It makes your heart beat faster. It awakens your senses. It takes you outside of your comfort zone. It gets inside your head. No matter how you experience the extraordinary — with your eyes, ears, heart or mind — you’ll recognize it throughout the Clarice Smith Center 2012–2013 season.
The Extraordinary: How It’s Seen, Heard, Felt and Known
Women making waves, jazz with a twist, masters reimagined, African heart, classical straight up and more: The 2012-2013 season at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center will be filled with extraordinary performances, creative collaborations and face-to-face engagement with artists. Explore new artistic ideas and honor cultural traditions in music, dance and theatre and hear from our Storytellers — artists, students, donors, faculty and community members — about the power of the performing arts. Share your own story in our Storytellers booth in the Center lobby, open 7 days a week throughout the season.
Select Performance Highlights
- A Chinese-American production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream/仲夏夜之梦, conceived and produced by the UMD School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies (TDPS) and The National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts (NACTA). Two cultures from half a world apart will share the stage in this bilingual co-production of Shakespeare’s classic. Each actor will perform in his or her native language and the original sets and costumes, designed and created by TDPS and NACTA faculty and students through an innovative international collaborative process, will travel to China with the cast after the premiere at the Center on September 27-30, 2012.
- Pianist Anthony de Mare’s ongoing project, Liaisons: Reimagining Sondheim from the Piano. Pianist Anthony de Mare will return this season to perform a Center-commissioned work from Frederic Rzewski, along with approximately 20 other Sondheim pieces, on September 21, 2012.
- A new work from avant-garde musician and performance artist Laurie Anderson. Anderson returns this season to create a new work commissioned by the Center, which she will perform with the Kronos Quartet on February 1 and 2, 2013.
- Jazz musician Branford Marsalis and his Quartet, presented in partnership with UMD’s own David C. Driskell Center. Mr. Marsalis’s performance will celebrate the opening of a new exhibit of work by African American visual artists at the Driskell Center, and David C. Driskell will join Mr. Marsalis in a pre-performance discussion on February 15, 2013.
- UMD Symphony Orchestra performing Britten’s Les Illuminations, with visual designs by Doug Fitch. Renowned for his multimedia spectacles, Doug Fitch collaborates with UMSO conductor James Ross on Les Illuminations, a concert to benefit the Music in Mind Scholarship program, on March 9, 2013.
Creative Dialogues
WAMU’s Kojo Nnamdi will once again moderate our free Creative Dialogue series featuring artists, experts and scholars discussing ideas that animate our performances.
- The Scientific Method and the Creative Process - September 18, 2012
- The Art of Adaptation - October 1, 2012
- Creativity and the Elder Artist - October 16, 2012
- Writing and Celebrating in the African American Tradition - November 26, 2012
- A Conversation about Women and Resistance - April 1, 2012
- Considering the Human Condition: On Behalf of Nature - April 29, 2012
Residencies
- SF Jazz Collective will be in residency for a week this fall, preparing its new program, The Music of Chick Corea, to receive its world premiere here on October 12, 2012.
- Each year, Kronos Quartet works closely with composition students in the School of Music and this year, three student composers will travel to the Quartet’s home in San Francisco to refine their pieces for Kronos’s public readings on April 25, 2013.
Commissions and Collaborations
- A dance-theatre production by renowned choreographer Bill T. Jones and SITI Company’s artistic director, Anne Bogart on February 8 & 9, 2013 exploring the impact of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring on the way we perceive music.
- Lucky Plush Productions dance/theatre hybrid, The Better Half. Based on — and poking fun at — the classic film Gaslight, this rowdy, witty piece transcends its sources to examine wedded (or unwedded) “bliss” from unexpected physical and emotional angles in performances on October 4 & 5, 2012
Other Events of Note
- SEASON OPENER: Paul Taylor Dance Company - September 8, 2012
- SITI Company, Café Variations - September 20-21, 2012
- UMD School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies, In the Red and Brown Water - November 9-17, 2012
- Maryland Opera Studio, Die Zauberflöte - November 18, 2012
- UMD Chamber Singers and UMD University Chorale, Masterworks from 20th Century France - November 18, 2012
- Nolan Williams, Jr., Christmas Gift! – December 14-15, 2012
- UMD School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies MFA in Performance, Festival of New Works - February 1-16, 2013
- New York Festival of Song, Jacques Brel and Charles Trenet Revisited - February 21, 2013
- UMD School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies, Dead Man’s Cell Phone - March 1-9, 2013
- Nora Chipaumire, MIRIAM - April 4-6, 2013
- UMD Concert Choir and UMD Symphony Orchestra, Firebird - May 3, 2013
The season will include numerous other performances and events; information about the entire season and tickets is available at claricesmithcenter.umd.edu or by calling 301.405.ARTS (2787). Student discounts and other ticket discount information can be found here.
