Miro Magloire's New Chamber Ballet Perform SEA at Mark Morris Dance Center

Miro Magloire's New Chamber Ballet returns to the Mark Morris Dance Center, June 30 and July 1, with a repeat of the 2021 "Sea".   The lyrical work, premiered two years ago, is set to music by contemporary composer Richard Carrick.

As New York woke up from its performing arts covid hiatus, New Chamber Ballet premiered "Sea', a quintet choreographed by Miro to "The Mill", Preludes" for piano, "Danga", and "In Flow" for solo violin by Richard Carrick.  At the time, the ballet was simply billed as "inspired by the movement of waves  in the water...and the joy of dancing together".  In reality it was more than that.  "Sea" has brought a new quality to New Chamber Ballet's work: the dancers perform the entire hour-long piece as an ensemble - dancing as a group in overlapping patterns and trading the lead roles every few moments.  The quintet is a tour-de-force of concentration and stamina (particularly as it was first performed with the dancers wearing masks!).

The music consists of four works by Carrick, three of which were commissioned by New Chamber Ballet over the years.  The result is a whirlwind of melodic and rhythmic impressions, many of them alluding to ancient sites around the globe, described by the composer as "a travelogue of haunting places".  Miro's choreography responds with lilting movements that not only evoke water - an effect enhanced by Sarah Thea Craig's floating blue costumes - but surprise the eye with their rhythmic complexity.

Richard Carrick, composer, conductor, pianist, is a Guggenheim Fellow who writes music of spatial depth and robust stasis, described by The New York Times as "charming, with exoticism and sheer infectiousness."  His music has been presented at international festivals, released on three critically acclaimed CD's, and published by PSNY.  

Carrick is Chair of Composition at Berklee, co-founder of Either/Or, and winner of the CMA/ASCAP Award for Adventuresome Programming.  He has presented master classes and lectures throughout Europe, Israel, Japan, Rwanda, and South Korea. Born in Paris of French-Algerian and British descent, Carrick received his BA from Columbia University, PhD from the University of California/San Diego with Brian Ferneyhough, and pursued further studies at IRCAM and the Koninklijk Conservatorium in The Hague. This is his third collaboration with New Chamber Ballet. www.richardcarrick.com 

Miro Magloire, the founder and Artistic Director of New Chamber Ballet, has created over one hundred ballets in his signature sculptural style. Magloire and his company have broken many boundaries in classical dance, from using an in-the-round presentation for all performances, to fielding its singular, all-female company of virtuosic dancers. As former New York Times dance critic Alastair Macaulay wrote, "It's heartening to see work so focused on the meeting of dance and music,” lauding Miro as “refreshingly original,” in work that former New York Post dance critic Leigh Witchel called “bracing, daring, and calmly radical.”

Trained as a composer in his native Germany, as well as a choreographer, Magloire is known for his ground- breaking collaborations with musicians and special affinity for cutting-edge contemporary music, as well as for the no-frills, unaffected aesthetic he has pioneered with his company.

Recent commissions include works for the New York Choreographic Institute, the American Academy in Rome, and the Sarasota Opera among others. In 2017 he was one of 25 arts leaders nationally selected for the Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP) Leadership Fellows Program.

Magloire's works have also been commissioned by Joyce/SoHo, Roulette, the Moving Sounds and Sonic Music Festivals in NYC, the Sarasota Opera, and the Center for Faith and Work NYC, and performed at the Jacob's Pillow Inside/Out Stage, Ailey/Citigroup Theater, the Center for Performance Research, the Clark Institute, and Bramante's Tempietto at San Pietro in Montorio in Rome, among other venues. He has collaborated with the Argento Chamber Ensemble, the Momenta String Quartet, Ensemble Moto Perpetuo and Ensemble Sospeso, and the vocal ensembles Ekmeles, Variant 6, and AuditivVokal. Born in Munich, Germany, Magloire studied composition with Mauricio Kagel at the Cologne Conservatory of Music before settling in New York City. The recipient of several O'Donnell-Green Music and Dance Foundation Grants, he was profiled in a 2008 full-page article in the Sunday NY Times. He has been a guest speaker recently at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's MIT Media Lab, Columbia University, and the Manhattan School of Music.  www.newchamberballet.com   

 

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