L.A. Dance Project's INVISIBLE CITIES Opens Today at Union Station

The Industry, LA's home for new and experimental opera, in partnership with the L.A. Dance Project and powered by Sennheiser, has announced that tickets are now on sale at www.InvisibleCitiesOpera.com/tickets for Invisible Cities, an innovative production representing a thrilling new collaboration of art and technology that has never before been done. Invisible Cities makes its world premiere on Saturday, October 19 for a limited run through November 8.

Because the live performance will be experienced via premium wireless headphones from Sennheiser in the spectacular setting of Los Angeles' iconic Union Station, while the station is still operating, space will be limited. The use of headphones will make this performance a highly personal experience in a highly public space allowing the audience to act as a participant roaming freely through the station, following individual characters or creating their own adventure in the moment.

Performance dates for Invisible Cities are today, Oct. 19, Oct. 24, Oct. 26, Oct. 29, Oct. 31, Nov. 5, and Nov. 8. There will be two performances each night except for today, October 19. The VIP experience includes exclusive access to a roped off area of the Harvey Restaurant and a glass of wine.

7:30pm performances: $60, $75 VIP
10:00pm performances: $45, $60 VIP
"$25 Tuesdays" -- All headphones for the 10:00pm shows on Tuesdays are $25

"The opera will function as an invisible layer of everyday life, and every audience member will have a different, radically subjective experience of the opera," said Yuval Sharon, director of Invisible Cities and artistic director of The Industry. "It's an ideal way to bring Calvino's masterpiece to life and to hear Chris's quiet, haunting original score-all while celebrating a landmark of L.A.'s architecture."

Composed and adapted by Christopher Cerrone (hailed as "a rising star" by the New Yorker), this fragile, quiet score attempts to capture "decaying sounds" through the use of found objects as instruments and pre-recorded voices interweaving with live voices. The instrumental music will be a mixture of pre-recorded and live performances from an eleven person orchestra.

During the course of the performance, all vocalists will sing live as they freely move throughout Union Station, appearing and disappearing into the everyday fabric of the building. Dancers from the L.A. Dance Project, the company founded by artistic director and choreographer director Benjamin Millepied, are featured in a site-specific new choreography by the LA-based Danielle Agami.

"L.A. Dance Project is incredibly excited to partner with The Industry for what promises to be a unique performance experience," said Millepied. "The kind of bold artistic adventure that makes L.A. so special."

The involvement of Sennheiser, a leader in sound and wireless transmission technology ensures that Invisible Cities will offer the highest possible sound reproduction without distortion, delay and interference. Due to the technological demands of this production, this type of performance would not have been possible even ten years ago.

"We are thrilled to be part of this incredibly creative production, which relies on Sennheiser's innovative wireless microphone and headphone technology as its technical foundation," commented Stefanie Reichert, director of strategic marketing, Sennheiser USA. "As our technology has evolved and become more sophisticated, Sennheiser has played a more central role in the creation of art rather than just be the supply of technical hardware. Our work with The Industry on this project is a testimony of the power of collaboration between the best technical and creative minds - and how these can shape and create unique user experiences. "

Based on Italo Calvino's fantastical novel, Invisible Cities imagines a meeting of the emperor Kublai Khan at the end of his life with the explorer Marco Polo. Khan orders Polo to report on the cities in his empire, and Polo's responses are flights of fancy, cities of the imagination and the mind. The opera depicts the meeting and describes five chimerical cities with a quiet stateliness that offers the audience a chance to contemplate the essence of travel, as well as our subjective experience of environment and time.

ABOUT THE INDUSTRY:

Founded and led by director Yuval Sharon, The Industry creates ambitious productions that expand the traditional definition of opera and explore new paradigms for interdisciplinary collaboration. Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times writes "The Industry is quickly and dramatically becoming an essential component in American opera. It's now indispensable to the LA scene." The Industry's inaugural production, Anne LeBaron and Douglas Kearney's Crescent City, was instantly hailed as "reshaping LA opera" (Los Angeles Times) and "changing the face of music- theater in this city overnight" (Out West Arts). The large-scale multimedia production, featuring the work of six visual artists in a 25,000 sq. ft. warehouse in Atwater Village, performed over three weeks in May 2012 to capacity audiences. The Industry recently presented First Take, a west coast opera workshop showcasing excerpts from six new operatic works-in-progress by the legendary Pauline Oliveros, and rising star composer Mohammed Fairouz at the Hammer Museum's Billy Wilder Theater. For more information visit: www.TheIndustryLA.org

ABOUT L.A. DANCE PROJECT:

L.A. Dance Project is a curatorial collective founded in 2012 by renowned choreographer and dancer Benjamin Millepied with founding producer Charles Fabius, along with composer Nico Muhly and art consultant Matthieu Humery.

L.A. Dance Project's mission is to create new work and to revive seminal collaborations from influential dance makers. Programs include full-length evenings in traditional theater venues as well as various modular performances in non-traditional environments. New works by the company endeavor to be multidisciplinary collaborations with various artists: visual artists, musicians, designers, directors and composers. L.A. Dance Project promotes the work of emerging and established creators, contributing to new platforms for contemporary dance.

L.A. Dance Project's inaugural performance was commissioned by Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance and premiered at Walt Disney Concert Hall on September 22, 2012. Since then, the Company has successfully toured in the US and in Europe. Most recently, a new work by Benjamin Millepied in collaboration with composer David Lang and artist Barbara Kruger premiered in Paris at the Theatre du Chatelet on May 23, 2013 to rave reviews. In addition to the time it spends at its home base in Los Angeles, L.A. Dance Project will continue to tour in Instanbul, at the Holland Festival in Amsterdam, Spoleto Festival in Italy, Edinburgh International Festival in Scotland, La Maison de la Danse in Lyon, France and Sadler's Wells Theatre in London. For more information visit: www.ladanceproject.com

ABOUT SENNHEISER:

The Sennheiser Group, with its headquarters in Wedemark near Hanover, Germany, is one of the world's leading manufacturers of microphones, headphones and wireless transmission systems. In 2011 the family company, which was founded in 1945, achieved a turnover of around 531 million euros. Sennheiser employs more than 2,100 people worldwide, and has manufacturing plants in Germany, Ireland and the USA. The company is represented worldwide by subsidiaries in France, Great Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Liechtenstein, Germany, Denmark (Nordic), Russia, Hong Kong, India, Singapore, Japan, China, Canada, Mexico and the USA, as well as by long-term trading partners in many other countries. Also part of the Sennheiser Group are Georg Neumann GmbH, Berlin (studio microphones and monitor loudspeakers), and the joint venture Sennheiser Communications A/S (headsets for PCs, offices and call centres). For more information visit: www.sennheiser.com

To post a comment, you must register and login.