Laura Diffenderfer/Oh Dear Dance Theatre announces the New York premiere of "A Wagner Matinee," a multi-media dance work to be presented at the Merce Cunningham Studio April 3 (8pm), 10 (8pm) and 11 (7pm), 2010. Tickets are $12 - $20 and can be purchased at the door or online here.
"A Wagner Matinee" is an abstract rendering of Willa Cather's short story of the same name, which chronicles a homesteader's journey from the isolation of the Nebraska plains back to her urban birthplace, Boston.
At a concert, she is engulfed by the fullness of an orchestra for the first time in 30 years. As the music swells, so do her memories: a black pond, a vast expanse, and her abandoned dream of becoming a concert pianist. When the crowd clears, she is forced to ask the question: "How do I go back?"
The evening-length work will be performed by Laurie Berg, Sevin Ceviker, Maya Krishnasastry, Josh Rowe and Alicia Weill. The piece will include recordings of Clara Schumann and Richard Wagner, as well as live, original music by Matt McBane performed by McBane and Michael Cassedy. McBane’s composition takes inspiration from the famous opening chords of Wagner’s Prelude to Tristan und Isolde (referenced in Cather’s short story). The dance will also include video by Drew Blattman and Jessica Lacombe, and photographs by Nebraska artist Michael Farrell.
ARTIST'S STATEMENT: "A Wagner Matinee" began as a rumination on the idea of returning home as I approached my tenth year of living in New York. I kept coming back to the fiction of Willa Cather, who grew up in Nebraska, just as I did. While Cather lived in the East for most of her adult life, she frequently returned to Nebraska in her fiction. So, I decided that I should return to the plains with the Cather as a guide.
I was drawn to the way Cather writes about Nebraska—with a mixture of reverence and fear. For instance, in "My Antonia," the narrator Jim Burdon recalls his Nebraska youth, saying, "Between that earth and that sky I felt erased, blotted out," which is as beautiful as it is terrifying to me. In the process of making this piece, I’ve been exploring that inexplicable longing that we feel for the past, the nostalgia we hold for even the harshest parts, and the possibility of discovering a lost passion in the rubble.
PROJECT HISTORY: This project was developed in work-in-progress showings at the 92nd St Y and Movement Research at Judson Church, and has been supported by a Field Space Grant Residency, the Nebraska Arts Council and the Nebraska Humanities Council (through the Willa Cather Foundation), and numerous individuals. Following a month-long period of research in the Willa Cather Archive at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, a solo version on A Wagner Matinee was presented at the Willa Cather Spring Conference in June, 2008, in the opera house Cather attended in her youth. The New York performances will be the culminating event of this project.
