PEAK Performances to Release Films of Five Premieres Directed by Alla Kovgan

On January 19, PEAK Performances will release Alla Kovgan's innovative films of five works premiered at the Alexander Kasser Theater at Montclair State University in the 2021-22 season. The films, captured by the creator of one of the most celebrated dance movies in recent memory, the 3D Cunningham (2019), and shot by Director of Photography Mia Cioffi Henry, represent an exciting evolution of PEAK Plus. This initiative uses HD capture technology-installed in the Kasser well before the COVID-19 pandemic-to create exhilarating up-close live performance films.

The films being released on January 19 showcase a wide range of timely stage productions: Donald Byrd and Spectrum Dance Theater's Strange Fruit, a dance theater work responding to America's history of racial terrorism; Netta Yerushalmy's Movement, which quilts together quotes of movements and melodies spanning a vast swath of dance history; Gandini Juggling's Smashed2, the follow-up to their acclaimed Smashed; Berlin-Based mask theater company Familie Flöz's comic thriller fairy tale Hotel Paradiso; and Bill T. Jones / Arnie Zane Company's Curriculum II, an exploration of the historical and persistent connection between race and technology and the pursuit of what is human.

Jedediah Wheeler, who conceived PEAK Plus and retired from Montclair State University at the end of 2022, said, "Alla Kovgan has a genius for live performance capture. The five films she directed and edited illustrate her remarkable intuitive and technical skill. Audiences worldwide will be able to experience these singular artists with visceral authenticity."

HD Plus continues to develop, driven by PEAK's belief that if the films are approached with the level of artistry audiences have come to expect from the organization's live shows, they make timeless cultural contributions while being urgently responsive to the needs of our moment. PEAK HD offers a vital alternative way to experience performance in a moment of significant and overdue change surrounding questions of accessibility in the industry, catalyzed by the ongoing proliferation of public health threats.

Prior to the pandemic, PEAK installed its state-of-the-art performance capture technology using 4K robotic video cameras and steadicams in the Kasser, first creating a film of Siti Company and STREB Extreme Action's late-2019 work Falling & Loving. Out of commitment to the continued evolution of the initiative, the organization began collaborating with Kovgan in late 2021.

ABOUT THE PEAK PLUS LIVE PERFORMANCE FILMS

Donald Byrd and Spectrum Dance Theater

Strange Fruit

From Tony-nominated and Bessie-winning choreographer Donald Byrd and his Seattle-based company Spectrum Dance Theater, Strange Fruit draws its title from the 1937 poem and song of the same name by Abel Meeropol and made famous by the great jazz singer Billie Holiday-which metaphorically address lynching as a tool of racial terrorism during the Jim Crow Era. For this dance/theater work, Byrd transforms these brutal facts into abstract, expressionist vignettes set to a score that samples music ranging from Negro spirituals to Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto's haunting Attack/Transition.

Netta Yerushalmy

Movement

In Movement, celebrated choreographer Netta Yerushalmy intricately quilts together quotations from a vast array of sources: folk dances, traditional dances and ceremonies, modern and contemporary concert dance, commercial dance, sports, and contemporary life. The work draws from over 100 existing dances, stretching the idea of pluralism until it almost snaps. Movement features a new score by award-winning composer Paula Matthusen and is performed by dancers hailing from Korea, Senegal, Israel, Taiwan, and across the U.S.

Gandini Juggling

Smashed2

In Gandini Juggling's hit Smashed, which made its US Premiere at PEAK Performances, the manipulation of forbidden fruit shrewdly explored the strained relations between seven men and two women-and kindly flayed traditions of juggling and circus. Performed with meticulous unison and split-second timing, Smashed2 continues this exploration of the dark art of juggling: lightly disrupting the rigid conventions of etiquette, dress, gender, and body language. In this work, partners and Gandini Juggling co-founders Sean Gandini and Kati Ylä-Hokkala (respectively, director and assistant director of Smashed2) again borrow elements of Pina Bausch's gestural choreography and combine them with the intricate patterns and cascades of solo and ensemble juggling.

Familie Flöz

Hotel Paradiso

Strange things happen in Hotel Paradiso, a comedic thriller from Berlin-based mask theater company Familie Flöz, chock full of eccentric characters including a pajama-wearing front-desk clerk, a kleptomaniacal maid, and a cook who chops up more than just pork. Set in a family-run Alpine resort where a struggle of the new against the old unfolds, this fairy tale full of secrets is created by a troupe known worldwide for works that are "wordless and yet somehow so expressive, full of yearning and yet also filled with joy" (The Guardian).

Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company

Curriculum II

Conceived and directed by the iconic, Tony-winning Bill T. Jones and choreographed by Jones with Janet Wong and the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, Curriculum II continues a series of works juxtaposing formal exploration with a range of today's urgent topics as expansive as Jones's artistry. Applying the ideas of Cameroonian historian and political theorist Achille Mbembe, Nigerian-born Afrofuturism scholar Louis Chude-Sokei, and Jamaican writer and cultural theorist Sylvia Wynter, Curriculum II explores the historical and persistent connection between race and technology and the pursuit of what is human.

About PEAK Performances

PEAK Performances is a program of the Office of Arts + Cultural Programming at Montclair State University and has been honored by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts with previous Arts Citation of Excellence and Designation of Major Impact. Wiley Hausam was recently named Director. He assumes the role in January 2023.

For more information visit: https://www.peakperfs.org/

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