Upcoming Shen Wei Dance Arts events -- free & open to the public unless otherwise indicated:

Shen Wei Dance Arts In Residence January 12 - 24:

Performances:

Re- (Part 1) and In Progress: Re- (Parts 2 & 3), Friday, January 23, 8 pm, Reynolds Theater
Re- (Part 1) and In Progress: Re- (Parts 2 & 3), Saturday, January 24, 8 pm, Reynolds Theater

Master Classes:

Wednesday, January 14, 4:25 - 6 pm, The Ark, with Kathleen Jewet, SWDA Rehearsal/Education Director
Thursday, January 15, 6 - 7:30 pm, The Ark, with Jessica Harris, SWDA Dancer
Tuesday, January 20, 6 - 7:30 pm, The Ark, with Sara Procopio, SWDA Artistic Associate

Open Rehearsals:

Friday, January 16, 5 - 6 pm, Page Auditorium
Saturday, January 17, 5 - 6 pm, Page Auditorium
Wednesday, January 21, 5 - 6 pm, Reynolds

Lecture/Demonstrations:

Wednesday, January 14, 11:40 - 12:55 pm, The Ark, Postmodern Dance, 1950 - 2000, with Shen Wei, SWDA Artistic Director, & Sara Procopio, SWDA Artistic Associate
Friday, January 16, 6:30 - 8:30 pm, location TBA, Duke Asian American Association Charity Kick-off with Shen Wei, $25, $15 Duke Students
Tuesday, January 20, 11:40 - 12:55 pm, The Ark, Dance Composition with Kathleen Jewett, SWDA Rehearsal/Education Director
Wednesday, January 21, 12 - 1 pm, Franklin Humanities Institute, Conversation with Shen Wei & Jennifer Brody, Professor of African American Studies

Tickets Available:
by phone: 919-684-4444
on the web: http://www.dukeperformances.org
in person: University Box Office on-campus in Duke's Bryan Center

January 2009:

Simone Dinnerstein - Schubert, Bach, Lasser, Beethoven
Friday, January 16, 8 pm, Reynolds Industries Theater in the Bryan Center

Piano Recital Series

Since Dinnerstein burst onto the scene with her widely touted debut recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations (2005), this 30-something Brooklyn native has produced "some of the most beautiful, sensitive, intelligent and manifestly sincere playing you're ever likely to hear"(Piano Magazine).

Otis Taylor, Don Vappie, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Corey Harris - Recapturing the Banjo
Thursday, January 22, 8 pm, Page Auditorium
Shuffle & Pick Series

Blues visionary Taylor is pursuing a radical project: to reclaim the lost history of an American instrument. With a lineup of mind-blowing bluesman (Hart & Harris) and jazz banjo virtuoso (Vappie), Taylor reasserts the black roots of an instrument traditionally associated with white culture. In performance, these masters enmesh tales of African-American life-"Ran So Hard the Sun Went Down" and Jimi Hendrix's "Hey Joe"-in the shifting chord changes of the banjo blues. "There may not be," claims Downbeat Magazine in a recent review, "a better roots album released this year or decade than Recapturing the Banjo."

Shen Wei Dance Arts - Re- (Part 1) & In Progress: Re- (Parts 2 & 3)
Friday & Saturday, January 23 & 24, 8 pm, Reynolds Industries Theater
Art/Politics/Now Series

This Chinese-born dynamo-called "one of the great artists of our time" by the Washington Post-will present his current major work Re- (Parts 1, 2 & 3). The triptych as a whole engages concepts of repetition and return as the pieces link geopolitical hot spots. The breathtaking Part 1, premiered at ADF, will be presented complete followed by the in-progress Re- (Parts 2 & 3). In Part 2, photographs of Angkor Wat frame haunting movements set to a sound collage of jungle noises and Cambodian folk music. Shen closes the program with a presentation of the bare bones movements and gestures that form the basis of the final piece of Re-, a meditation on the Silk Road.

Shen Wei in residence January 12 - 24.

Roby Lakatos - Devil's Fiddler
Sunday, January 25, 8 pm, Reynolds Industries Theater
Gypsy Series

Descended from János Bihari, "King of Gypsy Violinists," this "Devil's Fiddler" (as he's called) is a Gypsy mastermind, a virtuoso shape-shifter who cuts from jazz to classical to his own Hungarian folk idiom, and has the power, critics say, to make the violin sound like a new instrument.

Gabriela Montero - Improvisations
Friday, January 30, 8 pm, Reynolds Industries Theater

A staggeringly talented pianist recently nominated for a Grammy Award for her classical crossover album, this protégé of Martha Argerich asks for suggestions from the audience-from these she composes, on the spot, her own "poetic" and "scintillating" improvisations (NY Times).

Geri Allen Trio & Patricia Barber Quartet - Evolutions: The Mary Lou Williams Center's 25th Anniversary
Saturday, January 31, 8 pm, Reynolds Industries Theater

Twenty-five years after the founding of the Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture at Duke, two groundbreaking female artists celebrate the legacy of this jazz pioneer who was also Duke's first-ever artist in residence, from 1977 until her death in 1981. The daring Allen, who played Williams in Robert Altman's Kansas City (1996), performs Williams' Zodiac, a 12-part suite based on jazz greats and astrological signs. Barber, with the refined grace that characterizes her singing and piano play, performs her own meditation on stability and change, an 11-song cycle inspired by characters in Ovid's Metamorphoses.

Further Down the Road:

David Krakauer, Matt Haimovitz & DJ SoCalled - Akoka: After Messaien's Quartet for the End of Time
Saturday, February 7, 8 pm, Page Auditorium

First performed in a prison camp, Messaien's work is among the most elegant and shattering compositions of the modern era, testifying, all at once, to its great promise and to its most brutal failures. Focused on the Quartet's relevance to the contemporary moment, virtuoso musicians David Krakauer (clarinet) and Matt Haimovitz (cello) have created the bold, evening-length Akoka, which features a full performance of Messaien's masterpiece framed by two original compositions conceived by DJ SoCalled.

Alarm Will Sound - World Premier: 1969
Friday, February 13, 8 pm, Reynolds Industries Theater

"Überhip" and "nonchalantly virtuosic" (Entertainment Weekly, New York Magazine), this vigorous 20-member band, here in a weeklong residency, radiates "superbly controlled energy" (SJ Mercury News)-or, as the New Yorker's classical music critic says, "incontestably kicks ass." For this world premiere performance, the fearless classicists revisit a moment when politics, music, and protest converged. 1969 features bags of broken glass, memorial songs to MLK and RFK, and arrangements by Stockhausen, Stravinsky, Berio, and, magically, the Beatles ("Revolution 9").

Ciompi Quartet with Arturo Ciompi, clarinet; Michael Burns, bassoon; Andrew M. Mcafee, horn; Robbie Link, bass - Mozart, Janáček, Schubert
Saturday, February 14, 8 PM, Reynolds Industries Theater

The Ciompi Quartet invites a host of guests for a program featuring Mozart, Schubert, and the Moravian dynamo Leoš Janáček, whose work, influenced by Dvorák, incorporates elements of gypsy and Slovak folk.

Donald Byrd's Spectrum Dance Company - The Theater of Needless Talents
Thursday & Friday, February 19 & 20, 8 pm, Reynolds Industries Theater

Duke Performances co-commissioned this evening length project that meditates on art's role in a time of unspeakable political violence. Adapting art created or inspired by "detainees" in Terezin, a Czech camp where Jews were confined before extermination, Byrd's haunting piece combines dance, cabaret, and elliptical nods to Guantanamo to ask how art responds to state oppression. This is the work's East Coast premiere, and the company will be in a weeklong residency in Durham.

Simon Shaheen with Aswat Orchestra featuring Ibrahim Azzam, Sonia M'barek, Khalil Abonula & Rima Khcheich - World Premiere: Aswat (Voices): Celebrating the Gold Age of Arab Music
Thursday, March 5, 8 pm, Page Auditorium

This evening-length world premiere revisits a high point in Middle Eastern music, the 1920s to the 1950s, when both Arabic film and music thrived, creating a cultural moment as relevant today as ever. The Aswat Orchestra features a 15-piece orchestra of traditional Arabic instruments; stunning vocalists from Palestine, Tunisia, and Lebanon; and projected video of Arab musicals long thought to be lost. At the helm of this ground-breaking project rides Palestine-born Simon Shaheen whose work NPR calls "staggering" and "full of passion."

Angela Hewitt - Bach: Goldberg Variations

Saturday, March 7, 8 PM, Reynolds Industries Theater

Hewitt is simply "the pre-eminent Bach pianist of our time" (Guardian), "the pianist who will define Bach performance on the piano for years to come" (Stereophile). Her epic, 18-cd recording of Bach's complete keyboard works is simply "one of the recording glories of our age" (Sunday Times).

Zakir Hussain & Pandit Sharma - Maestros in Concert

Sunday, March 29, 8 PM, Page Auditorium

"A living genius" (NY Times), Hussain is the world's authority on the tabla, a percussion instrument made of hardwood, goatskin, and silver, while Sharma has enraptured audiences for 50 years with his skills on the santur, or hammered dulcimer. The two titans perform a program of North Indian classical compositions.

Béla Fleck with Vusi Mahlasela, Toumani Diabaté, John Kitime, Anania Ngoliga, D'Gary & Mario -Throw Down Your Heart: Béla Fleck's African Project

Tuesday, April 7, 8 PM, Page Auditorium

Unrivaled master of the American banjo, Fleck is also a historian of his craft. He recently crossed the Atlantic to trace the roots of this instrument so often associated with the white South, finding analogues in the stringed gourds and percussive lutes of western Sub-Saharan Africa. At Duke, Fleck and his guests-Vusi Mahlasela (guitar/vocals) from South Africa, Toumani Diabaté (kora) from Mali, John Kitime (guitar) and Anania Ngoliga (multi-instrumentalist) from Tanzania, and D'Gary (guitar) and Mario (percussion) from Madagascar-play songs from the project that document that experience and testify with sublime dexterity to the African soul of American string music.

Ciompi Quartet - Hindemith, Bartók, Shostakovich
Saturday, April 11, 8 PM, Nelson Music Room in the East Duke Building

The Quartet addresses its craft to a program that includes Bartók's String Quartet No. 2 (1917), the first work the Hungarian master composed after two years of devoting himself to the study of folk music.

Rachid Taha - North African Roots Rock
Thursday, April 16, 8 pm, Page Auditorium

A rock star to the core, Taha mixes raï, techno, rock, and punk to sing Arabic wah-wah tunes about exile and racism. The combination of traditional and electronic instruments results in a sound like the Clash being backed by bendir, the North African snare drum.