UCLA's Center for the Art of Performance Presents FOUR QUARTETS
Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot’s mysterious and beautiful masterpiece, is a rumination on time and timelessness and is now prized as one of the 20th century’s most stunning literary achievements. Seventy-five years after its publication, Eliot’s poetry cycle has inspired three astonishing contemporary artists to join forces in a ravishing union of dance, music, painting, and poetry. American choreographer Pam Tanowitz, legendary Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, and American modernist painter Brice Marden have created a vast and thrilling performance from Eliot’s meditations on past and present, time and space, movement and stillness. Joining them is Tony Award-nominated actress Kathleen Chalfant (Angels in America, Wit) performing Eliot’s text live. This unprecedented collaboration, the first authorized performance based on Four Quartets, promises to be one of the must-see events of the season.
"UCLA's Center for the Art of Performance (CAP UCLA) presents Pam Tanowitz/Brice Marden/Kaija Saariaho's Four Quartets on Saturday, February 15 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, February 16, at 3 p.m. at Royce Hall. Tickets starting at $28 are available now at cap.ucla.edu, 310-825-2101, and Royce Hall box office.Based on T.S. Eliot's poems Four Quartets, the choreographer Pam Tanowitz along with painter Brice Marden and composer Kaija Saariaho have created a sublime new dance work.
The poems are read aloud by actress Kathleen Chalfant while the choreography builds the outer framework and the new score by Saariaho (performed by The Knights) accentuates the connotation of the words. Marden's work is in the form of four paintings that comprise the scenic design by Clifton Taylor. The 10 dancers perform together in solos and duets wearing billowing pale green and off-white costumes by Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung.
This is Tanowitz's second season in a row with CAP UCLA, but this time with a piece featuring her own choreography: last April she danced as part of the Merce Cunningham centennial event Night of 100 Solos.
Tanowitz has a reputation for fine footwork, but she has surpassed even herself with the choreography for Four Quartets. Unlike other choreographers, her exploration of dance-making is made with an unflinchingly post-modern treatment of the classical dance vocabulary. Tanowitz's credits and accolades are extensive, her latest came in May of 2019 when she received an Herb Alpert Award in the Arts."— BWW News Desk, Jan. 9, 2020
This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the Broadway World website.
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