Shen Wei Dance Arts makes its BAM debut with world premiere of NEITHER (photo by Jasmine Lai)
BAM Next Wave Festival
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
Peter Jay Sharp Building
230 Lafayette Ave.
October 5-8, $20-$55, 7:30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.shenweidancearts.org
New York-based Shen Wei Dance Arts (Folding, Still Moving) is doing something unusual this week: They will be presenting the world premiere of their latest work, Neither, on a proscenium stage that was actually built for dance and theater. Over the last handful of years, we have seen the immensely talented and creative company perform in the Park Avenue Armory, in the Charles Engelhard Court at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and at the Prospect Park Bandshell as part of the free Celebrate Brooklyn! summer arts series. From October 5 to 8, the troupe will be making its BAM debut at the Howard Gilman Opera House with Neither, a sixty-minute dance adaptation of the 1977 anti-opera composed by Queens-born indeterminate composer Morton Feldman for soprano and orchestra and with a sixteen-line libretto by Samuel Beckett that begins, “to and fro in shadow from inner to outer shadow / from impenetrable self to impenetrable unself by way of neither / as between two lit refuges whose doors once neared gently close, once away turned from gently part again.” The work will be performed by Lilly Balch, Cecily Campbell, Kate Jewett, Cynthia Koppe, Janice Lancaster Larsen, Russell Stuart Lilie, Chelsea Retzloff, Jennifer Rose, Zak Ryan Schlegel, Austin Selden, and Alex Speedie, with lighting by Jennifer Tipton and projections by Rocco DiSanti. Shen Wei is the choreographer as well as the costume and set designer; the stage will include mysterious doors and his black, white, and gray abstract painting “Untitled No. 12-1.” The recording of the opera is by Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, conducted by Kwamé Ryan and featuring soprano Petra Hoffmann.