OZ ARTS NASHVILLE, THE CITY’S PIONEERING CONTEMPORARY ARTS CENTER, ANNOUNCES 2016-17 SEASON
Season Features Celebrated Artists Spanning Multiple Art Forms, Including:
- Family Day, Headlined by GRAMMY-Winning Los Angeles Band (September 10)
- Melbourne, Australia-Based Theater Company one step at a time like this’s, an Interactive Journey Performance based on Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, Staged on the Streets of Downtown Nashville (October 5 – 23)
- MacArthur Fellow Michelle Dorrance’s Company in ETM: Double Down (December 9 & 10)
- Visual Artist Large-Scale, Site-Specific Installation Hide and Seek (February 9 – March 18, 2017)
- ’ Robot Planet Rising and Twin Infinity (April 28 & 29, 2017)
- perform a concert of Appalachian and Chinese folk music (June 1, 2017)
OZ Arts’ Local Spotlight Series, TNT, Will Feature Performances and Works by (November 3, 2016), (January 24, 2017), and & (June 15, 2017)
NASHVILLE, TENN., August 19, 2016 – OZ Arts Nashville, the city’s pioneering contemporary arts center, is pleased to announce its 2016-17 season, which will bring to the dynamic warehouse space a wide array of acclaimed artists—international, national and local—and new site-specific works.
The season begins with the 2016 edition of OZ Arts’ Family Day, an indoor-outdoor extravaganza for young people and families, on September 10. This year, the GRAMMY-winning multicultural Los Angeles band Ozomatli will perform songs from their new album and their celebrated dance party CD, Ozomatli Presents Ozokidz. A variety of Nashville artists and community organizations will offer hands-on activities for kids and their families to experience together.
Melbourne, Australia’s internationally renowned theater company one step at a time like this comes to OZ Arts to develop and perform a new, Nashville-specific iteration of their project Since I Suppose, which invites audiences to experience Shakespeare’s classic urban play, Measure for Measure, on the streets of their city, using an innovative mobile app. After their second residency at OZ Arts to create and rehearse the work (September 30 – October 4), one step at a time like this, plus more than a dozen local actors and theater students will perform it for the public in locations throughout the downtown area of Nashville, October 5 – 23.
Groundbreaking tap dancer-choreographer Michelle Dorrance, winner of a 2015 MacArthur Fellowship, brings her company Dorrance Dance to OZ Arts for two performances (December 9 & 10) of ETM: Double Down, their innovative collaboration with dancer, choreographer and musician Nicholas Young. Performing on a percussive electronic tap floor designed and made by Young, the company creates a thrilling combination of movement and music.
One thing that makes OZ Arts indispensable is its flexible 10,000 sf. warehouse space, an ideal canvas not only for spectacular performances but also for large-scale visual art installations. Artist Heeseop Yoon will take advantage of the expansive room with Hide and Seek, a sprawling, site-specific drawing made with pieces of tape and based on photographs Yoon has taken in locations around the world. The show, which also includes a series of small, ink collage drawings displayed in the visual art gallery, will draw audiences for multiple viewings and will be on view February 9 – March 18, 2017.
For critics and audiences alike, The Intergalactic Nemesis: Target Earth was a highlight of OZ Arts’ star-studded inaugural season in 2014. OZ Arts is thrilled to welcome back the artists for performances of Robot Planet Rising and Twin Infinity, Books 2 and 3 of their “live-action graphic novel,” in which hundreds of hand-drawn, full-color comic-book images flow from a large screen while three actors, a sound effects artist and a pianist perform live on stage. OZ Arts presents Robot Planet Rising and Twin Infinity April 28 & 29, 2017.
As the culmination of a year-long series of creative workshops and performances for young people, GRAMMY Award-winning singer-songwriter and banjo player Abigail Washburn joins forces with guzheng (21-string Chinese zither) virtuoso Wu Fei to present a concert of Appalachian and Chinese music. These two artists will perform new works that explore the complementary sounds of their instruments and voices, while communicating oral histories and building cultural understanding through music. OZ Arts presents their concert in celebration of International Children’s Day, June 1, 2017.
Events in OZ Arts’ local spotlight series, TNT, will take place throughout the season, including an album-release performance by electronic folk music group Foreign Fields, on November 3, 2016; ALIAS Chamber Ensemble’s annual winter concert, on January 24, 2017; and the aerial contemporary dance company FALL, in collaboration with visual artist Mary Mooney, on June 15, 2017.
Tickets for all events can be purchased online at . OZ Arts is located at 6172 Cockrill Bend Circle in Nashville, Tenn. Season subscriptions are priced at $270, and are also available for purchase at starting August 21. Season subscription price includes discounted tickets to all programs. Additionally, season subscribers receive the following benefits: lowest ticket price for artistic programs; easy ticket exchange (of same production); one low handling fee per order; and priority date/time selection for programs (one week prior to public on-sale date).
OZ ARTS NASHVILLE’S 2016-17 SEASON
MUSIC / FAMILY ENTERTAINMENT
Family Day 2016 with Ozomatli
September 10, 2016
11am-4pm
(Abigail Washburn & Wu Fei at 1pm, Ozomatli at 1:30pm)
“a high-energy and interactive experience.”—NPR
Family Day is OZ Arts’ annual public festival of indoor and outdoor arts activities for young people and families, designed to spark creativity, activity, and interaction. Dispersed among the grounds of OZ Arts, dozens of local artists and community organizations set up activity stations enabling kids to tap into their imaginations, create as a group and build something unique.
The centerpiece of this year’s Family Day is Ozomatli’s acclaimed live show in which the GRAMMY-winning, TED-talking Los Angeles multi-cultural band brings their “effortless mashup of musical styles” (NPR Music) to families and children. The band will perform songs from their new album, as well as their 2012 album Ozomatli Presents Ozokidz, which The Los Angeles Times declared “best kids album, ever,” iTunes named the Best Children’s Album of 2012, and Time Out Chicago described as “the best kind of party,” adding, “On this debut album for families, the legendary L.A.-based musical landmark band pulls out all the stops. Featuring effortless bilingualism (yes, your kids will learn some Spanish) and the band’s usual eclectic mix of genres, this album typifies multicultural America at its finest.”
Ozomatli has spent two decades working diligently to spread its message of peace, communication and understanding through music, with a longstanding tradition of performing for children all over the world, from the schools of North St. Louis to the orphanages of Southeast Asia. They burst onto the L.A. stage with their first, self-titled album in June 1998, having quickly become the talk of the live music scene with legendary shows at venues such as Dragonfly, Opium Den and The Viper Room. By 1999, they were touring with Carlos Santana and soon won the Grammy for Best Latin Rock/Alternative Album for their 2001 album Embrace the Chaos. Ozomatli is committed to giving voice to Latino culture and opportunity to children, fighting for workers’ rights, and promoting global unity and peace amongst people, cultures and nations. Ozomatli were named Cultural Ambassadors for the U.S. State Department in 2006, have spoken at the TED Conference about music and identity in the global age, and performed for President and First Lady Obama at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s 32nd Annual Award Gala. The band comes to OZ Arts amidst a national tour on which they are also debuting material from their forthcoming album Ozofied Volume 1 – A Century of Mexican Classics.
THEATER
one step at a time like this
Since I Suppose
Created by one step at a time like this
Directed by Suzanne Kersten
Commissioned by and developed with Chicago Shakespeare Theatre & Richard Jordan Productions, in association with the City of Melbourne through Arts House
October 5-23, 2016
12pm – 8:30pm, 140 mins (one person per performance time)
“The experience feels like you are inside some giant movie, where only you know it is a movie. Invigorating and revealing.”—The Chicago Tribune
OZ Arts Nashville welcomes the celebrated Melbourne, Australia-based theater company one step at a time like this for the creation and performance of a new version of their acclaimed work Since I Suppose. In this unique production, audiences will hit the streets of downtown Nashville, one person at a time, for an utterly unique take on William Shakespeare’s classic urban play, Measure for Measure. Participants will walk from one city locale to another, using a custom app on a smartphone and wearing a headset to guide them through the performance.
Measure for Measure explores city government, corruption and morality. Since I Suppose transposes the narrative to Nashville, employing shards of text, music, instructions and video to move audiences through the scenes of the story—sometimes as voyeurs, other times as active participants in the experience. Over the course of the performance, each audience member is guided to landmarks and venues throughout downtown. one step at a time like this hopes that, afterward, even longtime Nashvillians will see their city in a new light.
one step at a time like this creates place-responsive and conversation-based works, focusing on the activity of the audience as an essential element in the work, exploring ways to allow audience members to find a point of relaxed engagement, involvement and activity in the imaginable and real worlds unfolding before them. They premiered Since I Suppose in Chicago in September 2014, following the success of their site-specific theater piece En Route, created for downtown Chicago in 2011. The company has created more than twelve original works since 2001, and has been presented at prestigious institutions across the globe, including London Olympics, Seoul Performing Arts Festival, Traverse Theatre Edinburgh, Melbourne International Arts Festival, Auckland Arts Festival, and Clonmel Junction Festival (Tipperary, Ireland), among others.
Prior to the premiere, October 5 – 23, the company will be in residence at OZ Arts September 30 – October 4 to rehearse and trial the performance with local actors and theater students.
Warnings:
- Ages: 21+
- Adult themes
- Strictly limited capacity
- Dress for weather and walking
- Starting location to be provided via email after booking
- Audience members are required to be able to use a basic media device, but will be given a short tutorial at the beginning of the show.
DANCE
Dorrance Dance
ETM: Double Down
December 9 & 10, 2016
8pm
“[A] fresh and innovative show. The distinction between dancer and musician, between electronic and acoustic, fades. When ETM: Double Down is rocking, Dorrance Dance is one big band.”—The New York Times
Choreographer Michelle Dorrance, winner of a 2015 MacArthur Fellowship, and her company Dorrance Dance have upended questions of tap’s cultural relevance with their singular combination of let-it-all-hang-out style and locomotive foot speed.
Three musicians, one B-girl (2016 Bessie Award nominee Ephrat “Bounce” Asherie), and seven Dorrance Dance dancers deliver an absorbing performance in ETM: Double Down that twitches with invention. The dance takes place on electronic tap floors created by Dorrance’s longtime friend (and fellow STOMP cast member) Nicholas Young, which transforms the whole stage into a musical instrument producing what Dorrance calls ETM (electronic tap music). ETM: Double Down also features live music by an acoustic trio including vocalist Aaron Marcellus, bassist Greg Richardson and pianist Donovan Dorrance.
The New Yorker has called Michelle Dorrance “one of the most imaginative tap choreographers working today.” She and Nicholas Young first met as teens at the St. Louis Tap Festival, where they became enthralled by Gregory Hines and Savion Glover, and went on to perform together in the cast of STOMP. Young built the ETM: Double Down equipment by hand over a two-year, self-taught process of tinkering with tap boards and connecting them to a MIDI controller, popular in electronic music since the 1980s.
VISUAL ART
Heeseop Yoon
Hide and Seek
February 9 – March 18, 2017
Hours: Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday 11am – 5:30pm; Thursday & Friday 11am – 9pm
“Yoon’s staggeringly complex wall drawings…are both captivating and awe-inspiring.”—Dexter Wimberly, Curator, Hanes Art Gallery
Visual artist Heeseop Yoon explores obsessive consumerism within the chaos of clutter. Inspired by photographs of everyday objects – jumbled, piled, stacked and often discarded – Yoon creates a collage of imagery and intricately sketches its outline onto transparent mylar, freehand and without erasing. Through repeated application of thin strips of black tape, Yoon traces over the lines of her drawing creating a visual cacophony that grows to overtake the walls, floors, and sometimes ceilings of the space in which her work is inhabited.
Hide and Seek, commissioned for exhibition in OZ Arts’ Grand Salon and Visual Art Gallery, is a sweeping, site-specific tape drawing installation and a series of small, ink collage drawings. The drawings, ranging in scale from macro to micro, depict assemblages of objects from across the globe, including multiple locations in Nashville from photos taken during Yoon’s site visit in Spring 2016.
THEATER
The Intergalactic Nemesis
Robot Planet Rising and Twin Infinity
Produced and Directed by Jason Neulander
Robot Planet Rising: April 28, 2017, at 3pm and 7:30pm
Twin Infinity: April 29, 2017, at 7:30pm
“Furiously entertaining.”—Sydney Morning Herald
In 2014, the newly opened OZ Arts Nashville presented an innovative theatrical experience, the live-action graphic novel The Intergalactic Nemesis: Target Earth, to great acclaim. Blending the magic of a radio drama with the energy of a science fiction comic book, the one-of-a-kind all-ages performance featured more than 1,000 hand-drawn, full-color comic-book images blasting from the screen while three actors, one Foley artist and one keyboardist performed all the voices, sound effects and music live.
Now OZ Arts welcomes back the artists to perform Books 2 and 3 of the project, Robot Planet Rising and Twin Infinity. The format remains the same, but this engagement features two new stories. No previous Intergalatic Nemesis experience is necessary.
In Robot Planet Rising, the year is 1933. The time: two weeks after the conclusion of Target Earth. The place: Robonovia, the Robot Planet. When commander El-Bee-Dee-Oh is lost in space, it’s up to Molly Sloan and Timmy Mendez to find him. But when Molly’s former fiancé shows up with his assistant (and Soviet spy) Natasha Zorokov in tow, Molly and Timmy discover a plot that threatens not only the very existence of Robonovia, but the safety of Earth itself. Will they uncover the source of the problem? And just who is this robot who calls himself “Alphatron,” anyway?
Twin Infinity brings us to Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Molly Sloan’s and geneticist Ben Wilcott’s wedding day in 1942. Ben hasn’t shown up to the altar. When Molly goes to his apartment, she finds him. But it’s not him, after all. It’s a different Ben. A more bookish Ben. A librarian Ben. So Molly enlists this Ben to help her find the other Ben and, in the process, brings a whole new definition to the word “love.”
When The Intergalactic Nemesis Live-Action Graphic Novel premiered in 2010 in Austin, Texas, more than 2,100 people turned out. Shortly thereafter, it was featured on NPR and on “Conan” and has been touring the world ever since, including a run on Broadway and a sold-out showing at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. The company is currently embarking on a full season at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland.
MUSIC
Abigail Washburn & Wu Fei
June 1, 2017
7:30pm
GRAMMY-winning singer, songwriter and clawhammer banjo player Abigail Washburn and Beijing native and master guzheng (21-string Chinese zither) virtuoso Wu Fei collaborate to create a musical project that weaves together traditional Appalachian and Chinese folk music.
Working together as an entirely unique banjo-guzheng ensemble, Washburn and Wu embrace improvisation and non-traditional techniques in their music composition and performance. Their lyrics share similar tales, their music inspires audience participation and their presentation encourages listeners from diverse communities across Nashville to embrace an open dialogue of cultural perspectives in our growing city. The duo will share their multi-cultural music with the Nashville community via workshops and school visits, and they will create new songs together throughout the year. Their project will culminate in a live performance at OZ Arts in celebration of International Children’s Day.
Abigail Washburn’s music ranges from the “all-g’earl” string band sound of Uncle Earl to her bi-lingual solo release Song of the Traveling Daughter (2005) and the mind-bending “chamber roots” sound of the Sparrow Quartet, to the rhythms, sounds and stories of Afterquake, her fundraiser CD for the Sichuan earthquake victims. The New York Times praised her 2011 release, City of Refuge, written with collaborator Kai Welch, saying the the songs ‘mingle Appalachia and folk-pop, with tinges of Asia and Bruce Springsteen.” She recorded her recent release Béla Fleck & Abigail Washburn (2014) with her husband, 15-time GRAMMY Award-winning banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck. Currently they are touring the world as a “trio” with their growing little boy Juno.
Having toured the world, Washburn is also armed with Chinese language ability and profound connections to culture and people on the other side of the Pacific. She is one of the few foreign artists currently touring China independently and regularly. She completed a month-long tour (Nov-Dec 2011) of China’s Silk Road supported by grants from the US Embassy, Beijing. Washburn, along with 24 other innovative and creative thinkers worldwide, was named a TED fellow and gave a talk at the 2012 TED Convention in Long Beach about building US-China relations through music. She has been commissioned by New York Voices and the Public Theater in New York to write and debut a theatrical work titled, Post-American Girl, which draws from her 17-year relationship with China and addresses themes of expanding identity, cultural relativism, pilgrimage, the universal appeal of music and opening the heart big enough to fold it all in. Washburn was recently named the first U.S.-China Fellow at Vanderbilt University.
Wu Fei has performed and recorded with musicians such as Fred Frith, John Zorn, Billy Martin (of Medeski-Martin-Wood), Carla Kilhstedt, Abigail Washburn and Béla Fleck, to name a few. Her commissions range from a composition for the Percussions Claviers de Lyon (France) that premiered in the Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing, to live performances in Paris and Tokyo for Hermès. She has composed for Balinese gamelan, symphony orchestra, choir, string quartet, chamber ensemble, film, and modern dance. She has performed at The Stone and MoMA in New York City, North Sea Jazz Festival in the Netherlands, Vossa Jazz Festival in Norway, Europalia in Belgium, Beijing MIDI Festival, and Madame Guitar Festival in Italy. Fei has also been a guest lecturer and performer at the China Conservatory of Music, University of Richmond, University of Colorado at Boulder and more. Her solo albums are A Distant Youth (2007, Forrest Hill, Italy; 2012 re-released on Naturebliss Records, Japan) and Yuan (2008, Tzadik Records). Her most recent release is Pluck (2011), the eponymous record of her duo with Brooklyn based classical guitarist Gyan Riley.
This program is supported in part by Metro Nashville Arts Commission.
TNT : Featuring Tennessee-based Artists
TNT is a curated series of newly created artworks by Tennessee-based artists. Each artist or collective takes advantage of OZ Arts’ 10,000 sf. warehouse venue to create a performance or visual art experience they wouldn’t be able to make in a traditional theater or gallery.
This series is supported in part by Tennessee Arts Commission and the Danner Foundation.
This season’s offerings include:
Foreign Fields
November 3, 2016
Foreign Fields is an electronic folk group that began on the wintry plains of Wisconsin, but set a new course for the rivers of Tennessee in 2012. Members Eric Hillman and Brian Holl, also collaborators with The Great Aspirations of Sun Conductor, have established roots in Nashville and built a cult following in the city’s indie-rock scene. This album-release performance will be their only show in Nashville for the year.
ALIAS Chamber Ensemble
Reclaiming Peace: Honoring International Holocaust Remembrance Day
January 24, 2017
The GRAMMY-nominated, Nashville-based ALIAS Chamber Ensemble comes to OZ Arts for their annual winter concert. The program, honoring International Holocaust Remembrance Day (Jan. 27, 2017), includes Oliver Messiaen’s seminal Quartet for the End of Time, written during WWII while Messiaen was a prisoner in a German POW camp; composer/violinist Alexandra duBois’ string quartet Night Songs, inspired by the writings of the young Dutch writer Etty Hillesum; and a reading of confessional writings Hillesum penned prior to being deported to Auschwitz in 1943.
FALL & Mary Mooney
June 15, 2017
FALL, Nashville’s first aerial contemporary dance company, presents a new work about overcoming obstacles and perceived limitations. Founder and Artistic Director Rebekah Hampton Barger investigates her own struggle with severe scoliosis through a performance that blends classical and contemporary dance with a mix of aerial fabric and an invented apparatus.
Barger examines the psychology behind physical limitations in a broad range of gravity-challenging movement. Mary Mooney, Nashville-based visual artist and self-taught jewelry designer, will paint a number of large, museum-grade acrylic “canvases” in, around and throughout the performance— live—as a study of the movement created by FALL’s dancers. Mooney’s artworks will serve as a permanent record to this ephemeral moment, and the body of works created will be on display in OZ’s visual art gallery in the months following the live event.
About OZ Arts Nashville
Since opening in 2014, OZ Arts Nashville, a 501(c)(3) contemporary arts center, has changed the cultural landscape of the city. Housed in the former C.A.O. cigar warehouse owned by Nashville’s Ozgener family, OZ Arts brings world-class performances and art installations to the city, and gives ambitious local artists opportunities to work on a grand scale. The flexible 10,000 square-foot, column-free venue, nestled amidst five acres of artfully landscaped grounds, is continually reconfigured to serve artists’ imaginations, and to challenge and inspire a diverse range of curious audiences.
OZ Arts, under the artistic leadership of Lauren Snelling, has presented luminaries such as Philip Glass and Tim Fain, Tim Robbins’ The Actors’ Gang, Kyle Abraham and Abraham.In.Motion, Peter Brook’s Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, the Trisha Brown Company, Vijay Iyer, Laurie Anderson, SITI Company, Bang On A Can All-Stars and Taylor Mac. OZ Arts serves as a catalyst for local creativity through its TNT program, which fosters collaborations between Nashville-based artists from varying creative disciplines; and its newest series The Artists’ Lounge, which gives artists opportunities to develop work before a live audience, including fellow artists, in the venue’s intimate lounge space.
For more information, please visit .
OZ Arts Media Contacts
Nashville press, please contact Amy A. Atkinson at Amy Atkinson Communications, phone: 615-305-8118, email: , or Twitter at .
National press, please contact Blake Zidell at Blake Zidell & Associates, 718.643.9052 or blake@blakezidell.com.