HERE's 'Alchemy' Gala to Honor Basil Twist and More This May

On Monday, May 23, HERE honors renowned puppet artist Basil Twist and the Mertz Gilmore Foundation & the LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust, accepted by Foundation President Jay Beckner, at HERE's annual gala.

This year's gala, entitled Alchemy - Celebrating Art, the Universal Elixir, begins at 6:00pm with the Aurelian Feast at City Winery (155 Varick Street) featuring VIP Cocktail Reception, dinner, performances, raffle and silent auction, and continues with the Solid Gold Soirée, beginning at 8:30pm at HERE (145 Sixth Avenue), with cocktails, delectables, raffle and silent auction, performances and dancing.

HERE's Alchemy gala, hosted by Sxip Shirey, features performances by Dirty Martini, Julie Atlas Muz, Bora Yoon, Amanda Szeglowski/cakeface and DJ Sammy Jo. Proceeds support HERE, the award-winning producer and presenter of contemporary hybrid work for more than 20 years, renowned for the HERE Artist Residency Program, the Dream Music Puppetry Program, and the PROTOTYPE festival.

Tickets for the Aurelian Feast include VIP cocktail reception beginning at 6:00pm, seated dinner at City Winery (155 Varick Street), and access to the Solid Gold Soirée party. Individual dinner tickets are available at $500 or $1,000 levels, with tables available for purchase for $5,000, $10,000, and $25,000, and are accompanied by a range of perks. Full details at here.org/shows/detail/1761.

Tickets are also available for the Solid Gold Soirée at HERE (145 Sixth Avenue) with doors at 8:30pm, and dancing from 10:00pm onwards. Solid Gold Soirée tickets are 1 for $100, or 2 for $150 using the code SOIREE, and can be purchased online. To buy tickets over the phone or via email, contact Liene Camarena Fogele, Development Associate, at 212.647.0202 ext. 326, or liene@here.org.

ABOUT THE HONOREES:

Basil Twist, originally from San Francisco, is a third-generation puppeteer and the sole American to graduate from the École Supérieure Nationale des Arts de la Marionnette in Charleville- Mézières, France. Mr. Twist's work was first spotlighted at HERE with the critically praised and award-winning Symphonie Fantastique, which also inaugurated the Dream Music Puppetry Program, for which he is Artistic Director. Highlights of his subsequent work include Petrushka (commissioned by Lincoln Center), Dogugaeshi (Japan Society), Behind the Lid (Silver Whale Gallery) with Lee Nagrin and Arias with a Twist (HERE), co-created with nightlife icon Joey Arias. His productions have toured throughout the world. On Broadway, he created and staged the puppetry in The Addams Family, for which he won a Drama Desk Award, and staged the puppetry for The Pee-Wee Herman Show. In film, he collaborated most notably on Harry Potter. Mr. Twist's work is deeply musical in nature. He has conceived and directed two successful operas, Respighi's La Bella Dormente Nel Bosco with the Gotham Chamber Opera and Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel for the Houston Grand and Atlanta Operas. Other collaborations include: in dance, The Winter's Tale and Cinderella with Christopher Wheeldon, Darkness and Light with Pilobolus, and Wonderboy with the Joe Goode Performance Group; and in drama, Paula Vogel's play The Long Christmas Ride Home, Red Beads, and Peter and Wendy with Lee Breuer, plus puppetry for the Oskar Eustis-directed Hamlet for New York's Shakespeare in the Park. He collaborated with Kate Bush to realize her live concert "Before the Dawn," in London 2014. His original work, Rite of Spring, commissioned by Carolina Performing Arts/University of North Carolina Chapel Hill premiered in 2013 at Memorial Hall and in 2014, made its New York debut at Lincoln Center's White Light Festival. Sisters Follies was created for Abrons Arts Center where it made its world premiere in October of 2015. He has received Obie, Drama Desk, New York Innovative Theatre, and Henry Hewes Design awards, as well as five UNIMA and two Bessie awards. He has also been awarded Guggenheim, Creative Capital, and USA Artists fellowships, and was awarded an inaugural Doris Duke Performing Artist Award. Mr. Twist was recently honored with a MacArthur Fellowship.

Jay Beckner is President of the Mertz Gilmore Foundation. In 2016, the Foundation will make grants totaling $9 million in the areas of climate change, democratic values, New York City dance, and New York City community empowerment. Since joining what was then the Joyce Mertz Gilmore Foundation in 1987, Mr. Beckner has served as the Foundation's Director of Finance/Administration, Vice President, Executive Director, and President. In addition, Mr. Beckner serves as an advisor to the The LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust, which expects to make distributions of nearly $8 million in 2016. The Trust provides support primarily for environmental programs, civil rights groups, and the arts. Mr. Beckner lives in Montclair, New Jersey, and serves as the Vice Chairman of the Board of Philanthropy New York.

The OBIE-winning HERE (Kristin Marting, Artistic Director and Kim Whitener, Producing Director), named a Top Ten Off-Off Broadway Theatre by Time Out New York, is a leader in the field of producing and presenting new, hybrid performance viewed as a seamless integration of artistic disciplines-theater, dance, music and opera, puppetry, media, visual and installation, spoken word and performance art. Standout productions include Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues, Basil Twist's Symphonie Fantastique and Arias with a Twist, Hazelle Goodman's On Edge, Trey Lyford & Geoff Sobelle's all wear bowlers, Young Jean Lee's Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven, Corey Dargel's Removable Parts, Taylor Mac's The Lily's Revenge, Kamala Sankaram's Miranda and Robin Frohardt's The Pigeoning, among many others. In 2008, following an extensive renovation, HERE re-opened the doors to its long-time downtown home for the arts, where it continues as a vibrant, welcoming haven for artists and audiences alike.

The HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP) has been HERE's signature development and producing program since 1998. HARP commissions, develops and premieres new hybrid performances. Productions developed at HERE challenge existing boundaries between disciplines. Through HARP, Resident Artists are given the unique opportunity to develop their projects for up to three years through free works-in-progress showings, workshop presentations in HERE's annual CULTUREMART festival, culminating in full-scale productions. Each season, HERE premieres several of these Resident Artist productions as mainstage works. These innovative projects are grown in a diverse artistic community where artists receive career development resources and hands-on training. HARP has been widely recognized as a unique model for artistic development for the field to emulate. In honoring HERE with the 2009 Ross Wetzsteon Award, the OBIE Committee noted, "it's become increasingly hard for artists to find a place to take risks, a safe haven where they can develop daring new work. One theater has regularly bucked the trend, making its mission to ensure that artists have a home for their research and development, and that theatregoers can sample the exciting results."

HERE is also home to the cross-disciplinary productions of Artistic Director Kristin Marting and proudly hosts adventurous artists, companies and productions, whether emerging or acclaimed, through its SubletSeries. It also presents work from New York, across the country, and around the globe through the Dream Music Puppetry Program (co-curated with Basil Twist), and the widely acclaimed PROTOTYPE: Opera/Theatre/Now festival of opera-theater and music-theater, co-produced with Beth Morrison Projects.