ALLEGRA to Premiere at New York Live Arts

New York Live Arts (Live Arts) will present the World Premiere of Benjamin Akio Kimitch's Allegra, a fantasy Japanese American court dance where history presses against memory, and memory against imagination. Commissioned by Live Arts, Allegra will premiere in the New York Live Arts Theater (219 West 19th Street, New York, NY 10011) Thursday, October 8th at 7:30pm through Saturday, October 10th at 7:30pm.

An array of free public programming accompanies the performances, including at a Pre-Show Talk with Jeffrey Gan and Carlos J. Soto on Friday, October 9th at 6pm and a Gagaku music demonstration from the Columbia Gagaku Instrumental Ensemble of New York on Saturday, October 10th at 6pm, both hosted at Live Arts. Tickets to the performance start at $30 with limited Pay What You Wish options available, and can be purchased at NewYorkLiveArts.org or 212-691-6500, on sale now. Please see additional ticketing options below.

Kimitch's Allegra turns to Bugaku, an ancient dance form whose roots stretch across Persia, India, China, Korea, and Japan. In postwar U.S.-Japan relations, performances of Bugaku inspired multiple collaborations with New York City Ballet, including George Balanchine's own 'Bugaku' ballet. These histories converge through a Japanese American lens anchored by the aftermath of the camps in World War II in this new ensemble performance created by the recipient of the 2023 New York Dance and Performance 'Bessie' Award for Outstanding Choreographer. Kimitch's projects begin slowly, rooted in personal relationships with traditional dance forms and many years of research. The resulting work unfolds with thoughtful intention and a distinctive aesthetic, often holding tension between preservation and transformation.

In Allegra, ballet stages give way to temple grounds, barren foothills, army barracks, and the stench of empty horse stables. Kimitch draws from years of research in the United States and Japan and family oral history. From 1942-'43, Kimitch's grandparents and aunt were forcibly incarcerated by the United States government in an internment camp, along with roughly 120,000 Japanese Americans removed from the West Coast in the spring and summer of 1942 under the auspices of U.S. Executive Order 9066. Kimitch and his ensemble, Jessica Cook, Lai Yi Ohlsen, Glenn Potter-Takata, and Nami Yamamoto, bring these collective memories to life.

Kimitch's long-term research for Allegra includes the 1958 New York City Ballet tour to Japan; the 1959 Music Department of the Imperial Household Agency international tour that included 20 Bugaku performances with New York City Ballet (NYCB) at New York City Center; and George Balanchine's 1963 ballet titled 'Bugaku', which featured a commissioned score by Japanese composer Toshiro Mayuzumi and was created for NYCB principal dancers Edward Villella and Allegra Kent. In addition to references to Gagaku traditions, Kimitch's dreamscape drops in many other dance historical references from the early modernists such as Ballets Russes, George Balanchine, and Martha Graham.

Gagaku, literally 'elegant music,' is Japan's ancient classical music and is regarded as the oldest living tradition of orchestral music in the world. Its roots come from continental Asia over 1500 years ago, and evolved into its present form around the 10th century during the Heian Era, performed mainly at the Imperial Court, in aristocratic society, and at shrines and temples. Gagaku is the broader name comprising three performance styles: Kangen (wind and string music), Bugaku (dance and music), and Kayō (songs). Gagaku is still preserved and practiced today.

As with his previous Bessie Award-winning creation Tiger Hands, which recently toured to Jacob's Pillow and Lincoln Center, Kimitch's new work has been built in collaboration with fellow artists:

• Kimitch lived in Japan for five months where he trained in traditional Gagaku as part of an Asian Cultural Council Artist Fellowship. He received transmission and teaching from Fumiya Otonashi, a Gagaku artist and regular performer with Tim Hecker. Otonashi received formal training under Hideaki Bunno, former Chief Court Musician of the Imperial Household Agency. For Allegra, Otonashi serves as a Gagaku Advisor.
• Performers are transformed through custom looks by Costume Designer Carlos J. Soto, a frequent collaborator of Solange Knowles and the late Robert Wilson. Known for his sculptural silhouettes and keen attention to form and dramaturgy, Soto approaches costume as an extension of the body, light, and performance space. For his second collaboration with Kimitch, Soto has created a sequence of modular layered garments, including voluminous courtly robes, majestic trains, traditional dance shoes, and other precisely constructed forms that balance architectural structure with fluid movement. The palette moves from the fiery reds and cool blue-greens associated with Bugaku court dance to the subtly layered hues of Karinska's iconic costumes for Balanchine's Serenade. Drawing these references into the production's dreamscape, Soto transforms them into a visual language that is at once ceremonial, contemporary, and otherworldly.
• Obie Award winning set designer Jian Jung reimagines Live Arts's distinctive stage to uplift the movement, culture, perspective and histories seen in Allegra. Jung and Kimitch created a singular environment that transforms meaning throughout the piece. The nod to traditional Bugaku stages quickly reveals its haunting structural gestures borrowed from U.S. assembly centers and internment camps.
• Allegra features, in part, a score remixed especially for the occasion by the 'exceptional and tenacious' (Pitchfork) Lia Ouyang Rusli aka OHYUNG, composer to A24's Problemista. The remix for Allegra features Tokyo-based Gagaku musicians Fumiya Otonashi (sho) and Motonori Miura (hichiriki), in a commissioned remix of OHYUNG's 'memorial' from her album IOWA. As music is central to Kimitch's work, additional selections include Toshiro Mayuzumi's commission for New York City Ballet's 'Bugaku', traditional Gagaku and Bugaku music, and music from the 20th century western classical canon.
• Yasuko Yokoshi has been a cultural advisor and mentor for Kimitch since 2022. For this new project, Yokoshi is coaching Kimitch on a solo based in Nihon-buyo classical dance. Kimitch's solo in Allegra, in honor of his late-mother, is his first time performing in his own work. New York Live Arts was honored to name Yakoshi the inaugural Randjelović/Stryker Resident Commissioned Artist (RCA) in 2011.

The Allegra creative team also features esteemed return collaborators Serena Wong (lighting design) and Jeffrey Gan (dramaturgy).

Performances of Allegra will be accompanied by an array of free online resources and public programming, co-organized by Kimitch and Gan. These Allegra Activations include (full schedule to be announced):

• A Pre-show Talk with Gan Carlos J. Soto, and music demonstration from the Columbia Gagaku Instrumental Ensemble of New York, both hosted at New York Live Arts.
• Film screening of Rea Tajiri's poetic 1991 documentary film History and Memory: For Akiko and Takashige, followed by a conversation with the filmmaker and Kimitch. Hosted by Wythe Hotel Art Program.
• An online Glossary and video conversations between Kimitch with Bill T. Jones and Otonashi.

Allegra was commissioned by New York Live Arts' Live Feed Residency program, supported in part by Partners for New Performance. This production is made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Foundation and the Mellon Foundation; Creative Capital; Café Royal Cultural Foundation; and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. Development has been made possible by the Asian Cultural Council; MacDowell; Yaddo; Mercury Store; the Mertz Gilmore Foundation Dancer Award in partnership with The New York Foundation for the Arts; and residency support from a Chair's Space Grant at Hunter College Dance and the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM).

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