Lincoln Center Out of Doors (LCOOD) will present three weeks of FREE music and dance on the plazas of Lincoln Center from July 28 to August 15 in the 40th annual edition of the popular outdoor summer festival. The festival will feature a diverse range of music, dance and street performance events by dozens of international, U.S. and local artists, highlighted by New York, U.S. and World premieres and debuts, and special commissions. Out of Doors calls up its street culture roots opening on Wednesday, July 28 with No Snakes in This Grass, a landmark piece from the Civil Rights Movement that is a moving and hilarious re-telling of the story of Adam and Eve by James Magnuson, directed by Mical Whitaker, and produced by Shirley J. Radcliffe of the Richard Allen Center for Culture and Art (RACCA), at the Barclays Capital Grove at 6:30 p.m. All three are alumni of the first edition of the Everyman-Community Theater Festival that evolved into Lincoln Center Out of Doors.
The opening night concert, at the Damrosch Park Bandshell at 7:30 p.m., is ETHEL Fair: The Songwriters, which features post-classical string quartet ETHEL collaborating on world premiere compositions and arrangements with four distinctive songwriters: pop tunesmith Adam Schlesinger (Fountains of Wayne), who is joined by Mike Viola (Candy Butchers); Dayna Kurtz, a Brooklyn-based folk-blues singer; Argentinean Juana Molina, who blends folk and electronics; and Tom Verlaine, of iconic New York band Television, with bassist Patrick Derivaz.
Embracing the street culture origins of Out of Doors, series producer, Bill Bragin, Lincoln Center's director of public programming, once again has made parades, processions and site-specific performances key features of the festival, centered around the return of Bang on a Can's Asphalt Orchestra, which debuted at LCOOD last year. For five nights, August 4-8, the Asphalt Orchestra moves throughout the Lincoln Center campus performing World premiere compositions by Yoko Ono and David Byrne with Annie Clark of St. Vincent as well as new original arrangements, to movement choreographed by Susan Marshall and Mark DeChiazza.
Lincoln Center Out of Doors 2010 is sponsored by Bloomberg and PepsiCo, Inc.
Other "moving" performances include: Brooklyn-based Haitian rara carnival band DJA-Rara (July 29); Audio Tutu, a one-woman, site-specific mobile music performance beginning at Broadway Plaza (July 30); a traditional Chinese Lion Dance presented by the Chinese American Arts Council (August 12) and a Belaganjur (marching gamelan) featuring Gamelan Galak Tika, beginning with an audience participation workshop/demonstration of Kecak (traditional Balinese "Monkey Chant") at Broadway Plaza (August 13).
The second year of collaboration with Dancing in the Streets's Hip Hop Generation Next initiative brings the World premiere of CENTRIFUGAL FORCE: Hip Hop Generations @ Lincoln Center to Out of Doors on its closing day, August 15. The site-specific work by Emilio "Buddha Stretch" Austin Jr., Adesola Osakalumi, and Gus Solomons jr juxtaposes the raw energy of street dance with the architectural grandeur of Lincoln Center. More than fifty dancers-the first and second generation of hip hop dance pioneers, prominent and emerging local and international dancers, and New York City teenage dancers-lead audiences from Josie Robertson Plaza to Broadway Plaza in front of Alice Tully Hall where the public will be invited to join in a freestyle dance cipher.
Other debuts and premieres in the 40th annual edition of Out of Doors include:
? The World premiere of Motor choreographed by Brian Brooks, danced by Brian Brooks Moving Company on the closing night of Out of Doors (August 15). In the site-specific, hour-long work, hundreds of sky blue cables expand to create a tunnel-like space over both audience and performers, spanning the distance from the back of the Damrosch Park Bandshell stage to reach beyond the performance space. The dancers move across and through the expanse, creating shifting chain reactions as they meet and separate.
? The world premiere of composer Christine Southworth's Super Collider, (August 13) performed by the acclaimed Kronos Quartet and 14 musicians of Gamelan Galak Tika using the Gamelan Electrica, a new electronic "virtual gamelan" designed and developed by Alex Rigopulos (founder/CEO of Harmonix Music, inventor of video games Guitar Hero and Rock Band). Southworth was inspired by the Large Hadron Collider at CERN-the largest machine ever built-designed to recreate the beginning of the universe. Super Collider takes two sound worlds and traditions, the string quartet and the ancient gamelan, and juxtaposes them through the unlimited sonic universe of electronics, evoking string theory's concept of "universal harmony." Kronos will also perform works by Steve Reich and Café Tacuba. Kenyan Luo musicians Kenge Kenge, making their New York debut, open the evening, exploring the traditional acoustic roots of exhilarating benga dance music.
