Organized by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra (DSO)
DSO Music Director: Jaap Van Zweden
DSO President & CEO: Jonathan Martin
SOLUNA Co-Founder/Advisor: Anna-Sophia Van Zweden
Curator-at-Large: Muriel Quancard
SOLUNA 2016 (May 16-June 5) transformed the experience of live music by incorporating visual and performing arts to create unique provocative events. In its second year, the festival featured an innovative line-up of new works, including commissioned projects from visual artists Anton Ginzburg, Mai-Thu Perret and Paola Pivi and a ground-breaking collaboration between Daniel Arsham, choreographer Jonah Bokaer and musician Pharrell Williams.
The theme for the festival was “Myth &Legend.” The power of myths has fascinated thinkers throughout the 20th Century. The disciplines of psychoanalysis, anthropology and semiology brought a new understanding of the origin and function of myths, thus revealing their psychological and social impact on contemporary societies. Following this connection, artists have been exploring the infinite possibilities of mythology applied to their work.
Cutting-edge collaborations across classical music, dance, visual and performance arts explored myths, legends and folktales, occasionally creating new ones. Each project involved extensive interplay between artists, musicians, performers and institutional partners.
— Muriel Quancard
Muriel would like to extend a special thank you to Anna-Sophia Van Zweden, Jaap Van Zweden, Jonathan Martin, the gifted musicians of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and their dedicated team including Gillian Friedman, Peter Czornyj, Chris Munoz, Tom Brekhus, Sean Kelly, Denise Mc Govern, Chris Shull, Kristi Cooper, Megan Teel, Michelle Burns, Tab Boyles, Arnica Ziller, Cyndi Phelps, Debi Pena, Jamie Allen, Logan Heinsch and Sarah Israel for their collaboration.
SOLUNA Festival Opening Performance, May 17, 2016
Rules of the Game
Choreography by Jonah Bokaer
Scenography by Daniel Arsham
Score by Pharrell William
Arranged and conducted by David Campbell
Musicians of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra
Curated and produced in collaboration with Charles Fabius
Other works: Recess, Why Pattern
Winspear Opera House
Co-curated with Anna-Sophia Van Zweden
Headlining the festival’s opening night on May 17 is the world premiere of Rules Of The Game, a multimedia performance by artist Daniel Arsham and choreographer Jonah Bokaer featuring an original score by Pharrell Williams, arranged and conducted by David Campbell for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.
With Rules Of The Game, the long-standing creative partnership between Daniel Arsham and Jonah Bokaer reaches new heights, while pop musician Pharrell Williams and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra enter an unprecedented collaboration. This work builds from Bokaer’s current Guggenheim Fellowship, and previous exploration of cultural mythology in works such as Other Myths, with Arsham’s large-scale scenography adding a conception of time as a foundation for contemporary urban myth.
Daniel Arsham is represented by Perrotin
Jonah Boaker is represented by David Lieberman Artists’ Representatives and Julie George & Damien Valette
This project came to life thanks to the hard work of the maverick teams at Chez Bushwick : Kirstin Kapustik, Natasha Katerinopoulos, Laure Dubois... at Daniel Arsham's studio: Meghan Clohessy, Nathan Abbe... at Film the Future: Courtney Andrialis, Ben Louis Nicolas... and iamOther: Loic Villepontoux, Mike Larson, Cynthia “Cactus” Lu.
Photo by Tracy Martin
ReMix series: Myth & Legend, May 20 & 21, 2016
World Premiere of a new film by Anton Ginzburg
Musicians of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra
Guest soloist Anne-Marie McDermott
Dallas City Performance Hall
Co-curated with Anna-Sophie Van Zweden
The second annual SOLUNA festival extends the work we began in 2015 through a new video commissioned from Anton Ginzburg for the ReMix concerts on May 20 and 21.
“Turo” is set to Waldweben by Wagner and Pohjola’s Daughter by Sibelius, two symphonic pieces anchored in Norse mythology. Divided into two chapters, the video employs vestiges of Russian Constructivist architecture as a stage for past utopias. Exploring various methods of representation since the Romantic era, the video’s structure combines cinematic approach and digital abstraction.
Ma'am, May 24, 2016
Performance by Paola Pivi
Musicians of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra
Exhibition curator: Justine Ludwig, assistant curator: Lilia Kudelia
Dallas Contemporary
Co-curated with Anna-Sophie Van Zweden
This year, SOLUNA ventures into new territory by situating live music within exhibitions of visual art.
At Dallas Contemporary, Paola Pivi’s whimsical exhibition, Ma’am, will be the site of a series of musical interventions in which audiences mingle with a very special group of temporary museum inhabitants — a sleuth of colorful feathered bears, which reference many different sources including Native American folklore.
Paola Pivi is represented by Perrotin and Massimo de Carlo Gallery
Figures, June 2, 2016
Performance by Mai-Thu Perret, vocals by Tamara Barrett-Herrin, music by Beatrice Dillon
Exhibition curator: Jed Morse, assistant curator: Leigh Arnold
Nasher Sculpture Center
Co-curated with Jed Morse
At the Nasher Sculpture Center, Mai-Thu Perret will stage two performances to coincide with her solo exhibition Sightings: Mai-Thu Perret. These include her recent work Figures, on June 2, and a newly-commissioned work, o.
Figures reflects the artist’s research into woman’s role in the development of computer technology and the writings of Indian author and former computer programmer, Vikram Chandra, whose 2013 book Mirrored Mind: My Life in Letters and Code describes the aesthetics of code writing and the connections between art and technology. Further influences include Perret’s readings on meditation and the tantric practices of Kashmir Shaivism, as well as her fascination with American Utopias and the various religious and non-religious movements in the U.S. during the 19th and 20th centuries. These wide-ranging and diverse interests culminate in Figures, which features a life-size marionette, whose body is animated by dancer Anja Schmidt. During the performance, the two figures (dancer and puppet) enact an elaborate narrative that involves an Indian mystic, a 19th-century American Shaker, a 1950s computer programmer, an Artificial Intelligence, and a journalist. The performance begins with the dancer and puppet as separate entities, and as it goes on, the two gradually merge then disappear, to be replaced on stage by a character with a typewriter (the journalist, played by Perret), who is typing text that describes the Artificial Intelligence. The staging of the piece recalls the Japanese style of puppetry known as bunraku, in which the manipulators appear on stage alongside the puppets, providing a parallel performance of real and artificial bodies in motion. Vocals sung by Barnett-Herrin relate the script of the performance that is set to percussive beats played by musician Beatrice Dillon.
Mai-Thu Perret is represented by David Kordansky Gallery.
O, June 4, 2016
Performance by Mai-Thu Perret
Musicians and Dancers of SMU Meadows School of the Arts
Exhibition curator: Jed Morse, assistant curator: Leigh Arnold
Nasher Sculpture Center
Co-curated with Jed Morse
Over the past decade, the artist’s installations, paintings, and sculptures have often made use of fluid narratives centered on mythical utopian communities organized around feminist and modernist principles.
On June 4, an ensemble of performers and percussionists further beguile visitors extending the already ethereal atmosphere of Perret’s show.
Mai-Thu Perret is represented by David Kordansky Gallery.