Performances
STREB Dance Company performers rehearse with robotics.
Performances throughout the CHAT festival will feature faculty, staff, students and artists and performers invited from around the nation.
Two key performance components of the festival are the STREB:Brave collaborative performance and Festival on the Hill, a biennial festival held by the UNC music department.
Two key performance components of the festival are the STREB:Brave collaborative performance and Festival on the Hill, a biennial festival held by the UNC music department.
Carolina Performing Arts: STREB:Brave Collaborative Performance
STREB:Brave is a cross-disciplinary collaboration between New York choreographer Elizabeth Streb, founder of the innovative STREB Dance Company; composer David Van Teighem; and the MIT Media Lab.
The performance will allow the collaborators to investigate physical concepts such as ways to occupy traditionally unoccupied surfaces—ceilings, walls and trusses; challenge gravity; and investigate high-speed vertical motion in the face of centrifugal force. STREB:Brave performers will incorporate experimental technologies including smart prostheses, a human-sized yo-yo and personal robots. The performances are scheduled February 19-20, 2010.
STREB's performances of Fall Line, Airlines, Surface and Look Up are made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts' American Masterpieces: Dance initiative, administered by the New England Foundation for the Arts.
STREB:Brave is a cross-disciplinary collaboration between New York choreographer Elizabeth Streb, founder of the innovative STREB Dance Company; composer David Van Teighem; and the MIT Media Lab.
The performance will allow the collaborators to investigate physical concepts such as ways to occupy traditionally unoccupied surfaces—ceilings, walls and trusses; challenge gravity; and investigate high-speed vertical motion in the face of centrifugal force. STREB:Brave performers will incorporate experimental technologies including smart prostheses, a human-sized yo-yo and personal robots. The performances are scheduled February 19-20, 2010.
STREB's performances of Fall Line, Airlines, Surface and Look Up are made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts' American Masterpieces: Dance initiative, administered by the New England Foundation for the Arts.
Festival on the Hill
UNC professors Mark Katz and Stephen Anderson have organized Festival on the Hill, a public event held biennially and sponsored by UNC’s music department, to coincide with CHAT. Festival on the Hill and related events will include:
UNC professors Mark Katz and Stephen Anderson have organized Festival on the Hill, a public event held biennially and sponsored by UNC’s music department, to coincide with CHAT. Festival on the Hill and related events will include:
- An Electro-Acoustic Concert - The electro-acoustic concert will kick off the CHAT festival on Tuesday, February 16, in Memorial Hall. A foundational performance of the concert is an innovative, collaborative composition organized by Stephen Anderson that addresses the topic of war. Anderson's team will develop a custom interactive environment to generate, trigger and alter sounds as well as drive a visual display of war imagery. Anderson will then compose a piece of music that will provide a flexible musical framework and incorporate UNC faculty performers who will interact in real-time with the images, each other and the interactive environment. The sounds and visuals will be part of a larger system including sensors such as visible and audible analysis of the audience.
- Premiere: Maurice Remembered - A key performance at the electro-acoustic concert is a world premiere of a musical composition: pianist Thomas Otten of the UNC department of music has commissioned Frances White to compose a piece of music for piano and voice based upon Maurice Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit with a text drawn from E.M. Forster’s novel, Maurice. Known as a leading composer of computer music, White will combine computer-generated sonority with the live acoustic performance in her composition. Otten will perform both the vocal and piano parts of White’s composition.
- Turntable Concert with Open Rehearsal - Katz has commissioned a work for turntables and ensemble, to be composed by Raúl Yañez and performed by DJ Radar and the Charanga Carolina, UNC’s Latin music ensemble, under the direction of David Garcia of the UNC music department. In partnership with UNC’s Process Series, Charanga Carolina will hold an open rehearsal of the Turntable Concert the day before the performance. Musicians will explain their work and field questions from the audience.
- Panel Discussion: The Art and Culture of the DJ - Friday afternoon will feature several scholarly presentations on the art and culture of the DJ as well as a roundtable discussion with DJs and scholars about the impact of digital technologies on the field. The all-star participants include: Oliver Wang (California State University, Long Beach), Mark Butler (University of Pennsylvania), Rayvon Fouche (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), Larisa Mann (a.k.a. DJ Ripley, University of California, Berkeley), DJ Radar (DJ, Phoenix), and Raúl Yañez (composer, Arizona)
- DJ/VJ Dance Party - This community event, held the Thursday evening of the CHAT festival, features a variety of local and national DJs in collaboration with student and faculty VJs, or video jockeys, who will digitally manipulate images projected onto a large screen while the music plays. We have partnered with WXYC, UNC’s student-run radio station, on this event. WXYC has a history of digital innovation: In 1994, the radio station became the first in the world to stream its on-air signal live over the Internet. Several of the DJ/VJ performers for the dance party are UNC students who also work as DJs at the radio station.