Mark Morris News

General Director Plácido Domingo announced today that Grant Gershon has renewed his contract at LA Opera's Resident Conductor, effective through June of 2017.

This year's Jacob's Pillow Dance Award, a coveted honor carrying a $25,000 cash prize, will be presented to choreographer John Heginbotham in recognition of his talent and outstanding contributions to the dance field. Heginbotham, an alumnus of The School at Jacob's Pillow, has garnered critical and popular acclaim for his contemporary works, eclectic and rich with “movement that exhibits sharpness, energy, formality and, yes, oddity” (Alastair Macaulay, The New York Times). His company, Dance Heginbotham, will perform the evening-length world premiere of Chalk and Soot in the Doris Duke Theatre July 30-August 3. In Chalk and Soot, Heginbotham joins forces with composer Colin Jacobsen to create a work featuring imaginative, theatrical choreography, live music performed by superstar string quartet Brooklyn Rider, the vocal stylings of Shara Worden (lead singer of My Brightest Diamond), and singer/songwriter Gabriel Kahane on harmonium.

General Director Plácido Domingo announced today that Grant Gershon has renewed his contract at LA Opera's Resident Conductor, effective through June of 2017.

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, one of the world's premier dance organizations, together with event chair Richard L. Rodesand Meg Siegler Callahan, chair of Hubbard Street's board of directors, hosted the Season 36 Spotlight Ball on Monday, May 19 at theFairmont Chicago Millennium Park.

The Theatre Centre is pleased to announce the appointment of Aislinn Rose as the company's General Manager. As an independent producer and theatre maker Rose has worked with companies across Toronto, including the Luminato and SummerWorks festivals, and brings seven years experience to her new role at The Theatre Centre.

Following the record-breaking attendance of Festival 2013, Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival announces the full 2014 Festival free and ticketed event schedule. Jacob's Pillow is a National Historic Landmark, home to America's longest-running dance festival, and a recipient of the National Medal of Arts. Noted dance writer Jennifer Dunning has called the Pillow "the dance center of the nation, possibly the world."

On Friday, June 13, 2014 from 12:00pm to 3:00pm at the Cherry Valley Country Club in Skillman, NJ, Princeton Ballet School, the official school of American Repertory Ballet, will host its first annual fashion show: "Turn Out for Fashion." All proceeds of this event will support the Princeton Ballet School Scholarship Fund.

Today, May 17, 2014, Princeton Ballet School will present its 2014 annual spring production, The Sleeping Beauty, at the Patriots Theater at the War Memorial in Trenton at 2:00pm and 7:00pm. Over 300 students will dance in this production.

Take a grand musical journey through the seasons of the year with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and Korean violin prodigy Ye-Eun Choi during the BNY Mellon Grand Classics performances of Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons" on May 30-June 1 at Heinz Hall.

Oscar-nominated actor and founding Wooster Group member Willem Dafoe and legendary performer Mikhail Baryshnikov are a dapperly dressed odd couple, forced to deal with the most inconsiderate of corpses in this surreal melding of absurdism, pitch- black comedy, and vaudeville from iconic director Robert Wilson, THE OLD WOMAN.

ODC Theater has announced the program for the Music Moves Festival, nearly a full month of diverse performances emphasizing the relationship between music and dance. Festival highlights include the West Coast debut of Dance Heginbotham as well as works by Joe Goode, Pearl Marill, Kate Weare, Randy Paufve and Brenda Way. A series of one-night only concerts features artists Holcombe Waller, Keith Terry & Corposonic, Dandelion Dancetheater's Bandelion ensemble and San Jose Taiko with DJ Bangerz. Finally, the Festival spotlights Namita Kapoor and Rueda con Ritmo, performing as part of ODC Theater's biannual Dance and Diaspora series, and Milissa Payne Bradley and Antoine Hunter, this year's Theater Unplugged artists. The Music Moves Festival runs July 31 to August 24, 2014.

On May 17, 2014, Princeton Ballet School will present its 2014 annual spring production, The Sleeping Beauty, at the Patriots Theater at the War Memorial in Trenton at 2:00pm and 7:00pm. Over 300 students will dance in this production.

Juilliard Dance, under the direction of Lawrence Rhodes, opens its 2014-15 season in December 2014 with New Dances: Edition 2014 featuring four world premiere dances by innovative choreographers, Juilliard alumnus Austin McCormick (1st-Year Dancers); alumna Loni Landon (2nd-Year Dancers); Kate Weare (3rd-Year Dancers); and Larry Keigwin (4th-Year Dancers). Mr. Keigwin is returning to Juilliard where he already choreographed and premiered, in December 2008, Runaway, a large-scale piece that riffs on the high fashion runway scene, and in December 2009, Megalopolis.

On Thursday, May 29 (8 pm), The Nouveau Classical Project and TrioDance Collective present the world premiere of a new modern ballet titled Potential Energies at BAM Fisher's Fishman Space. The 50-minute piece, choreographed by Barbie Diewald to music by rising composer Trevor Gureckis, will be seen in a single performance. Ticket and venue information appears below.

Carnegie Hall today announced that tenor Thomas Cooley has agreed to step in for Anthony Dean Griffey, performing Britten's War Requiem with Music Director Robert Spano leading the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus tomorrow evening, Wednesday, April 30 at 8:00 p.m. Mr. Griffey is unable to appear due to illness. Mr. Cooley is joined by soprano Evelina Dobraeva, baritone Stephen Powell, and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus.

Beloved classics, reimagined takes on well-known works, popular culture, and new, emerging and developing local artists can all be found in Seattle Theatre Group's historic venues during our 2014-2015 season.

The internationally-acclaimed Pacific Chorale in Orange County, CA will be presenting a new work created by American opera composer Jake Heggie, and the versatile librettist Gene Scheer entitled 'THE RADIO HOUR'. The choral opera will be conducted by Pacific Chorale's Artistic Director, John Alexander, and stage-directed by James R. Taulli. The premiere work will be performed by the organization's chamber choir, The John Alexander Singers, accompanied by an 8-member ensemble of musicians who are members of Pacific Symphony. The performance is on Sunday, May 18 at 5:30 p.m. at the Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall in Costa Mesa, CA. Scroll down to see an interview with composer Jake Heggie and conductor John Alexander!

Theatre for a New Audience (TFANA), New York's pre-eminent classical theatre company, will celebrate the Bard's 450th birthday with a special performance of its critically acclaimed production of KING LEAR, featuring Michael Pennington in a cast of 22.

This weekend, as we all overload on sugar and attend the obligatory Passion performance, Mark Morris is getting ready to unveil his latest opus. His new production of Handel's ACIS AND GALATEA, one of the most beloved English language operas, has its world premiere next week at Cal Performances, Berkeley (April 25 - 27), before traveling to Celebrity Series of Boston (May 15-18) for its East Coast premiere.

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Acting Chairman Joan Shigekawa has announced that University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) Department of Dance is one of 886 nonprofit organizations nationwide to receive an NEA Art Works grant. UWM Department of Dance at the Peck School of the Arts is recommended for a $15,000 grant to support the restaging of Trisha Brown's signature work Set and Reset (1983) as the focal point of Brown: Lineage and Process, a year-long exploration of Brown's creative ideas during the 2014-2015 academic year. UWM is one of only four colleges and universities in the United States that received a grant this year in the dance artistic field.