REDCAT Announces 15th Fall Season: Vital Artists at a Crucial Time

REDCAT, CalArts' downtown center for contemporary arts, raises the stakes in 2017 with a bold international program of daring and provocative artists who confront the most vital issues of our time with intelligent, memorable experiences you won't soon forget. Artists from around the world are using our theater and gallery-and other LA neighborhoods-to probe urgent issues: Congolese choreographer Faustin Linyekula uses exquisite movement, music and piercing poetry to masterfully capture the essence of hope in the face of the tragedies facing his war-torn home of the Democratic Republic of the Congo; Activist-powerhouse Karen Finley's incisive writing and performing gives us a freshly hilarious and alarming perspective on drastic changes in our own country; and Chile's famed playwright/director Guillermo Calderón directs the U.S. premiere of his work questioning the vital role of artists at times of injustice.

Other performance events explore new technologies that help us view the world differently - digitally and in very real time including a daring collaboration between two former Merce Cunningham dancers, Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener, and radical video artist and iconic filmmaker Charles Atlas, who together create new perceptions of bodies in motion, as powerfully physical and precise choreography is mixed and projected live onstage.

The Gallery at REDCAT focuses on the work of renegade activist artist León Ferrari, a maverick from Argentina who condemned warlords and criminals in their own words, which opens September 16 with a durational performance of The Words of Others performed in its entirety for the first time ever, in the theater at REDCAT.

Fall Music events include Jazz legend Bennie Maupin appearing at REDCAT for the first time in a special collaboration with Steve Lehman and Eyvind Kang; the return of the Angel City Jazz Festival; U.S. premieres of the music of Pascale Criton; EXO//ENDO performing Ulrich Krieger's Black Sun Rebirth and Braden Diotte: General Manifest; and Lou Harrison's Music of the Pacific, continuing the worldwide musical celebration of Lou Harrison's centennial.

The Film program launches Ism Ism Ism: Experimental Cinema in Latin America, the first film series in the U.S., that surveys Latin America's vibrant experimental production from the 1930s to today through a wealth of materials from the Latin American film archives; the work of Lee Anne Schmitt, Laura Poitras, Janie Geiser; Ellen Cantor, Claudio Caldini, Diego Rísquez and Moustapha Alassane.

Winter Spring 2018 highlights include:
A January 2018 city-wide festival of Live Art produced by REDCAT in conjunction with the Getty's Pacific Standard Time LA/LA initiative, featuring over 100 artists from throughout Latin America and L. A. activating different venues and neighborhoods with unforgettable performances; Bessie Award-winning Okwui Okpokwasili, known for her intensely powerful performances, who considers the collective amnesia around the Nigerian women's resistance movements of the past century; and The Wooster Group, who weave together live performance, music, and video in an encounter with the work of visionary Polish artist, writer, and stage director Tadeusz Kantor (1915-1990).

The wide-ranging 15th season at the Frank Gehry-designed center in the Walt Disney Concert Hall, builds on its tradition of encouraging experimentation, discovery and lively civic discourse, keeping up the contemporary tradition of its parent institution, the California Institute of the Arts.

More information is available by contacting Kelly Hargraves at khargraves@calarts.edu or 213-237-2873

Sep 22 to Sep 24 Film-Video
Ism, Ism, Ism: Experimental Cinema in Latin America, an ambitious, five-month film series -the first in the U.S.-that surveys Latin America's vibrant experimental production from the 1930s to today. Read more

Sep 28 to Sep 30 Dance
Faustin Linyekula/Studios Kabako: Sur les traces de Dinozord
The riveting and elegant work of Congolese choreographer and writer Faustin Linyekula nurtures hope in the face of the ongoing legacy of war and ruin in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Read more

Oct 2 Film-Video
Lee Anne Schmitt: Purge This Land
In 1812, as a mere boy, John Brown saw a slave owner beat a black child almost to death. By the mid-1840s, he had become a noted abolitionist as well as a friend of former slave-turned social reformer Frederick Douglass. Read more

Oct 7 Music
Angel City Jazz Festival
The 10th Annual Angel City Jazz Festival arrives at REDCAT with a double bill: the music of Adam Rudolph's Moving Pictures and Go: Organic Orchestra. Read more

Oct 9 Film-Video
Laura Poitras: Short Film Disclosures
Laura Poitras' films reveal truths hidden within activities posing unparalleled dangers to freedom. Poitras faces deeply disturbing subjects with unwavering honesty, creating portraits of people and situations with an artistic complexity, rigor and sense of humanity that transcends conventional political documentaries. Read more

Oct 12 to Oct 15 Theater
Karen Finley: The Expanded Unicorn Gratitude Mystery
Finley brings her rave reviewed solo performance that explores the recent heightened US political presidential landscape that takes on citizenship, gender disparity and abuse of power. Read more

Oct 16 Film-Video
Double Vision: Recent Films by Janie Geiser
Janie Geiser's celebrated animated collage films and puppet-theater performances delve deeply into the realm of waking dreams, weaving fragments of sounds and moving images into mysterious tales at the edge of logic and memory. Read more

Oct 18 Film-Video
Ellen Cantor: Pinochet Porn
Using her 2004 series of eighty-two drawings, Circus Lives from Hell, as an unconventional "script," feminist artist Ellen Cantor (1961-2013) worked on her most ambitious project, Pinochet Porn, for the last five years of her life. Read more

Oct 23 Film-Video
Fantasmas Cromáticos: 8mm Visions of Claudio Caldini
A major force of Argentine and Latin American experimental cinema for 45 years, Claudio Caldini was pivotal to Argentina's legendary 1970s "El Grupo Goethe." Read more

Oct 24 Music
Sounding Limits: The Music of Pascale Criton
The expressive duo of Silvia Tarozzi (violin) and Deborah Walker (cello) join CalArts composer and violist Eyvind Kang to present the U.S. premiere of recent works by the innovative French composer Pascale Criton. Read more

Oct 26 to Oct 28 Theater
Guillermo Calderón: Mateluna
Mercurial Chilean playwright and director Guillermo Calderón, who is described as "an authentic genius of the theater" by The New Yorker, confronts urgent questions about the complex relationship between artists, truth and reality in this new work having its U.S. premiere at REDCAT. Read more

Nov 09 to Nov 12 Theater Music
Keeril Makan and Jay Scheib: Persona
Based on Ingmar Bergman's classic film, Persona is a provocative and artistically complex depiction of human frailty, cruelty and identity. In an isolated summer house, a young nurse becomes caretaker of a stage actress who has suddenly lost the ability to speak. Read more

Nov 17 Music
EXO//ENDO performs Ulrich Krieger: Black Sun Rebirth and Braden Diotte: General Manifest
The boundary-breaking ensemble EXO//ENDO joins forces with renowned saxophone interpreter Ulrich Krieger for the world premiere of his Black Sun Rebirth. Read more

Nov 20 Film-Video
Diego Rísquez' American Trilogy: Amérika, Terra Incógnita
In the 1980s, the multifaceted artist, painter and filmmaker from Venezuela, Diego Rísquez, undertook the daunting project of a trilogy about the real and mythical histories of the Latin American continent. Read more

Nov 30 to Dec 03 Dance
Charles Atlas, Rashaun Mitchell, Silas Reiner: Tesseract
Virtuosic movement is experienced through heightened new dimensions in this daring collaboration between two former Merce Cunningham dancers and an iconic filmmaker expanding the corporeal and digital realms. Read more

Dec 04 Film-Video
Moustapha Alassane: Pioneer of The Golden Age of Nigerien Cinema
Moustapha Alassane (Niger, 1942-2015) studied in Jean Rouch's IRSH Institute in Niamey, became the French documentarist's friend and collaborator, and then went to Canada where he met Norman McLaren. Read more

Dec 8 Music
Bennie Maupin plays The Jewel and The Lotus (1974, ECM)
Jazz legend Bennie Maupin appears at REDCAT for the first live performance of The Jewel and the Lotus, an iconic ECM release from 1974. Read more

Dec 9 Music
Lou Harrison: Music of the Pacific
Continuing the worldwide musical celebration of Lou Harrison's centennial, this diverse program presents a rare opportunity to hear a survey of works by the ebullient composer known for his fearless blending of Eastern and Western sounds. Read more

Dec 10 to Dec 11 Theater Music Dance Multimedia
Studio: Fall 2017
REDCAT's quarterly program of new works and works-in-progress highlights new forms of dance, theater, music and multimedia performance in a wide-ranging evening that celebrates the vitality of L.A.'s next-generation artists making work for the stage. Read more

Dec 15 to Dec 16
CalArts Winter Dance
The Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance at CalArts presents an evening of dance, featuring works by guest artists and current faculty. Read more