The Montana turkeys are flying the coop once again.
Next week, a group of 50 student and professional dancers, instructors, musicians and organizers from Missoula’s Rocky Mountain Ballet Theatre will embark on yet another international journey, this time traveling to Austria, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. The month-long tour will be just the latest adventure for the local troupe, which has previously taken its dancers to Italy, China, and other far-flung reaches of the world.
Before the dancers leave town, though, they’ll be sharing a little bit of what the trip is all about, with a performance next Tuesday, June 7, at the company’s headquarters off Brooks Street. The performance in the small south-side studio will highlight several of the works that will later be seen by audiences of as many as 8,000 during the company’s whirwind 10-city, four-country tour. [Read More...]
Like other matters of the spirit, intuition doesn’t get much credence in American culture today. Heidi Junkersfeld knows this quite well. So when the Missoula artist speaks of the inspiration – indeed, urgency – behind the upcoming production by the performance-art troupe Open Field Artists, she chooses her words carefully.
“It really feels obvious to me that this is the time for this to happen,” she says. “I can tell you stuff about prophesies or visions; but in our culture, a lot of people view those subjects as sort of out-there. If you put those things into art that evokes rather than tells, you feel it and the audience will undoubtedly feel it, and it’s somehow safer or more acceptable to address that way.
“The arts are powerful in that way,” she continues. “That’s why I believe we need the arts – art that moves our stuff.”
If that seems rather vague, what’s clear is that plenty of stuff moves in “First Breath,” a collaborative multi-media performance that opened Thursday night at the Missoula Community Co-Op. [Read More...]
I wrote a preview of UM’s upcoming production of “Crazy For You,” which you can read below; time’s a wastin’, though, because today only, you can get two tickets for the price of one through the Missoulian’s Deal of the Day. Here’s that link; and here’s that preview… [Read More...]
It’s that time of year again, when every self-appointed critic and self-respecting media outlet looks back and ponders the best (and worst) of the year. We’re no different around here at the Missoulian. On Christmas Day, the Missoulian will publish an issue of the Entertainer devoted largely to the year in music, film, [...]
For those who live in Western Montana, the decline of Glacier National Park’s namesake glaciers is old news. Next week, old news becomes new art, when the Boise-based Trey McIntyre Project comes to Missoula for a performance of “The Sun Road,” a multimedia contemporary ballet production that draws its inspiration from the transformation of our backyard National Park.
Created as part of a series of dance works commissioned by Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts in Vienna, Va., “The Sun Road” premiered at Wolf Trap in August of 2009. Since then, it has been performed across the country, with prior Montana stops in Billings and Helena.
Blending live dance with filmed footage of dancers performing at various locations within the park, the production showcases the innovative work that has made the Trey McIntyre Project one of the new millenium’s most celebrated dance troupes.
For next week’s Missoula audience, “The Sun Road” should be a particularly compelling entrée into McIntyre’s choreography and worldview. [Read More...]
First Night, Missoula’s annual alcohol-free New Year’s Eve celebration of the arts, has put out the final call for artists to participate in this year’s festivities. All performers get paid, so if you’re looking to make money rather than spend it on New Year’s Eve, maybe this is your answer….Click through for the press release with information about how to apply. [Read More...]
You are a mountain, a tree, a riffle. The flattest plain, fence posts receding, wheat. You are people, you are a place, you are time. You are Montana.
Such was the challenge, abstract as it may be, set before the choreographers and dancers who have, over the course of four years, assembled “The Montana Suite.” Bringing together the efforts of four nationally renowned choreographers and four Montana-based composers, the people and landscapes of four distinct regions of Montana, tens of thousands of dollars, and countless weeks of work by this state’s only professional modern dance troupe, “The Montana Suite” is by far the most ambitious modern dance project in the history of this state.
And now, it’s finally all on one stage, at one time. (See the end of this post for some video samples, as well as excerpted quotes from some of the choreographers) [Read More...]
This weekend, at the Downtown Dance Collective, there’ll be a fundraiser to help our local professional modern dance group, Headwaters Dance Company, raise funds for an upcoming tour of the Montana Suite, an ambitious program that’s been in the works for years. I’ll be writing more about the Montana Suite in upcoming weeks for the newspaper; but if you’re looking for something fun to do this weekend, this looks like a good time… [Read More...]
Unlike some people, I’ll be rooting hard for the Griz to win the national championship tonight. But there’s other entertainment worth catching this weekend. Also tonight, Garden City Ballet opens its annual run of The Nutcracker, with our own Mayor making a guest appearance. Then, on Saturday and Sunday, the Metropolitan Opera’s Live [...]
Created as part of a series of dance works commissioned by Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts in Vienna, Va., “The Sun Road” premiered at Wolf Trap in August of 2009. Since then, it has been performed across the country, with prior Montana stops in Billings and Helena.
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