CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Choreographer and visual artist Jonah Bokaer is exploring themes of dislocation as he develops two opera productions – one a canonical tale of Middle Eastern/Northern African reclamation, and the other a modern, abstract work about an “unspeakable home.”
Bokaer recently spent a two-week residency at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts as part of the center’s Intensive Development Lab – a program funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which offers emerging and established artists space and resources to develop a new work. Artists-in-residence work with “Level 21” theater students who are studying design, technology or management.
“Neither” is a collaboration between composer Morton Feldman and poet and playwright Samuel Beckett that premiered in 1977 at Teatro dell’Opera di Roma. It is a monodrama opera for solo soprano and orchestra. The libretto is a poem by Beckett in which he writes of being “between two lit refuges” and refers to the “unspeakable home.”
“Dido and Aeneas” is a 1687 opera by Henry Purcell, telling of the wounded warrior Aeneas who falls in love with Dido, queen of Carthage, but must flee Tunisia and his lover to fulfill the founding of Rome.
Bokaer said the story reminded him of “the waves of human migration from Greece, Turkey, the Middle East and North Africa. The arrival of Aeneas in Carthage after the fall of Troy sounds hauntingly like what we read about every day. He’s kind of a wounded-warrior figure. Perhaps at the time these events occurred, he was seeking refuge? I think it’s very rich for revisiting this work through that lens.”
In Bokaer’s versions of the two productions, the dancers are all of Middle Eastern or North African ancestry. He wants the operas to raise questions about the unrest in the region and about America’s interactions there.
Bokaer called the two operas an “iconoclastic pairing,” but said it is important to note that they will be performed by the same soprano and within the same scenography by Bokaer, developed at the Krannert Center residency.
“To go from ‘Dido and Aeneas’ to ‘Neither’ is an aesthetic adventure, from Baroque music to modern music,” he said. “‘Neither’ is a challenging work. It’s austere and restrained. It’s technically challenging, vague and atmospheric, as well as historically hard to program. I hope that our thematic pairing here will make the work more accessible to wider audiences – hopefully one day with live music.”
A large focus for Bokaer while at Krannert Center was developing the visual installation elements, which include items of various states of transparency, such as mesh and plexiglass panels. While in residence at Krannert Center, Bokaer uncovered an essay on the subject of plexiglass and translucence by Michelangelo Pistoletto, the Arte Povera icon who designed the sets and costumes for the 1977 premier of “Neither.”
The scenery is held up with cables affixed to lighting booms rather than overhead rigging. Bokaer has invitations for the production to tour internationally, and he wants to stage it in outdoor amphitheaters in the Mediterranean basin, so the stage in the Tryon Festival Theatre at Krannert Center was a mock-up of what an open-air setting would demand, he said.
The two productions will premiere in the 2018-19 season – hopefully at Krannert Center, Bokaer said.
A collaborative production by Bokaer, visual artist Daniel Arsham, and singer and producer Pharrell Williams will be at Krannert Center on Nov. 16. “Rules of the Game” was co-commissioned by Krannert Center and is a work for eight dancers, inspired by the play of the same title by Luigi Pirandello. Williams composed an original score, his first for a live dance and theater production, which was arranged, conducted and co-written by David Campbell, and Arsham created a multimedia setting.
The November program includes two other collaborative pieces by Bokaer and Arsham – “Why Patterns,” set to music by Feldman and featuring 10,000 pingpong balls, and “RECESS,” a solo dance work with a score by Greek composer Stavros Gasparatos.