The immersive experience featured Martha Graham Dance Company and merged opera, dance, theater, and the culinary arts.
The Feast, a world premiere reinvention of a baroque banquet envisioned by Long Beach Opera and inspired by G. F. Handel’s opera Alessandro, received its world premiere with performances May 20 and 21, 2023. See photos from inside the event.
The immersive experience featured Martha Graham Dance Company and merged opera, dance, theater, the culinary arts – and even the relationship between performer and audience as they shared the same space throughout the performance.
Beginning in Isamu Noguchi’s iconic garden, California Scenario, and concluding in Segerstrom Center for the Arts’ Samueli Theater, the new production brought together seven of Greek mythology’s most storied and volatile characters—King Agamemnon, Alexander the Great, Clytemnestra, Cassandra of Troy, Theseus, Medea, and Cleopatra—for a hedonistic banquet that reimagined some of antiquity’s most enduring Stories.
In honor of Isamu Noguchi and Martha Graham’s decades-long creative partnership, the performance begins in the Noguchi Garden with a series of dance rituals performed by members of Martha Graham Dance Company who were embedded in the audience they were performing for.
The audience was then led to the Samueli Theater for a sumptuous meal including asparagus salad, duck confit, and Laderach Chocolates while seated alongside the performers at elaborate banquet tables as the drama unfolded around them.
The performance wove together new and existing choreography from Graham’s celebrated repertoire with selections from Handel’s opera and orchestral works and texts from Aeschylus’ The Oresteia. The cast featured renowned Polish countertenor Jakub Jósef Orliński and acclaimed American soprano Anna Schubert.
A collaboration between Long Beach Opera and the Martha Graham Dance Company, The Feast was presented in partnership with Elizabeth Segerstrom and the Henry T. & Elizabeth Segerstrom Foundation. The Feast was co-created by James Darrah, Long Beach Opera’s Artistic Director of Chief Creative Officer, and Janet Eilber, Artistic Director of the Martha Graham Dance Company. Andrew McIntosh was the musical Director.
VIP Guests included Segerstrom Center Board Chair Jane Fujishige Yada; Kira Perov, Executive Director of Bill Viola Studios; LA Opera President and CEO Christopher Koelsch; West End playwright Ian Kelly; Charles Letourneau, co-founder of Festival Napa Valley; Gloria Brandes; George & Terry Schreyer; Mark & Jaynine Warner, Richard & Lisa Merage; Valerie Sobel; and film directors Justin Kelly and Dan Savage.
Photo Credit: Phillip Faraone/Getty Images & Lauren Hillary
Valerie Sobel and Destin Bass
Kourosh and Shirin Akhtarzad
James Darrah, Anna Schubert, Elizabeth Segerstrom and Jakub Jozef Orlinski
George and Terry Schreyer
David & Jaynine Warner, Elizabeth Segerstrom, Lisa and Richard Merage
David DeVan, Elizabeth Segerstrom, James Darrah, Gloria Brandes
Elizabeth Segerstrom and Jane Yada
Christopher Koelsch, James Darrah, Elizabeth Segerstrom, and Janet Eilber
Elizabeth Segerstrom, Janet Eilber, and Jane Yada
Janet Eilber and Elizabeth Segerstrom
Richard & Lisa Merage, Christopher Koelsch, James Darrah, Elizabeth Segerstrom, and Janet Eilber
Lloyd Knight, Anna Schubert, Xin Ying and Anne Souder, Carlis Shane Clark and Jakub Jozef Orlinski
Lloyd Knight, Xin Yang, Jakub Jozef Orlinski, Anna Schubert, Anne Souder
Anna Schubert and Anne Souder
Anne Souder
Anna Schubert
Jakub Jozef Orlinski and cast in The Feast
Xin Ying
Carlis Shane Clark and Guests
Jakub Jozef Orlinski
Leslie Andrea Williams, Anne Souder, Carlis Shane Clark, Lloyd Knight, and Xin Ying
Xin Ying =
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