BAM 2015 Next Wave Festival announced: Other Lives, Kid Koala, My Brightest Diamond, Miranda July & more

photo: Other Lives at MHOW in 2012 (more by Jonathan McPhail)

The annual BAM Next Wave Festival returns in 2015 from September 16 – December 20 with multiple events in dance, music, opera, performance art, and theater.

There’s a few cool things on the music front, including producer Kid Koala (of Deltron 3030 and other projects) presenting an adaptation of his graphic novel, Nufonia Must Fall, from September 17-19 at BAM Harvey Theater. The event description reads:

Directed by the Oscar-nominated production designer K.K. Barrett (Her, Marie Antoinette, Lost in Translation, Being John Malkovich) the story centers around a lonesome, music-obsessed, headphones-sporting robot on the verge of obsolescence who falls in love with a winsome office worker.

After a chance encounter, their precarious courtship unfolds via real-time filming of more than a dozen miniature stage settings and a cast of meticulously-crafted puppets. Kid Koala and the dynamic Canadian ensemble, the Afiara Quartet, provide the live score for piano, strings, and turntables, creating an unforgettably heartwarming performance experience that provides a fresh look at contemporary relationships, technology, and existential relevance.

Another one is Portland indie band Other Lives (who recently put out a new album) presenting the world premiere of Reconfiguration: An Evening with Other Lives on October 9 and 10 at BAM Howard Gilman Opera House . Here’s details:

True to its title, Reconfiguration: An Evening with Other Lives reconceives the acclaimed indie rock band’s live show as an immersive theatrical experience helmed by Steppenwolf Theatre Company cofounder Terry Kinney in this world premiere collaborative work. Other Lives’ Jesse Tabish, Jonathan Mooney, Josh Onstott, Daniel Hart, and Danny Reish will perform songs from their most recent album, Rituals, along with previous releases, while Kinney crafts an engrossing audio-visual narrative inspired by the band’s lyrics and Oklahoma roots.

And jazz composer Darcy James Argue is premiering his new piece Real Enemies with Isaac Butler, Peter Nigrini, and the 18-piece Secret Society ensemble from November 18-21 at BAM Harvey Theater. Details:

Grammy Award-nominated composer Darcy James Argue and his acclaimed 18-member jazz ensemble Secret Society return to BAM with Real Enemies–a multimedia work that explores American conspiracy theories in 12 vignettes. Using both contemporary and historical stories of both real and imagined plots, Real Enemies will build a new conspiracy theory on stage.

Featuring a series of short films by Peter Nigrini, broadcast on multiple surfaces designed by Maruti Evans, Real Enemies creates connections and mini-narratives between disparate pieces of information. The work’s narrative, by Isaac Butler, is drawn from declassified government papers, conspiracy documentaries, and historical sources–fusing a final collage of pictures, multiple channels of simultaneously-broadcast film, and live music performed by Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society.

One of the opera events has My Brightest Diamond frontwoman Shara Worden teaming up with Andrew Ondrejcak and Baroque Orchestration X for the US premiere of You Us We All from November 11-14 at BAM Harvey Theater. The description reads:

Singer and composer Shara Worden partners with writer/director/designer Andrew Ondrejcak to create this contemporary opera for five singers and a baroque chamber ensemble. YOU US WE ALL is inspired by the 17th-century court masques, with characters, lyrics, music, costumes, sets, and staging
all fractured through a contemporary lens. The explicitly allegorical characters–Death, Hope, Virtue, and Love–are thrust into our world, where they negotiate mundane everyday lives: going to the gym, obsessing over celebrities, fantasizing the life-that-could-be, etc–until Time comes along and tears everything away.

The 2015 BAM Next Wave Festival also includes a performance art event with Miranda July and many more.

Tickets go on sale June 8 to members and June 15 to the general public. Tickets for individual shows go on sale August 3 to members and August 10 to the general public. Check out the full list of events below.

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2015 BAM Next Wave Festival

Dance
Rice………………….Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan, Lin Hwai-min
TAPE………………….K. Kvarnström & Co/Kulturhuset City Theatre Stockholm
Dream’d in a Dream……Seán Curran Company, Ustatshakirt Plus
Umusuna: Memories Before History…….Sankai Juku, Ushio Amagatsu
Hagoromo…………….International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), American Opera Projects,
Wendy Whelan, Jock Soto
Beyond Time…………U-Theatre
Yimbégré……………..Souleymane Badolo
Continu……………….Sasha Waltz & Guests
Walking with ‘Trane…Urban Bush Women, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Samantha Speis
The Hard Nut…………Mark Morris Dance Group, Colin Fowler, MMDG Music Ensemble

Music
Nufonia Must Fall……Kid Koala, The Afiara Quartet, K.K. Barrett
COLLAPSE………………Timur and the Dime Museum
Reconfiguration: An Evening with Other Lives……Other Lives, Rebecca Habel, Terry
Kinney
All Vows………………Maya Beiser
Epiphany: A Circle of Life………………VisionIntoArt, Young People’s Chorus of NYC,
Francisco J. Núñez
Real Enemies………..Darcy James Argue, Secret Society

Opera
Refuse the Hour………William Kentridge, Peter Galison
YOU US WE ALL………Shara Worden, Andrew Ondrejcak, B.O.X. (Baroque
Orchestration X)

Performance Art
New Society…………..Miranda July
More Up a Tree……… de Serpa Soares, Sussman, and White; Performa

Physical Theater
Tabac Rouge…………James Thierrée, Compagnie de Hanneton
Hallo……………………..Martin Zimmermann
Opus………………….Circa, Debussy String Quartet

Theater
Antigone…………….Barbican and Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, Ivo van Hove,
Anne Carson
17 Border Crossings….Thaddeus Phillips, Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental
Helen Lawrence………….Canadian Stage, Stan Douglas, Chris Haddock
texts&beheadings/ElizabethR … Compagnia de’ Colombari, Karin Coonrod
The Exalted………….Carl Hancock Rux, Theo Bleckmann, Anne Bogart
Savannah Bay……Marguerite Duras; Théâtre de l’Atelier, Paris; Didier Bezace
Steel Hammer…….. Julia Wolfe and SITI Company, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Anne Bogart
Alas, the Nymphs…..John Jahnke, Hotel Savant
Sancho: An Act of Remembrance……Paterson Joseph, Simon Godwin