Music: John Adams / Choreography: Lucinda Childs / Stage Design: Frank O. Gehry / Lighting Design: Beverley Emmons, John Torres / Costume Design: Kasia Walicka Maimone / Sound Design: Mark Grey / Performed by: The Lucinda Childs Dance Company: Ty Boomershine, Katie Dorn, Josh Christopher, Katherine Helen Fisher, Sarah Hillmon, Anne Lewis, Sharon Milanese, Patrick John O’ Neill, Matt Pardo, Lonnie Poupard Jr., Caitlin Scranton, Shakirah Stewart / Associate General Manager: Linsey Bostwick / Company Manager: Katie Ichtertz / Production Manager: Jeremy Lydic / Stage Manager: Jason Kaiser / Associate Producer: Kaleb Kilkenny, Alisa E. Regas / Produced by: Pomegranate Arts, Inc. / Executive Producer: Linda Brumbach
John Adams - Lucinda Childs - Frank O. Gehry
Available Light
- Dance
- Tanz im August
Audience engagement formats for "Available Light"
Physical Introduction: 14.08. | 13:00-14:00 | Haus der Berliner Festspiele (side stage)
Meeting of Minds: 15.08. | 21:30 | Haus der Berliner Festspiele: Lucinda Childs & Rosemary Butcher
After seeing ‘Available Light’ in 1983, Anna Kisselgoff, dance critic for The New York Times, called it ‘a work of blazing formal beauty’. In Kisselgoff’s eyes, the collaboration between chorographer Lucinda Childs, architect Frank O. Gehry, and composer John Adams took Childs’ career to a new level, two decades after she first started out at the Judson Dance Theater. In ‘Available Light’ the austere mathematical minimalism with which Childs permuted, repeated, and varied the concentrated movement phrases was combined with a new richness, unknown in previous works. Also ground-breaking in 1983 was the style of presentation. The work was commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles to mark the opening of its new exhibition space in a former warehouse, Temporary Contemporary. The introduction of choreography to an exhibition space, today quite common, was a radical gesture at the time. ‘Available Light’ has now been reconstructed for a world tour and will be performed for the first time in Germany. After the premiere in Los Angeles in June, ‘Available Light’ will open the Kampnagel Festival in Hamburg and shortly after it, Tanz im August. ‘Available Light’ is just another iconic collaborative project featuring Lucinda Childs’ work to go on show in Berlin this year; the other being ‘Einstein on the Beach’: In her review of Childs’ legacy, performance historian RoseLee Goldberg comments on how in ‘Available Light’ Childs managed to find her own rhythmic pulse to Adams’ complex, structured music, while simultaneously devising an elegant, three-dimensional design for Gehry’s industrial stage construction.
Rehearsals for the revival (2015) Clip from the original production (1983)
The 2015 revival of Available Light was produced by Pomegranate Arts and commissioned by the Cal Performances, University of California, Berkeley; Festspielhaus St. Pölten; FringeArts, Philadelphia with the support of The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage; Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance at the Music Center and The Los Angeles Philharmonic Association; International Summer Festival Kampnagel, Hamburg; Onassis Cultural Centre - Athens; Tanz Im August, Berlin; and Théâtre de la Ville - Paris and Festival d'Automne à Paris.
Available Light was developed at MASS MoCa (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art).
European premiere in cooperation with Sommerfestival Kampnagel, Hamburg. Tanz im August as a guest of Haus der Berliner Festspiele.
Cast
Dates
Past
Location
Haus der Berliner Festspiele
Schaperstr. 24, 10719 BerlinThe Haus der Berliner Festspiele in Schaperstraße 24 has wheelchair access without steps to the foyer and to the auditorium on the ground floor. A wheelchair accessible lift is available for the upper foyers. This lift is equipped with tactile lettering. There is a WC on the ground floor for persons with restricted mobility.
