Works & Process Presents World Premiere Video Performance of L'ORIENT by Kamala Sankaram and Preeti Vasudevan

Works & Process has announced three newly commissioned video performances developed during Works & Process bubble residencies at Bethany Arts Community, Catskill Mountain Foundation, and Mount Tremper Arts that were sequenced directly into filming on location at The New York Public Library at Lincoln Center, facilitated by the Jerome Robbins Dance Division. The video performances, which premiere on Sundays in April at 7:30pm ET, are part of the series Works & Process at Lincoln Center, which began in November 2020. Each work will premiere digitally at LincolnCenter.org and Lincoln Center's Facebook and YouTube as well as on Works & Process at the Guggenheim's Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.

DETAILS:

L'Orient

Libretto by Catherine Filloux

Music by Kamala Sankaram

Choreography by Preeti Vasudevan

Filmed by Dancing Camera

L'Orient is a multidisciplinary production produced by Thresh, a New York-based performing arts collaborative. The production recontextualizes the Orientalist gaze and its representation of women and people of color in the classical arts. The project envisions Lakmé, the lead character in the eponymous 1883 opera by Léo Delibes, as a twenty-first-century woman situated in the chaotic environment of reality television. Today's Lakmé represents the voice of a modern woman questioning her constrained role in a patriarchal society. This provocative work features choreography based on the principles of ballet and the Indian dance tradition Bharatanatyam, in dialogue with a score of Carnatic songs (South Indian classical music), operatic vocals, percussion, electronics (including amplified pointe), and a libretto that includes texts in French, Indian Telugu, and English.



The Works & Process bubble residency at Mount Tremper Arts provided an opportunity for the creative team to continue to redefine opera as an intersectional landscape for Eastern and Western artistic disciplines. During the course of the residency, select vignettes of L'Orient were developed that challenge the cultural displacement of exoticized subjects and characters in Western opera. Featured perfomers include Sangeetha Santhebennur, Justine Aronson, Ramona Kelley, Jolina Javier, Dorothea Garland, Weston Krukow, Ted Keener, and Samantha Figgins (not present in the video).

Since the pandemic began, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts has driven efforts to bring the power of the arts to New Yorkers outdoors and digitally-from Love From Lincoln Center concerts for individual essential workers to works of art that elevate the voices and lived experiences of people of color in America, such as Carrie Mae Weems' installation Resist COVID/Take 6!, Davóne Tines' Vigil, and digital commissions like The Baptism by Carl Hancock Rux. Future international collaborations with the Stavros Niarchos Cultural Center in Athens (SNFCC) will bring new approaches to cultural engagement in both cities. These are just the beginning of a reorientation towards prioritizing openness, access, and inclusive excellence - elevating talent from every corner of the globe and fostering a sense of radical welcome on the campus.

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