Shen Wei Dance Arts
Music by Morton Feldman
Libretto by Samuel Beckett
Conceived and Choreographed by Shen Wei
Celebrated choreographer and painter Shen Wei (Park Avenue Armory, 2011; 2008 Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony) makes his much-anticipated BAM debut with this danced realization of Morton Feldman’s 1977 anti-opera for orchestra and soprano. With a sphinxlike 16-line libretto by Samuel Beckett, Neither folds 11 dancers into Feldman’s cavernous score, setting Shen Wei’s painterly choreography amid massive moving set pieces and luminous visuals of his own design. Bodies flare, sharply and urgently, then settle together into intricate tableaux, oscillating—like Beckett’s libretto—in the gaps between light and shadow, departure and perpetual return.
Concept, choreography, set, and costume design by Shen Wei
Lighting design by Jennifer Tipton
Projection design by Rocco DiSanti
Neither is commissioned by BAM and co-commissioned by the Performing Arts Center at Purchase College.
Support for the creation of Neither was provided with lead funding from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund; the US-China Cultural Institute, a Cultural Associate of the Committee of 100, Shirley Young, Chair; the SHS Foundation, the Howard Gilman Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional institutional support was provided by the Irwin S. Scherzer Foundation, the Harkness Foundation for Dance, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and La Fondazione I Teatri di Reggio Emilia (Italy).
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