Danny Elfman, Druid Theatre, National Ballet of China, Cleveland Orchestra and More Set for Lincoln Center Festival 2015

Nigel Redden, Director of Lincoln Center Festival, today announced the line-up for the 20th edition of the Festival, which runs from July 6 through August 2, 2015. The Festival will unfold in six venues on and off the Lincoln Center campus. There will be a total of 58 performances by artists and ensembles from Germany, China, England, Ireland, Russia, USA, and Japan.

The festival opens on July 6 with Danny Elfman's Music from the Films of Tim Burton, a multimedia orchestral experience of specially created suites from a majority of the film collaborations by the legendary composer and visionary director, combined with montages of film clips, sketches, drawings and storyboards edited by Burton. John Mauceri, one of the world's foremost conductors of live film music, will lead a full orchestra and choir, with Danny Elfman making a special guest appearance. Audience members are encouraged to come to the performance dressed as their favorite character from the films. There will be eight performances in Avery Fisher Hall through July 12.

Druid Theatre Company of Galway, Ireland, returns for a fourth engagement at the Festival with artistic director Garry Hynes's staging the North American premiere of DruidShakespeare: The History Plays, playwright Mark O'Rowe's adaptation of William Shakespeare's four history plays that make up the key foundational narrative of the English monarchy -- Richard II, Henry IV Part One, Henry IV Part Two, and Henry V. Performances will be in the Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College, July 7 - 19, with four marathon performances over the two weekends and two-part performances on consecutive weeknights.

The National Ballet of China and National Ballet of China Symphony Orchestra will perform two full-evening story ballets representing distinctly different periods in Chinese history: The Peony Pavilion, a romance based on a 400-year-old epic masterpiece of Kunqu opera, choreographed by Fei Bo; and, in celebration of its 50th anniversary, The Red Detachment of Women, the first ballet created in the new nation, the People's Republic of China, choreographed by Li Chenxiang, Jiang Zuhui, and Wang Yangiao. There will be three performances of The Peony Pavilion and two of The Red Detachment of Women, July 8 - 12 in the David H. Koch Theater.

The Cleveland Orchestra returns to Lincoln Center with four concerts July 15 - 18 in Avery Fisher Hall led by its esteemed music director Franz Welser-Möst, highlighted by two performances of a concert version of Richard Strauss's rarely-performed operaDaphne, as well as two additional orchestral programs featuring music by Beethoven, Strauss, Messiaen, and Dvorák.

Cheek by Jowl director Declan Donnellan and designer Nick Ormerod reignite the savage comedy of Ubu Roi, Alfred Jarry's 1896 proto-surrealist and absurdist comedy about a scheming, murderous yet ridiculous dictator, in a contemporary production set in a chic French apartment featuring an ensemble of

French actors affiliated with the Cheek by Jowl company. This is Donnellan and Ormerod's second Lincoln Center Festivalproduction. In 2009 they memorably staged the Chekov International Theatre Festival production of Pushkin's Boris Godunovwith a cast including actor Yvgeny Mironov (see Miss Julie below). There will be five performances of Ubu Roi, July 22?26, at Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College.

Renowned Russian actors Chulpan Khamatova and Yvgeny Mironov will make a rare New York appearance when they star in August Strindberg's drama Miss Julie, staged by iconoclastic German director Thomas Ostermeier, known for his provocative and stylishly contemporary stagings of Ibsen's plays in recent years. Mironov, a hugely popular stage and film actor who was in the 2009 Festival production of Boris Godunov staged by Declan Donnellan, is also artistic director of the Theatre of Nations, Moscow. Ostermeier's production of Miss Julie premiered there in 2011. The play was adapted by Russian playwright Mikhail Durnenkov and is set in modern day Russia. Using contemporary language, the adaptation takes on the same themes of class warfare that appear in Strindberg's original 1888 Swedish text. There will be six performances at New York City Center, July 27 - August 2.

Legendary director Yukio Ninagawa celebrates his 80th birthday with a return to Lincoln Center Festival for the U.S. premiere of his production of Haruki Murakami's internationally best-selling novel, Kafka on the Shore, starring actors Rie Miyazawa,Naohito Fujiki, and Nino Furuhata. The play is about two journeys. In one, the teen-age hero, Kafka Tamura -- who has adopted the name of the great writer whose work is filled with the themes and archetypes of alienation -- packs his backpack and, with his alter-ego/companion Crow, flees his home in an attempt to escape his father's Oedipal curse. At the same time, an old man, Nakata, suffering from an inexplicable childhood affliction that stole his memory, is compelled to set out on a voyage for reasons he does not understand. Their odysseys entwine in modern-day Japan. There will be four performances, July 23 - 26 at the David H. Koch Theater.

The Ruhrtriennale's production of Harry Partch's music theater spectacle Delusion of the Fury will receive its U.S. premiere in a co-production by Lincoln Center Festival, Holland Festival, Ensemble Musikfabrik, and the Ruhr. Heiner Goebbels returns to the Festival to direct this maverick composer's work, considered his magnum opus. Ensemble Musikfabrik is bringing a complete set of Partch instruments which the ensemble has recreated for these performances. There will be two performances, July 23 and 24, at New York City Center.

Rezo Gabriadze and his acclaimed puppet-theater troupe from the Republic of Georgia, The Gabriadze Theatre, make their fourth Festival appearance with Ramona, the story of two ill-fated steam engines who fall in love in the USSR. This humorously stark tale of compassion and loss is accompanied by music inspired by Georgian folk songs. As is the case with all of Gabriadze's previous puppet plays, Ramona is produced on a small scale with extraordinary puppets and sets made from such commonplace objects as string, bits of cloth, twigs, and wire. There will be ten performances, July 27 - August 1, in the Clark Studio Theater.

Yarn/Wire, the Queens-based chamber quartet, part of a new wave of young contemporary ensembles specializing in the performance of 20th- and 21st-century music for piano and percussion, will make its Lincoln Center Festival debut on July 15 in the intimate Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse with a concert dedicated to contemporary music commissioned for the group by a new generation of young French composers. The program offers world premieres by composers rarely heard in the United States: Misato Mochizuki, Raphaël Cendo, and will also feature new work by the acclaimed Tristan Murail, one of spectral music's principal founders and theoreticians, resulting in a survey of important recent trends in French contemporary classical music.

Said Mr. Redden, "For 20 years Lincoln Center Festival has been recognized in the U.S. and abroad for presenting some of the broadest and most original performing arts programs in New York. Work by the leading artists of our time has graced the stages of Lincoln Center and venues across the city. This summer we welcome back Garry Hynes and the Druid Theatre Company; Franz Welser-Möst and the Cleveland Orchestra; Yukio Ninagawa and his eponymous theater company; director Declan Donnellan and designer Nick Ormerod; Heiner Goebbels and Ensemble Musikfabrik; director Rezo Gabriadze and The Gabriadze Theatre; and the great Russian actor, Yvgeny Mironov. They join other artists stretching the boundaries of performance who will be appearing at the Festival for the first time."

Tickets: Lincoln Center Festival packages go on sale on January 23 to Friends of Lincoln Center and to the general public on February 2. Single tickets for the entire festival go on sale to Friends of Lincoln Center on March 23 and the general public on starting March 31. For more information and to buy tickets, visit LincolnCenterFestival.org or go to the Avery Fisher or Alice Tully Hall box offices, or call CenterCharge, 212-721-6500.

Programs, artists and ticket prices are subject to change.

Photo Credit: Barry McCall