DIAVOLO: ARCHITECTURE IN MOTION Comes To Musco Center, 9/21

Chapman University's Musco Center for the Arts will kick off its 2019-2020 Season on Saturday, September 21, when Diavolo: Architecture in Motion, the internationally acclaimed dance troupe performs three powerful dance pieces including the premiere of an Orange County based installment of its evolving Veterans Project.
The program will open with "Voyages," a 2018 dance inspired by space travel and the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing. A third piece is still to be announced.

As part of its appearance at Musco Center, Diavolo will hold a Musco Master Class for students and faculty and launch "Leap of Art," a new topic-based Musco Center program to illuminate the vital role the arts play in academia, science, and society at large.

The September 21, 2019 performance begins at 7:30pm. Tickets, beginning at $38, are available at www.muscocenter.org or through the Musco box office by calling 844-OC-MUSCO (844-626-8726). All print-at-home tickets include a no-cost parking pass.

The centerpiece of the Diavolo program on September 21 will be the premiere of the latest installment in its Veterans Project series. Three years ago, Jacques Heim, who founded Diavolo in 1992, began working with U.S. military veterans to see if his company's unique approach to movement could help them readjust after their service.

"Our mission with veterans was to help them restore what they had," Heim said, "to restore their physical and mental and emotional strength through the intensity of the movement of Diavolo."

The project began with workshops lasting up to six months and soon some participants had confided to Heim that the experience had turned around a life that had become truly desperate. "I needed this," one told him. "I needed this."

"We started the same way I work with my dancers," he continued, "which is pushing them beyond their own physical, mental, and emotional limits so they can rediscover who they are. They reconnected through movement and something quite beautiful happened."

From the harrowing stories the veterans told of their tours of duty and difficulties returning home a dance piece emerged. The same veterans who had recounted the stories were recruited to join the company of dancers, alongside Diavolo's professionals. Since that time, a half-dozen Diavolo Veterans Projects have taken place in various cities including Los Angeles, Washington DC and Tampa, Florida.

For this latest version, Diavolo is now working with Musco Center and representatives of Chapman University's dedicated Veterans Service Center and its Center for War, Memory, and Society and the Chapman Dance Department. Musco Center creative team members Matthew McCray and Amanda Rountree approached various veterans associations in the region to enlist up to a dozen local vets interested in participating, first telling their stories and then helping perform the piece they spawned.

That piece will premiere at Musco Center on September 21, following "Voyages," which is set on an abstract dome structure sitting on a reflection of itself. In the piece a young woman dreams of traveling distances only astronauts can, escaping from the ordinary world into a surreal landscape of infinite possibilities. Gravity-defying bodies join her on the journey in a universe that is alive with kinetic energy, fantastical whimsy and surprising transformation.

The Leap of Art Program

While the new Veterans Project is being developed prior to its September 21 premiere, Diavolo's directors and dancers will be in residence at Chapman University for several weeks. During that time the troupe will also hold the season's first Musco Master Class and launch the first year of "Leap of Art" events.

Currently, three Leap of Art programs are scheduled for the inaugural year. Chapman students, faculty and donors will be invited to attend workshops, open rehearsals, or lectures that will take place in the days or weeks prior to the related performance. First, Diavolo will hold an open rehearsal and discussion by Jacques Heim to demonstrate the troupe's work with veterans through movement. In February 2020, Kevin Spencer will share his work teaching magic to practitioners, therapists and family members to help them connect with autism, dementia, and traumatic brain injury patients. Finally, there will be a presentation by Kishi Bashi prior to his concert appearance on April 1, 2020, all in support of Chapman University's new World War II Japanese-American Incarceration Memory Project. Kishi Bashi's Chapman residency will also include a screening of his new film "Omoiyari."

"The topics explored in this first year's pilot program are based in specific areas that Chapman University is not only teaching but breaking ground in developing," said Musco Center Executive Director Richard T. Bryant. "At the core of both the residencies and the public performances that culminate them are intellectual pursuits of questions that need answering, challenges that need tackling, and mysteries that need solving."

Tickets and more information are available at www.muscocenter.org or by calling the box office at 844-OC-MUSCO (844-626-8726). All print-at-home tickets include a no-cost parking pass. Musco Center for the Arts is located on the campus of Chapman University at 415 North Glassell, Orange, Calif.

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