USA Projects

The generation of artists who bridged the 19th and 20th centuries irrevocably altered the way we see and hear.  During this watershed epoch, the composer Claude Debussy introduced a language of music devised of impressions, reflections, and transparencies, a sonic veil of tones that speaks of water, light, and wind, thus capturing the fragile and ephemeral nature of existence. During the same epoch that gave birth to Debussy’s new sounds, artists scraped away the illusions of depth and realistic figuration of classical painting to pare down to the essence of color and pattern to show only that which tells enough about the subject, calling upon the eye and imagination of the viewer to supply the rest.  In this manner, Picasso’s “Family of Saltimbanques" (1905) reveals through his use of design and color the lives of itinerant street performers, and our eyes and imagination quickly fill in the rest, and we understand that he has captured the fragility and poignancy of their world and, metaphorically, ours as well.  As I see it, Debussy and Picasso are, each in their own way, commenting on the same view of the essential fragility and impermanence of that which we find beautiful – like a rose, whose beauty is all the more compelling for its brief existence and inevitable demise.  As a choreographer, I am devoted to showing the physical experience of sound, and to creating an image of music through dance, as motion drawings, that capture the spirit and the emotional condition that is engendered by the music.  For my new dance, to Debussy’s “String Quartet in G minor" (1893), I seek to embody the music’s story by using the characters in "Saltimbanques" as a design source and point of departure - not a literal story of course, but a series of interlaced emotional conditions, captured in dance, that speak of the ephemerality and poignancy that resonate from these two sources. It is to be a movement poem without irony. I am choreographing this dance, which I am calling “Transparent Things,” on dancers of the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company (LLDC), whose lives as performers, bear more than a passing resemblance to those deeply touching figures in Picasso's painting.  

 “Transparent Things” will have its world premiere in November 2012 at the annual NYC performances of the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company, and then be seen on tour nationally in 2013 as the company embarks upon its 45th anniversary season tour. It is the second in a series of new dances to be performed in collaboration with "Le Train Bleu," a new music ensemble under the direction of internationally renowned conductor Ransom Wilson. The first, "Crisis Variations," premiered last season by the LLDC together with Le Train Bleu to an original score by avant garde composer Yevgenyi Sharlat, commissioned by the LLDC in collaboration with Le Train Bleu.  In April of 2012 it was awarded the 20th annual "Benois de la Danse" for new choreography, an international dance award presented in Moscow, Russia each year at the famed Bolshoi Theater.  A third dance will premiere next year, also with a commissioned score, and will complete the full evening of music and dance, to be presented in collaboration with Ransom Wilson's ensemble, as a highlight of the company's 45th anniversary season.

This opportunity for artists to engage directly with the public to gain support for their work is created and sponsored by United States Artists and serves to acknowledge the challenge facing the arts in today's economic climate. Your generous contribution may be accurately understood as a stake in the preservation of Art in America and the vitality and inspiration that the arts provide to the quality of our lives. Your contribution will go directly to underwriting the dancers, costumes and musicians that will bring "Transparent Things" into being.... If 500 people donate $50, or if 1,000 donate $25, or .......Well, whatever the equation we hope you will help us to meet our goal by the time the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company presents the world premiere of  "Transparent Things" on November 14th at the Florence Gould Hall, Alliance Française, in New York City, preceding the 45th Anniversary National Tour in 2013.