Peak Performances Season Schedule

KARIN COONROD | COMPAGNIA DE' COLOMBARI

The Merchant of Venice

September 19 - October 1

Karin Coonrod “looks for the flash in the actors’ eyes and listens for the music of the audience.” This internationally acclaimed director first staged Shakespeare’s thorny masterpiece in 2016 in its original setting, the Jewish ghetto of Venice. Her ambitious and wildly inventive production features five actors of different races, nationalities and genders portraying Shylock, the iconic Jewish moneylender at the center of the play, “to open it up in a way that is both Jewish and universal.”

Ashley Fure | Adam Fure | International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE)

The Force of Things: An Opera for Objects

October 6 - 8

“Tones made tactile, objects made audible, noise made beautiful.” That’s how The New York Times describes Ashley Fure’s work. In her wordless drama, the audience sits beneath a canopy of familiar and exotic objects, while performers spur them into action and singers, like the sirens of mythology, shout and whisper warnings, luring the audience into an entirely new way of listening.

Pam Tanowitz | Simone Dinnerstein

New Work for Goldberg Variations

October 19 – 22

In 2007, pianist Simone Dinnerstein rocked the music world with her recording of Bach’s “Goldberg Variations.” The glowing reviews praised her “expressive force” and “timeless, meditative, utterly audacious solo debut.” Eager for a new challenge, she proposed matching movement to the music in collaboration with acclaimed choreographer Pam Tanowitz. The result is “New Work for Goldberg Variations,” with Dinnerstein center stage at the piano in expressive dialogue with the dancers moving all around her.

Emma Dante | Compagnia Sud Costa Occidentale (Italy)

Le Sorelle Macaluso (The Sisters Macaluso)

November 16 - 19

Once upon a time in Sicily, there were seven sisters who lived in Palermo. An untimely death plunges the sisters into their own divine tragedy, this one created by Emma Dante, a ferocious Sicilian theater artist and award-winning writer, actor, producer and director of plays, operas and films. In her raucous, poetic fable, these vibrant, funny sisters command the stage, quarrelling and reminiscing, in this empathetic and uncompromising look at the chains of family and tradition. In Sicilan and Apulian dialects with English supertitles.

Shanghai Quartet | Yiwen Lu, erhu

December 16

The renowned Shanghai Quartet introduces Yiwen Lu, acclaimed young master of the erhu, a two-stringed instrument whose versatile, expressive tone is an essential element of Chinese folk music and culture. Lu’s virtuosity allows her to blend techniques and styles – modern and traditional, Eastern and Western – defying expectations for this “simple” instrument.

Camille A. Brown & Dancers

ink

February 1 – 4

Award-winning choreographer Camille A. Brown brings her company and its irresistible energy to Peak Performances. ink, the final installation of her trilogy about culture, race, and identity, celebrates the rituals, gestural vocabulary, and traditions of the African diaspora. Using the rhythms and sounds of traditional African music mixed with blues, hip-hop, jazz, and swing, ink travels through time from the abolitionist movement to the Civil Rights struggle, from the Black Power movement to the emergence of hip-hop.

Stacy Klein | Double Edge Theatre

Leonora and Alejandro: La Maga y el Maestro

March 17 – 25

In 2016, Stacy Klein and her Double Edge Theatre dazzled Peak audiences with their acclaimed, kaleidoscopic The Grand Parade (of the 20th Century). They return in 2018 with the world premiere of Leonora and Alejandro: La Maga y el Maestro, a fantasia on the relationship between two remarkable artists: the Mexican painter, writer and feminist Leonora Carrington and the Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky. Drawing on the music, dance and magic realism of Latin American culture, Double Edge’s new project promises to be challenging, provocative and beautiful.

Inbal Oshman | New York Baroque Incorporated

M Stabat Mater

April 12 – 15

In this stunning tribute to motherhood, contemporary Israeli choreographer Inbal Oshman takes inspiration from Pergolesi’s version of Stabat Mater, the 13th-century hymn about Mary’s vigil at the foot of the cross, performed live on period instruments by New York Baroque Incorporated. Oshman’s dance explores the vulnerability and tenderness required of mothers, and the strength and ferocity that come with the territory.

Angélica Liddell | Atra Bilis Teatro

Esta Breve Tragedia de la Carne (This Brief Tragedy of the Flesh)

April 19 – 22

With Esta Breve Tragedia de la Carne (This Brief Tragedy of the Flesh), Peak Performances introduces audiences to the singular work of the brilliant and provocative Spanish writer, director and performance artist Angélica Liddell.

Maya Beiser | Julia Wolfe | Laurie Olinder

Spinning

May 10 – 13

Composer Julia Wolfe, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for music, and “cello goddess” Maya Beiser (The New Yorker) create a sonic universe that incorporates layers of recorded cello, accordion, percussion, singing and speaking, accompanied by multimedia projections and textiles by artist Laurie Olinder to illuminate and pay homage to the craft of spinning thread.