New Chamber Ballet Celebrates Centennial of Composer Ursula Mamlok in May

On May 25, the Goethe-Institut Boston will welcome Miro Magloire's New Chamber Ballet in the Boston premiere of Stray Bird, Dances to Music by Ursula Mamlok, celebrating the composer's centennial.

Performed in New Chamber Ballet's trademark up-close, in-the-round style and highlighting the Goethe-Institut's historic building, the full-length work of contemporary ballet was choreographed by artistic director Miro Magloire and guest choreographers Rebecca Walden and Mara Driscoll, featuring live music by the Momenta Quartet, soprano Cree Carrico, flutist Roberta Michel, and clarinetist Pascal Archer.

In addition to the performances, on May 24 the Goethe-Institut Boston will screen the documentary film Ursula Mamlok - Movements by filmmaker Anne Berrini, which offers a sensitive examination of Mamlok's life, and of the music that played such a central part in it. New Chamber Ballet artistic director Miro Magloire will also share insight into New Chamber Ballet, the Stray Bird production, and its relationship to Ursula Mamlok.

Who is Ursula Mamlok? Ursula Mamlok (1923 - 2016) was born to a Jewish family in Berlin, and by her early teens was a precocious talent on her way to becoming a composer. Then Germany descended into Nazi oppression, and by the time Mamlok was sixteen, she and her parents made a last-minute escape to Ecuador. Dissatisfied with her new home's lack of perspective, the teenager wrote letters to musicians abroad, one of which gained her a scholarship at the Mannes School of Music in Manhattan. Thus, as a 17-year-old she came to New York City, alone, ready to embark on a career that was both trailblazing and successful. She went on to compose over 75 works, accept numerous prestigious awards and teach composition at New York University and Temple University, among others.

Stray Bird pays tribute to Mamlok's life and genius by pairing six chamber music works with dances by three choreographers for New Chamber Ballet's excellent dancers and a stellar array of chamber musicians. Reflecting on themes of loss, displacement, rejection, and reconciliation, the dances reveal a powerful subtext in Mamlok's delicate, abstract chamber music. An hour and ten minutes of intense, non-stop tour de force performances takes the audience on a roller coaster of impressions with entangled bodies, shimmering sounds, piercing melodies, and glacial silences.

Stray Bird received its world premiere in New York City in 2017 and has since been performed at the opening of the Jewish Cultural Festival in Magdeburg, Germany, and in Philadelphia and Washington, DC.

Praised by the New York Times as "one of the small-scale delights of the New York Dance Scene," Miro Magloire's New Chamber Ballet is dedicated to performing new ballets to contemporary chamber music in its pioneering up-close, in-the-round style. Since its inception in 2004, the company has premiered over one hundred ballets by Magloire and selected guest choreographers. The company has been praised in the national and international press for its classic-modern esthetic and the top-notch musical artists who perform live at all performances. In addition to national and international touring, New Chamber Ballet continues to present its work in a bi-monthly series in New York City.

Lauded as "refreshingly original" by Alastair Macaulay of The New York Times, Miro Magloire was trained as a composer as well as a choreographer. He is known for his ground-breaking collaborations with musicians and a special affinity for cutting-edge contemporary music, as well as for the no-frills, unaffected, and in-the-round esthetic he has pioneered with his New Chamber Ballet. Recent outside commissions include works for the New York Choreographic Institute, the American Academy in Rome, and the Sarasota Opera among others.

Guest choreographer Rebecca Walden, a graduate of the North Carolina School of the Arts' ballet program and Alonzo King's LINES Ballet Training Program in San Francisco, is a former dancer of the Columbia Classical Ballet, Nevada Ballet Theatre, Armitage Gone! Dance, Terra Firma Dance Theatre, and Ballet Inc. An emerging choreographic voice, Walden has choreographed for konverjdans, the LINES Ballet's training program and CoLab at Columbia University. Along with choreographer and North Carolina School of the Arts graduate Mara Driscoll she has co-created works for konverjdans, the Dance At Socrates Festival, New York's Higher Ground Festival, and New Chamber Ballet.

Praised by Opera News for her "gleaming tone," soprano Cree Carrico is an emerging singing actress quickly gaining recognition as an interpreter of 20th and 21st century works. The Momenta Quartet is a standout ensemble of contemporary music experts who has performed works by over 120 living composers, nationally and internationally. The group was recently praised by the New York Times for its "diligence, curiosity and excellence." It has appeared at such prestigious venues as the Library of Congress, National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian's Freer Gallery, Rubin Museum, Miller Theatre at Columbia University, the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Chamber Music Cincinnati, Louisville Chamber Music Society, Washington University in St. Louis, Ostrava Days in the Czech Republic, and at the internationally renowned Cervantino Festival in Mexico.

These performances of Stray Bird were made possible in part by the Dwight and Ursula Mamlok Foundation and are presented in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut Boston.

Stray Bird, Dances to Music by Ursula Mamlok
Contemporary Ballet Performance

Dates/Times: Thursday, May 25 at 6:30pm and at 8:30pm

Location: Goethe-Institut Boston, 170 Beacon Street, Boston, MA 02116

Event and Ticket Info: FREE admission with RSVP at https://www.goethe.de/ins/us/en/sta/bos/ver.cfm?event_id=24642848

Ursula Mamlok - Movements, a cinematic portrait of the composer Ursula Mamlok, by Anne Berrini
Film Screening and introductory words by composer/choreographer Miro Magloire

Date/Time: Wednesday, May 24 at 7:00pm

Location: Goethe-Institut Boston, 170 Beacon Street, Boston, MA 02116

Ticket Info: FREE admission, no RSVP necessary

Event Info: https://www.goethe.de/ins/us/en/sta/bos/ver.cfm?event_id=24642740

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