Fifty years after its storied New York premiere, The Kitchen and the Goethe-Institut will present a 21st-century staging of Originale, a music-theater piece by pioneering German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007). Directed by Big Art Group's Caden Manson and Jemma Nelson, this staging, much like it's 1964 New York premiere, will feature a notable cross-section of contemporary performance artists and musicians whose actions are organized by Stockhausen's score and accompanied by noted electroacoustic compositions, such as his Kontakte.
Participants include visual artist Joan Jonas; poet Eileen Myles; performance artist Justin Vivian Bond (11/7 only, costumed by threeASFOUR); pianist Stephen Drury; sound projectionist Joe Drew; performers Niv Acosta, Bishi, Nao Bustamante, Raul de Nieves, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Zach Layton, Rachel Mason (11/7), Narcissister, Colin Self (11/8), Alexandro Segade, Lucy Sexton and Saori Tsukada; musicians Stuart W. Gerber, Nick Hallett and Zach Layton; and filmmaker A.L. Steiner. Performances of Originale will take place November 7 & 8 at 8pm at The Kitchen (512 West 19th Street, Manhattan). Tickets, $15 ($12 students, seniors), are available online at thekitchen.org or by phone at 212.255.5793 x11. This two-night, standing-room event has limited capacity. A discussion of the work, hosted by the Goethe-Institut, will take place at their Wyoming Building (5 East 3rd Street) on November 8 from 1-3pm. Originale (1961) is a music-theater piece by Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007), created in response to the Happenings genre pioneered by Allan Kaprow. The first performances in Cologne were freewheeling affairs where friends and acquaintances of the composer and his collaborator, Mary Bauermeister, could essentially goof off within the parameters of a loosely structured list of theatrical instructions. At the core of Originale is the composer's much-referenced musical work Kontakte for piano, percussion and electronics.Videos