Archived schedules

The 2008 Tanglewood season will begin with performances by:

• Mark Morris Dance Group on June 26 and 27,
• a live broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor on June 28,
• two concerts by James Taylor on July 3 and 4.

On June 30, Boston Symphony Orchestra Music Director James Levine will lead the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra in its first concert of the season, conducting Dvorák’s Symphony No. 8.

The Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Tanglewood season opens with weekend performances of Berlioz’s Les Troyens under the direction James Levine on July 5 and 6, 2008.

On June 26 and 27 at 8 p.m. in Seiji Ozawa Hall, the Mark Morris Dance Group will perform a program featuring the world premiere of a new work, Excursions, choreographed to a Barber piano piece of the same name. Music of Brahms and Schubert will also be featured on the program. Vocal and piano fellows from the Tanglewood Music Center will be featured along with dancers of MMDG, marking the fifth year of collaboration between the two groups. In addition to the performances, these TMC fellows will have the opportunity to work with members from the company on learning dances from the repertoire being performed; similarly, the dancers will study some of the music being played in the performances under the tutelage of TMC Fellows. Mark Morris, who will supervise most of the musical preparation for the performances, will also hold special classes for other TMC musicians, including the percussion and composition departments.

On, June 28 at 5:45 p.m., Garrison Keillor will host a live broadcast of American Public Media’s A Prairie Home Companion from the Koussevitzky Music Shed. The annual event has become the radio program’s season finale and a Tanglewood tradition since Prairie Home was first broadcast live from the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s summer home in 1998. The Prairie Home broadcast is sponsored by Select Comfort and General Mills, Inc.

On June 29 at 2:30 p.m. in Seiji Ozawa Hall, the Boston Symphony Chamber Players will be joined by guest pianist Menahem Pressler for performances of Mozart’s Quintet for piano and winds and Dvorák’s Piano Quintet No. 2. Harbison’s Wind Quintet opens the program.

On July 3 and 4 at 7 p.m., Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter James Taylor performs with his band for two sold-out Shed performances. The Tanglewood grounds open at 4 p.m., and each concert is followed by fireworks over the Stockbridge Bowl.

An exhibition at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA, running from June 22 through October 19, 2008, will be the first to explore “painting softly,” a distinctive and unexamined approach to painting exemplified in works by James McNeill Whistler and George Inness.

Like Breath on Glass: Whistler, Inness, and the Art of Painting Softly brings together forty paintings by leading American artists working around 1900, including Whistler, Inness, William Merritt Chase, John Twachtman, Eduard Steichen, and others, to examine this style of painting through which artists obscured their brush strokes.

Generally thought of as an era of virtuosic brushwork-where touch and surface were nearly as important as the subject being painted-the exhibition will trace a quieter approach to painting that evolved during this period.

“The Clark is engaged in providing new ways to look at well-known artists,” said Michael Conforti, director of the Clark. “This exhibition invites a re-examination of the work of America’s leading artists at the turn of the twentieth century in which the artists challenged the very nature of making art and by removing themselves as intermediaries between the work and the viewer.”

The exhibition will open with a community open house, and opening lecture, “Like Breath on Glass: The Hard Work of Painting Softly,” on June 22. Other lectures include “Night in the City: Whistler, Fireworks, and Dancing Girls” on August 10, “Higher Forms of Truth: The Late Works of George Inness” on August 24, and “In Praise of Shadows” on September 7. The “Vision of the Gilded Age: Film Adaptations of Henry James and Edith Wharton” film series will be held on selected Saturdays in July and August. “Listening to Mr. Whistler,” a special event co-hosted by the Williamstown Theatre Festival, will be held August 4.

The Clark is located at 225 South Street in Williamstown. The galleries are open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 am to 5 pm (daily in July and August). Admission June 1 through October 31 is $12.50 for adults, free for children 18 and younger, members, and students with valid ID. Admission is free November 1 through May 31. For more information, call 413-458-2303 or visit www.clarkart.edu.

Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, in Backet, MA, has announced that the contemporary French dance company Compagnie Heddy Maalem, comprised of dancers from Mali, Bénin, Nigeria, Senegal, Togo, and Mozambique, will make its debut at the Berkshires’ dance venue June 25 – 29, 2008.

Artistic director and choreographer Heddy Maalem presents his provocative re-imagination of Igor Stravinsky’s masterpiece The Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du Printemps). Inspiration for the piece derives from time the choreographer spent in Lagos, Nigeria.

Maalem’s explosively contemporary interpretation of The Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du Printemps) is performed in a stark white stage set, while the dance is “located” in Africa, with dramatic film interludes that bring the colors, sounds, and images of Nigeria onstage with the dancers. Maalem has said that when faced with the metropolitan cacophony of 12 million people in Lagos, Stravinsky’s throbbing score kept echoing in his head, “Lagos made me think of the end of the world.” This hour-long work for fourteen African men and women, each trained in their own indigenous movement style as well as Maalem’s precise and distinct dance language, has been performed more than 100 times throughout Europe.

“By definition, classic works of art such as The Rite of Spring continue to speak powerfully to artists and audiences, and Heddy Maalem gets to the core of it with his interpretation. I’ve presented and seen many versions of Rite all over the world, and this one is original and inspiring on many levels. The dancers are from all over the African continent and form an extraordinary ensemble, a sort of post-modern “tribe,” and the movement, film and of course the music draw us in, build throughout the dance, and combine to deliver a truly theatrical experience”, comments Ella Baff, Jacob’s Pillow Executive Director.

Maalem has commented, “Le Sacre has been performed a thousand times, unforgettable yet always new, with the same shocking joy overflowing out of time, out of the ages.” His version is striking and straightforward, yet quiet and sensual at times. Dynamic group sequences are interlaced with intense scenes of silence and atmospheric film projections. Dancers melt into one unit, pulsing with energy, and then explode apart only to come back again. The work is performed to the orchestral recording of the Cleveland Orchestra, conducted by Pierre Boulez.

In 1913, Stravinsky’s percussive, driving The Rite of Spring and Vaslav Nijinsky’s radical, angular movements shocked audience members who were present to see Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Void of long lines and elegant movement, the work portrayed pagan Russia and included the sacrifice of a young girl, dancing herself to death in honor of spring. The complex music and violent dance steps prompted catcalls from the audience and the theater soon erupted in fistfights and riots. The uproar became legendary. The Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du Printemps) has since been performed by orchestras around the world and has been staged and re-interpreted innumerable times by choreographers and companies such as Pina Bausch, Doug Varone, and The Joffrey Ballet. Jacob’s Pillow has presented Emmanuel Gat Dance, Shen Wei Dance Arts, and The Paul Taylor Dance Company in recent notable productions of the work.

Heddy Maalem was born in Batna, in the heart of the Aurès, Algeria, to an Algerian father and a French mother. Maalem’s early and extensive training in boxing and the Japanese martial art of Aikido continue to influence his choreography which is marked by precision, sparse vocabulary, and clarity. In 1990, he founded his own company, and in 2000 he began his investigation into the recurring question of identity with his work Black Spring, which would become the first in a trilogy inspired by Lagos, Nigeria. In 2002, Maalem collaborated with Benoît Dervaux to create their acclaimed film, also titled Black Spring, which has been screened and awarded prizes at film festivals around the world. That same year the two worked together again on L’Ordre de la bataille, with Dervaux providing imagery as a backdrop to Maalem’s choreographic inquiry into the meaning of existence in a war-torn world. The Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du Printemps) premiered in 2004, completing Maalem’s Lagos-inspired choreographic triology. The Rite of Spring has been performed more than 100 times throughout Europe and makes its American premiere in June of 2008. Generous support for the U.S. tour has been provided by The Cultural Services of the French Embassy of the United States, CulturesFrance, Afrique en Creation, and ADAMI.

A free PillowTalk film screening and discussion of Black Spring will be held at 4pm on Saturday, June 28 in Blake’s Barn on the Jacob’s Pillow grounds. A powerful exploration of identity, this film by Dervaux intercuts dynamic dance sequences with scenes of everyday life in Nigeria. Maalem choreographed the award-winning film, and he will be on hand to introduce and discuss it.

For more information on Compagnie Heddy Maalem and Jacob’s Pillow visit heddymaalem.com, or jacobspillow.org.

Nicholas Martin brings his new revival of the Joe Masteroff/Sheldon Harnick/Jerry Bock musical She Loves Me to the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Presented in association with Boston’s Huntington Theatre Company, She Loves Me will play the Main Stage from June 27 – July 12, 2008.

The cast includes: Monique Alhaddad, Ashley Arcement, Brooks Ashmanskas, Jason Babinsky, Kate Baldwin, Jeremy Beck, Troy Britton Johnson, Nancy E. Carroll, Aldrin Gonzales, Rosie Hunter, Matthew Kiernan, Dick Latessa, Josh Mertz, Mark Nelson, Jessica Stone, Sarah Turner and Mark Vietor.

The production team for She Loves Me includes choreography by Denis Jones, musical direction by Charlie Alterman, set design by James Noone, costume design by Robert Morgan, lighting co-designed by Ken Posner and Philip Rosenberg, and sound co-designed by Drew Levy and Tony Smolenski. The production stage manager is Matthew Silver and the stage manager is Eileen Kelly.

She Loves Me is the irresistible tale of two unlikely sweethearts (Ashmanskas and Baldwin) who work together during the day unaware they are writing to each other anonymously at night and the quirky coworkers (Britton Johnson, Latessa, and Stone) who surround them. Hailed by many as one of the most charming musicals ever written, She Love Me’s quixotic mix of wit and romanticism timelessly invokes the old-world glamour of days gone by.

The Atheist by Ronan Noone

The Atheist by Ronan Noone features stage and screen star Campbell Scott in a one-man tour-de-force. Directed by Williamstown Artistic Associate Justin Waldman, The Atheist plays the Nikos Stage from June 25 – July 6, 2008.

In The Atheist, Augustine Early (Scott) is a reporter who will do anything to get his next front-page story. When shady political dealings whet his appetite for success, the consequences could be much more than he anticipated, deterring his quest to catch a pitch-perfect headline.

The design team for The Atheist includes set design by Cristina Todesco, costume design by Jessica Curtwright, lighting design by Ben Stanton and sound design by Alex Neumann. The production stage manager is Emily Roberts.

Ticketing information for both She Loves Me and The Atheist at Williamstown can be obtained online at Williamstown Theatre Festival or by calling 413-597-3400.

Stockbridge, MA – Berkshire Theater Festival announces the following change in the 2008 schedule:

Noël Coward in Two Keys by Sir Noël Coward, directed by Vivian Matalon, will replace the previously announced Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as the fourth Main Stage production, running August 12 – August 30.

WILLIAMSTOWN, MA- Since the 1970s, celebrated critic and art historian Leo Steinberg has stirred the art world with his insightful and controversial commentary. Known for his powerful observations and documentary scrutiny, Steinberg is an influential and respected maverick among his peers. Steinberg will present the lecture “Oh, Say, Can You See” on Wednesday, April 23, at 7 pm, at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Admission is free. This lecture was originally scheduled for April 9.

In art, there exists resistance to seeing what is so clearly displayed. Suppose the question framed by the opening words of “The Star-Spangled Banner”-“Oh, say, can you see”-addressed consumers of art. Whether this art is modern, ancient, or Renaissance, surprisingly often the mute answer is “No, no we can’t see.” In his lecture, Steinberg will address this conundrum drawing on antiquity, modernism, and Michelangelo.

Born in Moscow in 1920, Steinberg spent his childhood in Berlin. He then moved to London, where he studied art at the Slade School, University of London. After World War II, he settled in New York City, working as a freelance writer, translator, and life-drawing instructor. He studied art history at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, taking his doctorate in 1960 with a dissertation on the Roman Baroque architect Francesco Borromini. Steinberg taught art history at the City University of New York (1962-75) and the University of Pennsylvania (1975-91). He has published and lectured widely on Renaissance, Baroque, and 20th-century art, including studies of Filippo Lippi, Mantegna, Michelangelo, Pontormo, Guercino, Rembrandt, Jan Steen, Velázquez, Picasso, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg.

In May 1983, Steinberg became the first art historian to receive an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. In February 1984, he won (for the second time) the College Art Association’s Frank Jewett Mather Award for Distinction in Criticism; in 1986, he became a MacArthur Foundation Fellow. During 1995-96, he delivered the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard University. In 2002, he was honored by the College Art Association as that year’s Distinguished Scholar.

The Clark is located at 225 South Street in Williamstown. The galleries are open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 am to 5 pm (daily in July and August). Admission is free November through May. Admission June 1 through October 31 is $12.50 for adults, free for children 18 and younger, members, and students with valid ID. For more information, call 413-458-2303 or visit www.clarkart.edu.