Bugs! at Benjamin and Marian Schuster Performing Arts Center

For this concert, the Dayton Philharmonic Youth Orchestra and the Dayton Ballet II will join forces and go downright, well, buggy. (If at any during the reading of this program description you feel like scratching, go right ahead. After all, it is about bugs…)

Or is it? These aren’t merely insects. These bugs have been described as “insects with attitude.” Imagine gnats dressed like the Three Musketeers, brandishing swords and wearing hats decorated with big feathers! Or a flea called Ralph, who gets a speech impediment when he tries to eat a giraffe! Or a grasshopper who chews tobacco! Or beetles who try to sail a boat made from a tennis shoe!

Cartoonist Rob Shepperson, who illustrated David L. Harrison’s book Bugs, is a friend of DPO Assistant Conductor Patrick Reynolds, so don’t be surprised if some of the pictures of these cute bugs show up on a screen above the orchestra. This performance will feature the Dayton Philharmonic Youth Orchestra, and Dayton Ballet II dancers costumed as bugs will perform choreography by Dayton Ballet's Artistic Director, Karen Russo Burke. There will also be a special surprise guest artist narrating poems from the book over musical scores reflecting themes about insects by such composers as Aaron Copland, Robert Sierra, Edvard Grieg, and Johann Strauss II, making this concert unique on so many levels. Bring the entire family!