 pm, Dec. 2, 9 at 3 pm and Dec. 8 at 2
pm, BAM Harvey Theater.)
The Next Wave Festival ends with Ballett Frankfurt’s three works
by William Forsythe. "Enemy in the Figure" features
a roving floodlight that exposes and obscures the dancers who
whirl and shimmer through space. "Quintett" is danced
to Gavin Bryars’ "Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet"
and reflects the score’s emotional tone of dread, longing and
love. (The third dance was not announced at press time.) (Dec.
14, 15, 18-20 at 7:30 pm and Dec. 16 at 3 pm, BAM Howard Gilman
Opera House.)
Although BAM’s New Wave Festival attracts audiences from far
beyond Brooklyn, it’s success certainly coincides with and reflects
Brooklyn’s diverse and dynamic neighborhoods, as well as the
Renaissance that is going on in many of these neighborhoods.
Melillo believes that BAM is an important part of the Brooklyn
Renaissance.
"Brooklynites are adventurous, curious audiences and that’s
why they find their way to BAM," he said. "There is
a whole array of new people here who find their way to BAM."
Melillo is convinced that "Brooklyn is an exciting place
in the 21st century."
"There’s lots of young energy. The community is changing,"
he said. "It’s very exciting. Hey, we have a baseball team."
The 2001 Next Wave Festival, including Next Wave Down Under,
begins Oct. 2. BAM Howard Gilman Opera House is located at 30
Lafayette Ave. BAM Harvey Theater is located at 651 Fulton St.
For tickets and information call BAM Ticket Services at (718)
636-4100 or visit www.bam.org. Tickets are also available at
Ticketmaster at (212) 307-4100.
