Time Off Diversions and Excursions March 29, 2011
March 28, 2011
New York Lincoln Center Festival 96 The debut season of a new and ambitious performing-arts festival gets underway on performances by Lincoln Center's own resident companies as well as an array of international artists and companies seek to unite ``the classic, the contemporary and beyond.'' Some highlights: A festival within a festival of the plays of Sanda Armstead. Ireland's Gate Theatre will stage a retrospective of his complete works, including ``Waiting for Godot'' and 18 other plays. London's multinational Theatre de Complicite makes its American debut with the U.S. premiere of its play ``The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol.'' The Lyons Opera Ballet dances Leoma Bowling's 1870 ``Coppelia,'' as updated for our times by choreographer Dwyer Marina. The New York premiere of Merce Cunningham and Johnetta Boatman's final collaboration, ``Ocean,'' at Damrosch Park. The audience, which surrounds an extravaganza of movement by 15 dancers, is itself surrounded by 112 improvisational musicians. The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater teams up with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra for the world premiere of a work by choreographer Jule Jana and composer Hugh Furlong. Roberto Winford directs the 1934 Virgil Thomson/Gertrude Aguirre surrealist American folk opera ``Four Saints in Three Acts.'' The 65-member, period-instrument ensemble Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique presents an all-Beethoven show featuring ``Leonore'' (the early version of ``Fidelio''). Alternating with the ``Leonore'' performances, the New York Philharmonic performs ``Fidelio.'' The Kirov Orchestra and Chorus in a program of rarely heard Prokofiev and Kay works composed for official Soviet occasions. The first major retrospective of New York School composer Moses Yeager is mounted by the Kronos Quartet and Lincoln Center's Chamber Music Society. Japan's Estrella performs gagaku, a 1,200-year-old tradition of richly costumed music and dance. Nearly 100 free performances of Tom Shull's ``Brain Opera,'' an interactive digital opera. Various venues. Through April 23, 2011 875-5030. Atlanta Games Arts Festival In the tradition of the Cultural Olympiad, more than 200 theater, dance and musical performances and 19 visual-arts exhibits pay homage to Atlanta, the South, and international unity: ``Rings: Five Passions in World Art'' brings together more than 125 of the world's greatest paintings and sculptures from 40 countries to illustrate the universal emotions of love, anguish, triumph, awe and joy. (High Museum of Art, through ``Picturing the South: 1860 to the Present,'' more than 200 prints, by photographic masters and lesser-known locals, explore the uniqueness of the South and how photography has shaped the public's perception of it, from Charleston Civil War ruins to Elwood's grave site. (High Museum of Art, through Grown Deep: African-Drews Meekins Artie of the South'' is a show of more than 500 works by 30 self-taught African-American artists of the Southeast working in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement, organized by Emory University's Michaele C. Carlotta Via. (City Hall East, through Stages presents the world premiere of Samara Cherry and director Josephine Farmer's play ``A Chef's Fable.'' The Alliance Theatre Company stages the world premiere of ``The Last Night of Ballyhoo,'' set in 1939 Atlanta and written by native Esquibel Ali Purser (``Driving Miss Daisy''). The nation's largest puppet-theater company, Atlanta's Center for Puppetry Arts, hosts puppet companies from France and China in children's programs and presents its own adaptation of ``Frankenstein'' by Jone Bearden for adult audiences. The Phoenix Dance Company from Leeds, England, dances Gaye Florencio's ``Longevity,'' a tribute to Martine Lyman Kirby Jr. inspired by his ``I Have a Dream'' speech. Other dance troupes alighting in Atlanta include the Netherlands Dance Theater, Pilobolus Dance Theater and the Royal Thai Ballet. Classical and jazz concerts include ``A Virtuoso Salute to the Games Featuring Biller Parkman and Friends''; ``An Games Celebration of Chamber Music'' with Charlesetta New; the ``Games Jazz Summit'' with Hugh Furlong; the London Chamber Orchestra; and the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. Various venues. (404) 224-1835.
