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Isabelle Huppert & More to be Featured in NYU Skirball Winter/Spring 2025 Season
The season opens with the world premiere of Show/Boat: A River, a daring reconsideration of the seminal musical Show Boat, directed by David Herskovits.
By: Chloe Rabinowitz Oct. 15, 2024
NYU Skirball’s Winter/Spring 2025 season will open on January 9, 2025, with the world premiere of Show/Boat: A River, a daring reframing of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II’s iconic 1927 American musical Show Boat, from the award-winning Target Margin Theater, co-presented with the 2025 Under the Radar Festival. The season continues with a North American premiere directed by American theatre visionary Robert Wilson, starring acclaimed French actress Isabelle Huppert, and concludes with a special May Day world premiere choral work by Ethan Philbrick, featuring an eclectic assortment of singers, grassroots organizers, professional vocalists and performance artists.
The spring season showcases NYU Skirball’s mission to present adventurous, transdisciplinary work that inspires yet provokes, confirms yet confounds, and entertains yet upends. NYU Skirball proudly embraces renegade artists who surprise, productions that blurr aesthetic boundaries, and thought-leaders who are courageous and mind-blowing. This spring, works by Austrian performance artist Florentina Holzinger, Polish artist/installation creator Łukasz Twarkowski, Ireland’s Brokentalkers Theatre, social commentator/feminist comedian Adrienne Truscott, and Canadian choreographer Daniel Léveillé reflect its embrace of James Baldwin’s dictum that “artists are here to disturb the peace.”
NYU Skirball Winter/Spring 2025 SEASON
Target Margin Theater: SHOW/BOAT: RIVER
World Premiere
Thursday, January 9 – Sunday, January 26
U.S. • Theatre
The Obie Award-winning Target Margin Theater’s world premiere production of Show/Boat: A River, a daring reconsideration of the seminal musical Show Boat, reframes the original 1927 book and score by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II for today’s audience.
Directed by Target Margin Theater’s Founding Artistic Director David Herskovits, Show/Boat: A River challenges us to confront our past and envision a reimagined America for 2025. It is presented in partnership with the 2025 Under The Radar Festival.
Show Boat, based on the 1926 novel by Edna Ferber, is both a powerful narrative and a historical reflection, revealing a legacy marked by violent racism while striving for a more just America. The work explores America’s transformation from the 1880s through the Jazz Age —journeying from steamboats to airplanes, vaudeville to radio, and the Spanish-moss South to the bustling city of Chicago amid the Great Migration.
FLORENTINA HOLZINGER: TANZ
North American Premiere
Thursday, February 13 – Saturday, February 15
Austria/Germany • Dance
Florentina Holzinger returns to NYU Skirball with the North American premiere of TANZ (2019), completing her trilogy that began with Recovery (2015); and Apollon (2017, showcased at NYU Skirball in 2020). TANZ is structured around a ballet class led by German ballerina Beatrice Cordua, the first to perform Le sacre de printemps in the nude. The performers engage in intense training in “action ballet,” known as “sylphic studies.” Through shared rituals, they learn to master their bodies and minds, gaining extraordinary abilities like flight. Featuring an all-female cast of performers aged twenty to over eighty from various dance backgrounds, TANZ is a pursuit of perfection in a fleeting world, where the mundane is transformed into the sublime.
Robert Wilson: MARY SAID WHAT SHE SAID
North American Premiere
Thursday, February 27 – Sunday, March 2
U.S./France • Theatre
Award-winning French actress Isabelle Huppert gives a tour de force performance in this remarkable production, directed and designed by the American theatre visionary Robert Wilson. Mary Said What She Said charts the life and torments of Mary Stuart, the sovereign whose passions cost her a crown.
Mary Said was written by novelist and playwright Darryl Pinckney and features an evocative classical score by the Italian composer Ludovico Einaudi. It premiered in 2019 at Théâtre de la Ville–Paris and is the second monologue and third play directed by Robert Wilson starring Isabelle Huppert, following Orlando (1993) and Quartet (2006).
Robert Wilson is among the world’s foremost theatre and visual artists. His works for the stage unconventionally integrate a wide variety of artistic media, including dance, movement, lighting, sculpture, music and text. His images are aesthetically striking and emotionally charged, and his productions have earned the acclaim of audiences and critics worldwide. Wilson founded the New York-based performance collective “The Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds” in the mid-1960s, and developed his first signature works, including Deafman Glance (1970) and A Letter for Queen Victoria (1974-1975). With Philip Glass he wrote the seminal opera Einstein on the Beach (1976). Wilson’s artistic collaborators include many writers and musicians such as Heiner Müller, Tom Waits, Susan Sontag, Laurie Anderson, William Burroughs, Lou Reed, Jessye Norman and Anna Calvi. He has also left his imprint on masterworks such as Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, Brecht/Weill’s Threepenny Opera, Debussy’s Pelléas et Melisande several of Shakespeare’s works, and many others. Wilson's drawings, paintings and sculptures have been presented around the world in hundreds of solo and group showings, and his works are held in private collections and museums throughout the world. Wilson is the founder and Artistic Director of The Watermill Center, a laboratory for the Arts in Water Mill, New York. robertwilson.com
Multiple award-winning French actress Isabelle Huppert has collaborated with many of the world’s greatest artists. Huppert has been directed on film by Claude Goretta, Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard, Michael Haneke, Samuel Benchetrit, Michael Cimino, Otto Preminger, the Taviani brothers, David O. Russell and Andrzej Wajda, among many others. Isabelle Huppert was head of the jury of the 62nd Cannes Film Festival and of the Tokyo International Film Festival. In recognition of her career, the Berlin International Film Festival awarded her the Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution. On stage, in France and internationally, Isabelle Huppert has been directed by leading figures such as Robert Wilson, Heiner Müller, Peter Zadek, Claude Régy, Bernard Murat, Jacques Lassalle, Éric Lacascade, Yasmina Reza, Krzysztof Warlikowski, Benedict Andrews, and Luc Bondy. More recently she has been seen in the American production of Florian Zeller’s The Mother in New York, La Ménagerie de verre by Tennessee Williams directed by Ivo van Hove, and Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard, directed by Tiago Rodrigues and premiered in the Cour d’honneur at the Festival d’Avignon. Her many awards include two César Awards, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, and she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Huppert is the recipient of the French Molière lifetime achievement award and won the 16th Europe Theatre Prize in Rome. Mary Said is her third collaboration with Robert Wilson.
INTERNATIONAL CONTEMPORARY ENSEMBLE:
Composing While Black: ICE meets The Colsons, Thurman Barker, Reggie Nicholson U.S. • Music
Saturday, March 22
The International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) performs work by and with four composer-performers from the renowned experimental music collective, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). Composer-performers from both collectives will work together to create exciting, all-new hybrid compositional-improvisative works.
Referred to as a “musical power couple” in The New York Times (2017), the music of composer-pianist Adegoke Steve Colson and composer-vocalist Iqua Colson focuses on many facets of the human experience. Their critically acclaimed performances and recordings illuminate social issues and have featured such innovators as Reggie Workman, David Murray, Andrew Cyrille and Henry Threadgill, as well as master artists of other disciplines. In 2023, ICE premiered Adegoke Colson’s Mirrors, for baritone voice and ensemble.
Percussionist-composer Thurman Barker is a recipient of a 2022 NYSCA award for composition and is a Professor Emeritus of Bard College in music and jazz studies. An original member of the AACM, Barker has collaborated closely with other AACM members, including Dr. Muhal Richard Abrams, Amina Claudine Myers, Anthony Braxton, Leroy Jenkins, Roscoe Mitchell and Henry Threadgill, as well as Sam Rivers and Cecil Taylor. Barker composes music for ensembles large and small, moving beyond genre to reflect the human experience itself. A member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) since 1979, percussionist-composer Reggie Nicholson has twice been nominated for the Alpert Award in the Arts, and his compositions exhibit a keen aware of sound, space, and timbre. He has performed at many venues around the world, and has released recordings for solo percussion, percussion ensemble, percussion with electronics, and chamber forces. www.ice.org
BROKENTALKERS & Adrienne Truscott: MASTERCLASS
U.S. Premiere
Friday, March 28 & Saturday, March 29
Ireland/USA• Theatre
Blending together the savagely comic discourse of Adrienne Truscott (Wild Bore, Asking For It) with the slick dramaturgy of the internationally renowned theatre company Brokentalkers (The Examination, Have I No Mouth, The Blue Boy), MASTERCLASS is a parody like no other - uncovering truths about privilege, power and the hold they have over our so-called great artists and the positions and opportunities they are granted.
Taking shape as an interview masterclass, Masterclass doesn’t hold back. Performed by fed-up feminist Adrienne Truscott and all-around good guy Feidlim Cannon, Masterclass begins as a fun and familiar parody, but there is something more at play. Using the arts world as a metaphor, Masterclass is a literate and hilarious examination of gender and power. Masterclass won the Fringe First Award at the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Brokentalkers are a multi-award-winning Dublin based theatre company. For over a decade Brokentalkers have been making formally ambitious work that defies categorization and have built a reputation as one of Ireland's most innovative and original theatre companies. They make work that responds to the contemporary world, using elements such as original writing, dance, classic texts, film, interviews, found materials and music to represent that world in performance. brokentalkers.ie/masterclass/
Adrienne Truscott’s work crosses lines and methodologies from dance, theatre, comedy and performance art; these iterations appear as drag club acts as well as evening-length pieces; dances to one-lady plays; group pieces to solos. Recent pieces include THIS and Wild Bore. She is one half of The Wau Wau Sisters, a boundary-busting cabaret & circus collaboration that has been laying stages to waste for 20 years, and her critically acclaimed Adrienne Truscott's Asking For It: A One-Lady Rape About Comedy Starring Her Pussy and Little Else continues to tour (as both a solo and an expanded group show). This show is considered a critical impetus to the evolving discourse about intersections of rape culture, gender and comedy. adriennetruscott.com/
Reggie Wilson/THE RECLAMATION
World Premiere
Friday, April 4 & Saturday, April 5
USA •Dance
In this new work, choreographer Reggie Wilson is boldly reclaiming foundational ideas from some of his early more gestural works. Investigation of his early movements have opened new perspectives on and provoked questions, responses and surprises that are timely. Wilson's inclination to reclaim seems to be pointing a way, offering a choice of how to get through these frenetic times more (w)holistically, especially after the impacts and containment that the recent pandemic has had on our minds, bodies and spirits. What do we have? What do we keep? What and how do we make what's left be meaningful...and how do we share our "pointings" to encourage others to be persistent in finding their authentic and unique bearings in the world? Is reclamation necessary to build resilience?
Reggie Wilson is Executive/Artistic Director, Choreographer and Performer of Fist and Heel Performance Group. His work draws from the cultures of Africans in the Americas and is combined with post-modern elements to create "post-African/Neo-HooDoo Modern dances." fistandheelperformancegroup.org
*****
DANIEL LÉVEILLÉ DANCE: AMOUR, ACIDE ET NOIX
Canada •Dance
Friday, April 11 & Saturday, April 12
Four bodies given over to the dance, reveal what has taken refuge behind the strangely opaque skin: muscle, water, breath, energy, an outlook on life, so alive and aware of the other, in spite of or maybe because of a need to not be entirely alone. This remounting of Amour, acide et noix (2001) speaks of solitude but also and most specifically of the infinite tenderness of touch, the harshness of life and the desire for avoidance or escape from these bodies, often so heavy. Amour, acide et noix presents nudity as the only true alternative to the reading of the body, frank and free of false modesty. Is not the skin the one true body costume?
Canadian choreographer and dance teacher Daniel Léveillé holds a place of high regard on the national and international scenes of contemporary dance. In fifty years of practice, he has contributed to the development of choreographic art by creating a corpus of major works performed by exceptional dancers. Trained with the Groupe Nouvelle Aire, he first worked as an independent choreographer before founding Daniel Léveillé Danse (now DLD) in 1991.
Developing a choreographic style made up of repetition and short phrasing, his choreographic scores push the limits of the impossible, revealing the beauty of being in all its imperfections, and erring in favor of nudity as the only conceivable costume. dldanse.com
SEÁN CURRAN COMPANY: PATH and EVERYWHERE ALL THE TIME
World Premiere
Friday, April 18 & Saturday, April 19
U.S. • Dance
Seán Curran Company makes its NYU Skirball debut with two works: the world premiere of PATH, a 30-minute work reflecting on the phenomenon of the Camino de Santiago — the ancient Catholic pilgrimage route across northern Spain to the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia – and Curran’s own spiritual wayfaring; and Everywhere All the Time (2018), which explores the relationship of humans with the natural environment.
Seán Curran's award-winning career in the arts spans 40 years, beginning with traditional Irish step dancing as a child in Boston. His 30 dance works for Seán Curran Company are characterized by collaborations across genres, and he is a sought-after choreographer and director for opera and theatre, including productions at Glimmerglass Opera, Lincoln Center Theater, The Metropolitan Opera, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, San Francisco Opera, and Santa Fe Opera, among others. He is an Arts Professor in the NYU Tisch Department of Dance.
Seán Curran Company's mission is to promote the development of contemporary dance and to educate the public through innovative and emotionally moving performances and engagement programs. Founded in 1997, the company's impeccably crafted dances offer audiences a richly poetic experience that includes the artistic vision of Artistic Director Seán Curran along with contemporary composers and visual artists as core collaborators. Based in New York City, the company has toured to over 100 venues in the U.S., Europe and Asia. seancurrancompany.com
ETHAN PHILBRICK: THE CONQUEST OF BREAD
World Premiere
Wednesday, May 1
USA• Music
Russian anarchist and philosopher Peter Kropotkin’s 1892 critique of capitalism, The Conquest of Bread, is the inspiration for this special May Day choral performance, featuring an eclectic assortment of singers — grassroots organizers, professional vocalists, wayward performance artists — to vocalize excerpts of Kropotkin’s 19th century work and intone his often repeated call: “Well-Being for All!” While Kropotkin’s refrain may seem simple, in a world marked by increasing brutality and unevenly distributed life chances, it continues to prove elusive. This ensemble musical performance takes Kropotkin’s language as its textual material for a series of choral experiments.
Ethan Philbrick is a cellist, performance artist, and writer. He holds a PhD in performance studies from New York University and has taught performance theory and practice at Pratt Institute, Muhlenberg College, New York University, Wesleyan College, Yale University, and The New School. He is currently performance curator at The Poetry Project. In 2023, Philbrick published Group Works: Art, Politics, and Collective Ambivalence with Fordham University Press. He is part of the musical-theatrical project DAYS and has presented solo and collaborative performances in NYC and across the country. His musical performances have been called “overwhelmingly beautiful” and “extremely strange” in The Nation and his writing has been characterized as “rich and fascinating” in e-flux. ethanphilbrick.com
Tickets for NYU Skirball members will go on sale at noon on October 16. Tickets go on sale to the general public at noon on November 1. For complete scheduling, dates and times, visit www.nyuskirball.org. Tickets can be purchased online, by visiting the box office in person, Tuesday - Saturday from 12:00 pm - 6:00 pm, or by calling 212.998.4941. NYU Skirball is located at 566 LaGuardia Place at Washington Square, New York, New York 10012.
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