Heidi Duckler Dance Presents UNDERWAY In Conjunction With LA Opera's Eurydice Found Festival

Los Angeles-based dance company, Heidi Duckler Dance (HDD) in conjunction with LA Opera's Eurydice Found Festival Presents Underway at the 7th Street Bridge on March 14th and 15th at 7pm.

Underway is a dance opera directed and choreographed by Heidi Duckler with music created by four composers - an opera for five voices by Leaha Maria Villarreal, an eclectic mix of woodwinds by William Roper, a prepared trumpet installation by Sarah Belle Reid and flute and electronics by Justin Scheid. Underway features HDD company dancers Himerria Wortham, Myles Lavallee, Anthea Young, Rafael Quintas, Lily Ontiveros, Keva Walker, and Santiago Villarreal. Lighting design by Grant Dunn, set design by Alex Ward and Tanya Orellana, and costume design by Mimi Haddon.

Inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke's poem "Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes," which creates a space for Eurydice to be imagined as an independent being, Duckler's unique choreographic style and Villarreal's distinctive music will take the audience on a transformative journey to the underworld through Eurydice's perspective. Persephone and Hermes embodied by HDD dancers will guide the audience into Hades, situated in the underbelly of LA's historic 7th Street Bridge, where viewers will sit facing the train tracks. Heidi Duckler Dance is repurposing the 7th Street Bridge underpass into a multidisciplinary public art space open to the public as part of a larger project in the works, titled The Span @ 7th Street Bridge.

This production will be closing out LA Opera's Euridice Found Festival, a festival of performances, conversations, and happenings inspired by LA Opera's world premiere of Eurydice by composer Matthew Aucoin and librettist Sarah Ruhl (February 1 through 23, 2020). Artists, scholars and community members across Los Angeles will come together in the first three months of 2020 for a festival dedicated to new perspectives on the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Since the new opera unfolds from the heroine's point of view, the festival will celebrate female artists and the female viewpoint.

This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, Fundamental, Inc., Linear City, and the California Arts Council, a state agency. Learn more at arts.ca.gov. Underway is also supported by New Music USA. To follow the project as it unfolds, visit my project page: https://www.newmusicusa.org/projects/underway/

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