Mount Tremper Arts 2013 Summer Festival
Mount Tremper Arts is only a six-year-old organization, but to give a full overview of its 11-week Summer Festival could easily fill up this whole Explore Hudson Valley supplement. Contemporary dance, music, performance and spoken word are the areas of focus, bolstered by artsy barbecue nights. Admission to most events costs $20. Season tickets, priced at $95, provide access to all events including the Art-B-Qs.
The schedule begins on June 15 with choreographer Abigail Levine’s Distance Measures. Performed in darkness, lit only by moving LED candles, borrows elements from mathematical models of chaotic systems. On June 21 and 22, the award-winning International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) and the Troupe perform the world premiere of Mesh, about vulnerability, connection and fundamental aspects of shared experience. The season’s first Art-B-Q event on June 29, Pork and Poetry! features spoken-word performances by Craig Dworkin and Mónica de la Torre.
On July 6, dancer Michelle Boulé and cellist Okkyung Lee push sonic and choreographic boundaries to the edge in BREAK>Urge>Imprint, an atmospheric work rooted in improvisation. July 12 and 13 see the world premiere of Poe, composed by Marcos Balter and performed by Claire Chase and Svet Stoyanov. Paul Lazar performs When a Priest Marries a Witch: an Artist Talk by Suzanne Bocanegra on July 20. On July 27, Karinne Keithley Syers will perform her work-in-progress Another Tree Dance.
On August 3, artist-in-residence Souleymane Badolo, from Burkina Faso, will trace the journey of his great-great-grandfather in his dance Buudou, BADOO, BADOLO. Composer/performer collective Varispeed will attempt to perform composer Art Jarvinen’s “unperformable” Adult Party Games from the Leisure Planet, a collection of wild performance pieces, text scores and musical activities, on August 10.
Possibly the highlight of the Mount Tremper Arts 2013 Summer Festival will be Perfect Lives, a daylong site-specific opera by composer Robert Ashley, adapted by Varispeed, which will be staged at sites throughout Woodstock, Boiceville, Mount Tremper and Phoenicia on August 17. Admission to this innovative event is free. The third Art-B-Q event, on August 24, is titled CATCH Takes the Catskills.
For more information or to order tickets, call (866) 811-4111 or (845) 688-9893 or visit https://mounttremperarts.org.
Mount Tremper Arts 2013 Summer Festival, June 15-August 24, most events $20, Mount Tremper Arts, 647 South Plank Rd, Mount Tremper; (866) 811-4111, (845) 688-9893, https://mounttremperarts.org.
Byrdcliffe Festival of the Arts
The organization entrusted with the preservation of Woodstock’s heritage as an important American arts colony is holding its second annual Byrdcliffe Festival of the Arts, in which 13 regional arts organizations will gather to present performances ranging from concerts, dance, stage plays, modern mystery and comedy to spoken word over a single weekend. The events take place in the Byrdcliffe Barn, the Byrdcliffe Theater and the Kleinert/James Center for the Arts, all in Woodstock.
On Friday, June 14, Gioia Timpanelli will present an evening of storytelling, Clyde Forth Visual Theatre will perform The Curious Mechanics of Truth and School of Rock founder Paul Green will host a tribute to the music of Rocky Horror. On Saturday afternoon, you can get a foretaste of the Phoenicia Festival of the Voice; catch a performance of 8: The Play (about California’s anti-same-sex-marriage law Proposition 8); see the Woodstock Players unveil Carey Harrison’s new one-acter Hitler’s Therapist; or watch Douglas Dunn and Dancers perform.
