Park Avenue Armory Announces First Full Season of Artistic Programming

Park Avenue Armory announced its first full season of cultural programming, comprising productions of visual art, dance, theater and music that are conceived and performed "outside the box" of conventional theaters and museums. Dedicated to presenting works that cannot be realized in traditional institutions, Park Avenue Armory's season will include monumental, immersive installations by visual artists Peter Greenaway and Ryoji Ikeda; Tune-In, a contemporary music festival featuring new music ensembles curated by and including eighth blackbird, the New York premier of Inuksuit by John Luther Adams and a new site-specific commission by Sympho; a six-week residency by the Royal Shakespeare Company in a full-scale Shakespearean theater built inside the Drill Hall; and free-form performances by Shen Wei Dance Arts, Streb, and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. With its soaring 55,000-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall and array of dramatic period rooms, the Armory's unique spaces enable artists to create-and the public to experience- unconventional work in all genres that could not be realized elsewhere in New York City.

"Since the day we first saw the Armory's industrial-scaled drill hall and dramatic period rooms, our driving vision has been to provide a home in New York City where artists of all disciplines can create without the restrictions of proscenium theaters and white wall galleries," stated Rebecca Robertson, President and Executive Producer of Park Avenue Armory. "There is so much extraordinary work in site-specific installations, video art, opera, dance, music, and theater that thrives in non-traditional settings - particularly settings of scale. Until we opened our doors to the arts, there was no place in the city for such presentations.

"At Park Avenue Armory, the audience ‘enters' the work and becomes part of it, altering the way viewers respond and interact with the art. It is always a very special experience. In the last three years, we have enabled such epic and acclaimed productions as Zimmermann's Die Soldaten, Christian Boltanski's No Man's Land, Ernesto Neto's anthropodino, and Ariane Mnouchkine's les Ephemeres. We are now presenting our first full season of music, sound and video, theater, and dance, with each production offering an experience that dynamically connects the artist and the audience."

The 2010-2011 season is curated by Consulting Artistic Director Kristy Edmunds, former Artistic Director of the Melbourne International Arts Festival.

2010-2011 SEASON

Peter GreenAWAY, Leonardo's Last Supper: A Vision by Peter Greenaway December 2, 2010 - January 6, 2011

Visionary artist and filmmaker Peter Greenaway brings new insight into one of the world's most celebrated masterpieces in a multi-media interpretation of Leonardo Da Vinci's The Last Supper. Set within a full-scale replica of the Refectory of Santa Maria Delle Grazie, the home of the original fresco, a meticulously detailed "clone" of The Last Supper is brought to life through Greenaway's incisive manipulation of light, sound, and theatrical illusion. Visitors will be led through a series of animated audio- Visual Environments that provoke new ways of seeing this iconic work.

Leonardo's Last Supper: A Vision by Peter Greenaway is part of his ongoing series Ten Classic Paintings Revisited in which the artist creates a dialogue "between 8,000 years of art and 112 years of cinema." The Armory's presentation marks the first time that one of Greenaway's critically acclaimed artistic installations will be mounted in the United States.

An initiative supported by COSMIT in collaboration with the Ministero per i Beni e le Attivita? Culturali and the Soprintendenza per i Beni Architettonici e per il Paesaggio di Milano.
This program is supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency.

TUNE-IN MUSIC FESTIVAL February 16 - 20, 2011

Curated by Grammy-winning eighth blackbird, the Armory's five-day contemporary music festival brings together an array of today's leading new music groups, including: red fish blue fish, the percussion lab out of San Diego; Argento Chamber Ensemble; and Newspeak. Additionally, Sympho with conductor Paul Haas, has co-created with Paul Fowler and Bora Yoon a new work commissioned by the Armory to respond to its history and space.

The Armory's soaring drill hall with its cathedral-like acoustics and informal character will create an immersive environment where performers and audiences will experience the music on an equal footing. For many of the works, musicians will be scattered throughout the vast hall, amongst the public, and on the balcony encircling the room, erasing the confines and formalities of traditional concert halls.

Central to the festival's programming is the New York-and indoor-premiere of John Luther Adams' Inuksuit, first performed outdoors in the Canadian Rockies, with dozens of percussionists arranged in concentric circles, spreading out, appearing and disappearing throughout the performance. Other highlights include: A Portrait of Glenn Beck by Matt Marks; and works by Steve Reich, Frederic Rzewski, John Cage, Louis Andriessen, Kurt Schwitters, David T. Little, and Stefan Weisman. Ancillary activities will include open rehearsals, jam sessions, artist talks, and a range of other visitor activities in the Armory's constellation of spectacular period rooms.

RYOJI IKEDA, the transfinite May 12 - June 11, 2011

Following critically acclaimed installations by Ernesto Neto and Christian Boltanski, Ryoji Ikeda has been selected by the Armory for its third annual visual art commission. Within the Armory's expansive Wade Thompson Drill Hall, Ryoji will create a digital and sonic environment where visitors will be subsumed in an extreme illustration of information to experience the infinite. In choreographing vast amounts of binary code and digital information Ryoji conjures up a transformative environment in which visitors confront data on a scale that defies comprehension. A Japanese sound and visual artist who lives and works in Paris, Ikeda has collaborated with such artists as choreographer William Forsythe, architect Toyo Ito and photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto. His work uses scale, light, color, shade, volume, shadow, electronic sounds, and rhythm, flooding the senses, immersing visitors in an overwhelming visual and audio atmosphere, and sculpting the infinite into the poetic. Widely known in Europe and Japan, the Armory installation will be Ryoji's first major United States exhibition. Co-produced by Forma.

Royal Shakespeare Company July 6 - August 14, 2011

The only United States appearance in 2011 by the Royal Shakespeare Company, coming to New York for an unprecedented six-week residency, is a theater experience not to be missed. Performing on a full- scale replica of the soon-to-be-reopened Royal Shakespeare Theatre stage, constructed in the vast Wade Thompson Drill Hall, the company will perform five of Shakespeare's most beloved and enduring plays: Antony and Cleopatra, As You Like It, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, and The Winter's Tale. Co- presented by Lincoln Center Festival and Park Avenue Armory, in association with Ohio State University, the residency is the culmination of an intensive, three-year process for RSC Artistic Director Michael Boyd and his 44-member company.
Major support is provided by The Gatsby Charitable Foundation and Suzie and Bruce Kovner/The Kovner Foundation, with additional generous support from The Pershing Square Foundation, the supporters of the Producers Circle, Susan and Elihu Rose, and The Bodman Foundation.

SHEN WEI DANCE ARTS November 30 - December 4, 2011

The appearance of Shen Wei Dance Arts at the Armory will highlight three distinctive choreographic styles unhindered by traditionAl Western staging. In celebration of a decade of choreographic artistry, Park Avenue Armory artist-in-residence Shen Wei will create a bold new work that heralds the next direction for the ensemble, exploring the intimacies of traditional hand crafted scenic elements with the expansiveness of digital projection and making dynamic use of the boundless possibilities available in the Wade Thompson Drill Hall. Also presented will be two of his most celebrated works re-staged: Rite of Spring, a study of deliberate versus reflexive movement set to Igor Stravinsky's intricate music; and Folding, which combines highly stylized movement with the ethereal melodies of John Tavener and traditional Tibetan Buddhist chants. An enormous hand-painted backdrop establishes a surreal atmosphere, painted with a rendition of an 18th-century Chinese watercolor by Ba Da San Ren. With the audience surrounded by the works, the Armory presentation will enable Shen Wei to realize the work as he originally envisioned it.

STREB December 14 - 22, 2011

Once dubbed the "Evel Knievel of dance", and known for her singular pursuit of movement as action that stretches the limitations of the human body, MacArthur "genius" Elizabeth Streb will create a new work for the Armory's expansive Wade Thompson Drill Hall. Essentialist Acts will be based on human actions that can occur in a matter of seconds, but when coupled with isolated movements of inanimate objects, create an impact that is monumentally powerful. Part aerial dance, part daredevil act, Elizabeth Streb's work defies the natural laws of motion and gravity. The audience, moving freely throughout the drill hall during the performance, will experience a visual and auditory tour de force.

MERCE CUNNINGHAM DANCE COMPANY December 29 - 31, 2011

The Merce Cunningham Dance Company will culminate its two-year farewell Legacy Tour with an engagement at Park Avenue Armory, where the legendary Company will give its final performance on December 31, 2011. Celebrating Cunningham's lifetime of creative achievement, the Legacy Tour offers audiences around the world an opportunity to experience the work of Cunningham as performed by the company that he personally trained. For its final performances, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company returns to New York-its home since its founding in 1953-to perform a series of site-specific Events at the Armory. Throughout its nearly 60 years, the Company has created and mounted these site-specific choreographic collages in unusual locations around the world-including two previous engagements in the Armory's drill hall, a 1983 performance and the 2009 public memorial for the legendary dancer and choreographer.

Part palace, part industrial shed, Park Avenue Armory fills a critical void in the cultural ecology of New York by enabling artists to create, and the public to experience, unconventional work that could not otherwise be mounted in traditional performance halls and museums. With its soaring 55,000-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall-reminiscent of 19th-century European train stations-and array of exuberant period rooms, the Armory inspires artists to draw upon its grand scale and distinctive character and captivates audiences with its ability to provide intense, dramatic, intimate, and immersive experiences.

Since its first production in September 2007-AaRon Young's Greeting Card, a 9,216-square-foot "action" painting created by the burned-out tire marks of ten choreographed motorcycles presented with Art Production Fund-the Armory has organized a series of immersive performances, installations, and works of art that have drawn critical and popular attention, among them: Bernd Zimmermann's epic opera Die Soldaten; Ariane Mnouchkine's les E?phe?me?res and Declan Donnellan's Boris Godunov, with the 2008 and 2009 Lincoln Center Festivals; the U.S. premiere of Heiner Goebbels' Stifters Dinge with Lincoln Center's Great Performers series; the 2008 Whitney Biennial with site-specific installations and performances by 37 artists; and an evening of Stravinsky's Sacred Masterpieces presented in association with Columbia University's Miller Theatre. The Armory's annual art commissioning program, launched in 2009, has presented to date two monumental site-specific installations: Ernesto Neto's anthropodino, a multi-sensory labyrinth of fabric and spice, and Christian Boltanski's contemplative and deeply moving No Man's Land.