Bobbi Jene Smith, New Dialect, & American Modern Opera Company
Broken Theater
November 17-19
Tickets from $25
“a wry, sometimes uproarious and poignant metatheatrical riff on the process of creation.”
— The New York Times
“…revitalizing what American music theater can mean with several of our most revolutionary young talents”
— The Los Angeles Times on AMOC
Celebrated Nashville dance collective New Dialect joins forces with the acclaimed American Modern Opera Company (AMOC) for the must-see collaboration of the season. Featuring evocative choreography by former Batsheva member Bobbi Jene Smith, the compelling new dance and music work assembles some of the most notable talents of the rising generation — including acclaimed dancer-choreographer and New Dialect founder Banning Bouldin in her triumphant return to the stage.
Described as “rapt and raw” by the Los Angeles Times, Broken Theater imagines a group of artists wrestling with identity and purpose after their audience disappears. Lines between selfhood and the parts we play blur as the virtuosic cast of performers slip in and out of their expected roles: “dancers sing, singers dance, and instrumentalists do both” (The New Yorker).
Founded by composer Matthew Aucoin and stage director Zack Winokur, AMOC is a youthful collective of seventeen singers, instrumentalists, and dancers who focus specifically on collaborative and interdisciplinary work. New Dialect is a contemporary dance practice based in Nashville and founded by Banning Bouldin out of a desire to foster a sustainable ecosystem for contemporary dance artists to live, learn, and collaborate in her hometown.
“…one of the most dynamic forces in Nashville’s artistic world”
— Nashville Edit on New Dialect
“Bobbi Jene Smith’s authenticity consistently shines through in her work. She’s known for her remorseless interrogation of the soul”
— Dance Magazine
ARTIST TALK
Friday, November 18
Following the Performance
Friday night ticket holders are invited to remain in the theater following the performance for a special conversation with the artists.
FREE WORKSHOP WITH BOBBI JENE SMITH
Saturday, November 19
11AM - noon
This 1-hour workshop will introduce movers of all ages and skill levels to Bobbi’s method for building language from grounded moments of enormous intensity and interpersonal communication.
Bobbi Jene Smith was born in Centerville, Iowa, and lives in New York City. From 2005-2014, she was a member of the Batsheva Dance Company under the artistic direction of Ohad Naharin. Since 2014, she has worked in Punchdrunk’s production of Sleep No More as well as Dido and Aeneas and Orphic Moment, choreographed by Zack Winokur. She is an alumnus of Juilliard, North Carolina School of the Arts, and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School. Her choreography has been presented by The Batsheva Dance Company, CORPUS – The Dance Laboratory of the Royal Danish Ballet, The Martha Graham Dance Company, The Juilliard School, PS122 COIL Festival, A.R.T, The Israel Museum, Luminato Festival, LaMama, Sacramento Ballet, and UNC Chapel Hill. In 2017 she became a founding member of the American Modern Opera Company (AMOC). She will premiere her first work for the Paris Opera in Spring 2023.
New Dialect is a contemporary dance practice based in Nashville, Tennessee. Banning Bouldin founded New Dialect out of a desire to foster a sustainable ecosystem for contemporary dance artists to live, learn, and collaborate in her hometown. New Dialect now offers workshops and residencies to professional and pre-professional dance artists and produces performances for the stage, the screen, and site-specific installations.
In July 2022, AMOC premiered a new production of Harawi at Festival d’Aix, an affecting interpretation of Olivier Messiaen’s song cycle that breaks open its explorations of love and death into a newly physicalized and theatrical dimension. AMOC’s 2022-2023 season will also see the world premiere of Bobbi Jene Smith’s Broken Theater, presented in partnership with New Dialect and Carolina Performing Arts; the New York premieres of Carolyn Chen’s How to Fall Apart and Anthony Cheung’s the echoing of tenses; and the world premiere of Comet Poppea at the Spoleto Festival USA, which includes an AMOC-commissioned opera by composer George Lewis.
Past projects include The No One’s Rose, a devised music-theater-dance piece; EASTMAN, a multi-dimensional performance piece contending with the life and work of Julius Eastman; a new arrangement of John Adams’s El Niño; and With Care and A Study on Effort, which have been produced at San Francisco’s ODC Theater, Toronto’s Luminato Festival, and elsewhere. CAGE, a production of John Cage’s music for prepared piano, was cited as the best recital of the year by The New York Times in 2018 and The Boston Globe in 2019. In its inaugural year, AMOC created the Run AMOC! Festival at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, MA. The company has appeared at the 92nd Street Y, Big Ears Festival, the Caramoor Festival, National Sawdust, The Clark Art Institute, and the San Diego Symphony. AMOC has been in residence at the Park Avenue Armory and Harvard University.
This performance is funded in part by a grant from South Arts in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and Tennessee Arts Commission.
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