New Jersey arts and entertainment news, features and event previews.

(Montclair, NJ) — peak performance held its world premiere at Montclair State University night fallschoreographed and directed by Troy Schumacher (New York City Ballet and Ballet) with a story and lyrics by Karen Russell (Swamplandia!, the vampire of the lemon grove), music and lyrics by Ellis Ludwig-Leone (San Fermin), February 9-12, 2023. Written for nine dancers, eight singers, and a chamber ensemble, this interdisciplinary work fuses opera, dance, and musical theater to create a new mythology in the run-down dreamland of contemporary America.

Across America, people on the brink of despair began to have the same nightmare. A song never leaves their heads – a piece of music that is absolutely beautiful. Its victims included Felisberto Robles, a teenager in Queens, New York, whose boyfriend had recently died. Night after night, Felice dreamed that three women were transformed into terrifying birds. They sing to him in his sleep, beckoning him to join them at “Nightfall,” a Florida roadside attraction built around a spectacular grotto, “the eerie home of echoes in the world. Eagerly thinking Knowing why the song haunts him — and desperate to hear it again — Felis heads to Night Falls Grotto. When he arrives, he discovers he’s not alone.

In a group of patients from all walks of life across America — an athlete whose spirit is shattered by a very public defeat, a mother who lost her daughter to drug addiction, a lost boa constrictor hunter —night falls Depicts the transformation of atomized individuals into real communities. Through dances that dramatize empathetic leaps between bodies, and music that conveys the polarities of surrender and resistance, night falls Demonstrating the inner strength of art, enabling us to withstand the abyss of loneliness.

Jedediah Wheeler, Artistic Director of PEAK Performances for the 2022-23 season, who recently announced his retirement from Montclair State University at the end of 2022, said, “It’s exciting to discover these three talented artists are creating together for the world for the first time. .. imagine the possibilities. Takes my breath away. That was the pinnacle!

A work started in 2017 by Schumacher and Ludwig-Leone—both lovers of Karen Russell’s work, who initially didn’t know the author and contacted a “middleman” who invited her to join the project— —night falls In its thoroughly collaborative creation, it sets out to emulate its own vision of how empathy can enrich us by bringing us into each other’s stories and expressive languages. Russell, Ludwig-Leone and Schumacher find themselves working in the same artistic idiocy – full of wit, levity and lyricism – to apply to their evocation of life surrounding the void.

reflect on how night falls Revolving around a battle between the lure of despair and self-destruction (voiced by the captivating appeal of the Sirenettes’ songs) and the potential to resist and restore life, Karen Russell says, “Ellis and I still struggle with the fact that And lol it meant I had to ask him, ‘Can you write something so hauntingly beautiful that people drop everything and surrender to despair? And then can you write an even more beautiful piece of music To remind them of who they are, to reinvigorate their aspirations in life and their sense of purpose and possibility? He did. She added Schumacher, “He made people’s process of dealing with difficulties concrete, and turned their private emotions into The poetry of the movement and dramatizes the ways in which strangers develop a common vocabulary as they share life stories. This ‘leap of empathy’ became a force and a miracle in Troy’s choreography, and it was the driving force of our show. “

Ellis Ludwig-Leone added: “That’s what we were all about making this piece. Making music for me has been taking Karen’s words and stories and finding a musical way to incorporate them – incorporating their intoxicating wit , humor, pathos, and a wide cocktail of emotions.Our actors are also played by a diverse group of people—singers from the opera tradition, singers from the theater tradition, members of San Fermin with a background in indie and folk music. The characters end up in this grotto where they can only talk to each other. If America is reflected here as a country of suffering, then it’s also a place where we can’t communicate. In terms of choreography, music, and lyrics, we’re asking, ‘People How do they find common language, and how do they create ligatures and bonds that unite us through our pain, rather than tear us apart?’”

This night fallsThe conceit of center stage—a double cast of characters, with dancers representing each character occupying the lower stage, while singers voice them on the upper fringe—reflects how desperation alienates characters even from themselves, while allowing full Artistic devotion and dexterity in every element of the work. Troy Schumacher explains: “One of the advantages of this double cast is that it shows the difference between how you see yourself and how you appear to be. For this drama to work, the dancer has to be fully engaged into their bodies, and the singers have to use their voices. Separating them into these different planes, as Karen does in the script, is brilliant: metaphorically, the voices of these characters have been ripped from them Dropped. When casting, we wanted to find two people for each character: not someone who looked alike, but two complementary interpretations that created a character and brought out their essence.”

The state of Florida in this essay operates as an “American Concentration,” as Russell explores in her acclaimed book. night falls Contemporary American mythology is found in this place, where people from all over the country witness the beauty and wildness of kitschy commodification, where kitschy infrastructure gilds the sublime—in an ecosystem that keenly experiences the greater Consequences of society’s mistreatment of nature.Harold García V’s paintings show the beauty of the Everglades at the same time as ecological degradation, resulting in night falls aesthetic. Like the desperate people lured to this abandoned attraction, night falls In its background, a beautiful and complex world on a cliff is discovered.

night falls Team includes Troy Schumacher (choreographer/director), Karen Russell (screenwriter/co-lyricist), Ellis Ludwig-Leone (composer/co-lyricist), Jason Ardizzone-West (set designer), Kenny Duecker (associate set designer ), Karen Young (costume designer), Amith Chandrashaker (co-lighting designer), Abigail Hoke-Brady (co-lighting designer), Harold Garcia V (contributing visual artist), Hannah Tran (projection), Garth MacAlavey (sound design teacher) and Naomi Wu (Music Director).

show schedule

performance night falls Thursday, February 9 and Friday, February 10 at 7:30 pm, Saturday, February 11 at 8:00 pm, and Sunday, February 12 at 3:00 pm at the Alexander Cassel Theater (1 Normal Ave, Montclair, NJ) held. Tickets: $50 | $40. 973-655-5112 or PEAKperfs.org

All Montclair State University undergraduate students receive a prepaid airline ticket with valid ID.

Troy Schumacher is a Basie-nominated American choreographer, dancer and director residing in New York, NY. His kinetic aesthetic draws on the artists he collaborates with to produce fresh, unexpected results. He is a soloist with the New York City Ballet and founder of BalletCollective. He was hailed as a “visionary artist” T Magazine and is “one of the most acclaimed choreographers of his generation” (PBS). Schumacher’s work has been exhibited at Lincoln Center, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City Ballet, Martha Graham Dance Company, Performa, Danspace Project, Guggenheim Works & Craft, Guggenheim Bilbao, Monte Carlo Clare State University’s PEAK Show, Joyce Theatre, Savannah Music Festival, NYU Scobo Center and more. He has collaborated with many artists, including Jeff Koons, Karen Russell, Zaria Forman, Tom Brown, Ken Liu, Ellis Ludwig-Leon, Maddie · Ziegler and David Sal.In addition to live performances, Schumacher has choreographed numerous art, fashion and commercial shoots, including for Google, Sony PlayStation, Capezio, HP, Aritzia, CR Fashion Book, Tom Ford and New York TimesDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, Schumacher wrote, directed and produced the first live world premiere ballet in the United States: a one-act natural history and a full-length Nutcracker in Wethersfield.

Karen Russell is the author of three collections of stories, most recently orange world and other storiesnovella sleep donationand novels wetlands!, New York Public Library Cub Award winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist.She won the 2018 and 2012 National Magazine Fiction Awards and was selected for new yorkerThe “20 under 40” list and the National Book Foundation’s 5 under 35 awards. She has received a MacArthur Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Bard Prize for Fiction, and the Shirley Jackson Award. She was born and raised in Miami, Florida and now lives with her family in Portland, Oregon.

be praised new yorkerJia Tolentino’s music “a knack for expressing beauty and crisis at the same time” Ellis Ludwig-Leon Exist on the tiny edge between excitement and fear. Ludwig-Leone gained international attention as a songwriter for the renowned band San Fermin, and over the past decade he has been balancing his work as a songwriter with a strong career writing for many of today’s contemporary classical luminaries. The 2022-23 season brings premieres and album releases we hope it’s fakeFeaturing the Grammy Award-winning Attacca Quartet and soprano Eliza Bagg (house full of teeth); and the premiere night falls. This season will also premiere daphne, a musical by the Brooklyn Youth Choir; the premiere and subsequent European tour of a new work by harpist Lavinia Meijer and violaist Nadia Sirota; and choreographer Danielle Rowe and the Grand Rapids Ballet (Grand Rapids Ballet) debuted a new work. Ludwig-Leone and his bandmate Allen Tate are founding partners of Better Company Records, a Brooklyn-based record label with an emphasis on collaboration. He is a resident physician at McDowell and the Banff Arts Center.

peak performance is a project of Montclair State University’s Office of Arts + Cultural Planning and has been honored by the New Jersey Arts Council, having previously received an Award for Excellence in the Arts and Designation for Significant Impact. Wiley Hausam was recently appointed Director. He will take office in January 2023.

night falls Developed and produced by BalletCollective, Inc. and PEAK Performances of Montclair State University. night falls Developed during a residency at Project Springboard: Developing Dance Musicals 2018.

This season of PEAK Performances was made possible in part by funding from the Alexander Cassell Theater Endowment Fund, PEAK Performances Patrons and the New Jersey Arts Council.