International Festival Of Arts & Ideas Tickets Are Now Available

NEW HAVEN — Tickets went on sale this week for the 12th Annual Festival of Arts & Ideas.

From Saturday, June 9, through Saturday, June 23, the festival will feature premieres of dance, theater and musical events, showcase internationally acclaimed artists and include a number of a variety of family-friendly performances and community events. The arts programs of the festival are complemented by the Ideas component, a series of stimulating discussions, thought-provoking debates and engaging seminars hosted by today’s leading thinkers, writers and speakers.

Executive Director of the festival this year is Mary Lou Aleskie.

This summer, festival audiences will experience a broadened range of events originating from across the country and around the globe. The festival has gathered a number of artists and thinkers who are actively revolutionizing their art form and, in turn, the world around them. With performances that have emerged from rich national traditions, the artists share the past and offer us a glimpse at the modern artistic styles that are influencing the countries they represent.

The festival’s commitment to expanding its offerings of dance will allow audiences to experience internationally acclaimed dance companies in performances that range from the Romantic era of French classical ballet to the contemporary dance aesthetic of the Russian provinces, and reflect the modern influences of dancers from around the globe – Haiti, Italy, India, West Africa, Brazil and more.

For the first time, the festival will present a full length classical ballet – the US debut tour of Giselle, performed by the State Ballet of Georgia and starring Nina Ananiashvili, a prima ballerina of the Bolshoi Ballet and a star of the American Ballet Theater.  Tickets for these performances, which will be July 15-16 at the Shubert Theater, range from $10 to $48.

This classic work will be complemented by the Martha Graham Dance Company performing the world premiere of Ardent Song (Redux), a historical re-creation of one of Graham’s “lost works.” The original Alan Hovhaness score will be performed by musicians from Yale School of Music. Also on the program will be Appalachian Spring, Graham’s timeless classic, and Chronicles.

There will be one performance only, on Thursday, June 21, at the Shubert, and tickets range from $10 to $48.

Dance will also be celebrated with the US premiere tour of Olga Pona’s Chelyabinsk Theater of Contemporary Dance which references the folk traditions of the old and the most experimental dance techniques of the new Russia; the tap revolutionary, Tamango, in a percussion-driven dancefest inspired by the rhythms of the global city street, hip-hop, tap and individual free-form styles; and Dance Salon, an original festival production spotlighting dance solos and small-scale works performed by local choreographers and intriguing guest artists in an up close and personal cabaret setting.

Theater audiences will have the opportunity of seeing the world from the performer’s eyes. Via cell phones, the group Cell takes one person at a time through a unique performance and invites them to experience the unexpected.

From an “audience of one,” the festival leaps to a performance of one with the US premiere tour of Aurélia’s Oratorio. Inspired by the traditions of French nouveau cirque, this solo circus-dance-theater performance takes audiences to a world where black is white and nothing is as it seems. Tickets for Oratorio, which will be performed Wednesday through Saturday, June 13-16, are $25.

The radio days of the 1940s spring to life when a group of radio actors assemble to record Shakespeare’s powerhouse Macbeth in the East Coast premiere of SITI Company’s Radio Macbeth. Directed by two-time Obie Award-winner Anne Bogart, the production will offer thrilling visual and narrative complexity. Performances will be Wednesday through Saturday, June 20-23, at Yale Repertory Theatre. All seats are $35.

Musically, this summer’s festival offers a mélange of styles: the Courtyard Concert Series will takes listeners around the world in three nights with performances by Mexican-American Lila Downs (June 12); the genre-busting six-man band, Les Yeux Noirs in a performance that is part klezmer, part gypsy, and references cultures from across Central and Eastern Europe (June 13); and Haitian-American, Daniel Bernard Roumain, a/k/a DBR, performing with The Mission, his multi-ethnic ensemble on June 15.

Performances will be in the Yale Law School courtyard, and tickets will be $30 per concert or $75 for all three shows.

Additional events include jazz pianist Jason Moran, the family friendly Dan Zanes and Friends, Brazilian percussionist Cyro Baptista, and the ever popular Opera on the Green featuring Yale Opera and New Haven Symphony Orchestra in a free performance of an Offenbach work.

This year the festival will pay homage to architect Louis Kahn by bringing his ingenious floating concert hall, the Point Counterpoint II, to New Haven. The arrival of this 195-foot oceangoing work of art, designed by the 20th Century American architect and iconoclast, brings to three the number of Kahn works in New Haven, along with the newly re-opened Yale University Art Gallery and Yale Center for British Art. The Kahn boat will serve as the catalyst for a variety of programming including concerts by the 45-piece American Wind Symphony Orchestra, daily tours of the boat, children’s concerts and a variety of Ideas-related events including lectures on Kahn’s art, walking tours of Kahn’s buildings, and screenings of the Oscar-nominated documentary, My Architect, directed by Kahn’s son, Nathaniel.

A highlight of the opening weekend celebration will be the East Coast premiere of The Movie Music of Spike Lee and Terence Blanchard hosted by acclaimed director Spike Lee on Saturday, June 9, at 8 pm, on the New Haven Green. With large screen projections of Lee’s films as a backdrop, Terence Blanchard – along with his quintet and accompanied by Orchestra New England – will perform the scores of such films as Mo’ Better Blues, Inside Man and the grief-stricken score from When the Levees Broke, Lee’s self-described requiem for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Spike Lee will narrate the evening, sharing memories and insights uniquely his own, and introduce soloists, newcomer Raoul Midon; Grammy and Tony Award-winning jazz singer Dee Dee Bridgewater; and Grammy-nominated jazz singer Kurt Elling.

The celebration will continue on Sunday, June 10, at 8 pm, again on the green with a performance by four-time Grammy nominee Angelique Kidjo. Gokh-Bi System, a leader in the emerging African hip-hop movement, opens at 7pm. All events on the New Haven Green are presented free.

A new addition to this year’s Festival is The Big Read. This new national initiative, created by the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and Arts Midwest, encourages literary reading by asking communities to come together to read and discuss one book. To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee’s ageless parable of the awakening to social justice, has been selected as New Haven’s focus book and will serve as the inspiration for The Big Read’s community and literary events.

Throughout April and May The Big Read will continue to a diverse range of free activities and events including panel book discussions, marathon readings, readings for the blind and dyslexic, school-based essay contests, and theatrical readings. It all culminates with a series of literary events, feature performances and concerts on the New Haven Green inspired by the themes of To Kill A Mockingbird to help kick off the festival during its opening weekend June 9-10.

Full details, including more ticket prices and options, are available through the festival’s website: ArtIdea.org.