For immediate re lease: 5 March 2013

The Dance Centre and Vancouver New Music present

MARTA MARTA Productions Speaking in Ligeti April 18 - 20, 2013 | 8PM

The Scotiabank Dance Centre (677 Davie Street) Tickets $30 regular, $22 students/seniors.

Available through Tickets Tonight - www.ticketstonight.ca / 604.684.2787 The music of iconic, 20th Century Hungarian composer Gyorgy Ligeti provides the starting point for this exciting new collaboration between contemporary choreographer Martha Carter and the innovative Microcosmos String Quartet. Presented through The Dance Centre’s Artist-in-Residence program as part of the Global Dance Connections series. www.newmusic.org Media contact: Heather McDermid | heather@newmusic.org | 604.633.0861

The music of the great Hungarian composer György Ligeti (1923 – 2006) provides inspiration for this unique dance and music creation directed and choreographed by esteemed Artistic Director Martha Carter. Speaking in Ligeti feature five accomplished dancers, Hayden Fong, Thoenn Glover, Heather Laura Gray, Delphine Leroux, and Nic Lydiate; and four musicians of the Microcosmos String Quartet, Marc Destrubé, Peggy Lee, Tawnya Popoff, and Andrea Siradze. The quartet’s presence onstage is intrinsic to the work, and the lighting design by Jason Dubois plays an important role in creating very specific and intimate connections between the musicians and the dancers.

Carter, a contemporary choreographer whose works incorporate ballet, urban dance forms, performance art and multimedia technology, has been known for creating pieces that can best be described as infamous. Thus, the thought of her taking on an icon of classical New Music…invites curiosity. – Paula Citron, Globe and Mail A composer who refused to play by the rules…Ligeti is the 20th century composer with the most cosmic connotations in popular consciousness. – Tom Service, The Guardian

Speaking in Ligeti began with choreographer Martha Carter’s vision of creating a new work that would integrate a live string quartet onstage with the dancers. When Carter heard the Microcosmos Quartet play Ligeti’s incredible String Quartet #1, she invited them to collaborate on the project. Since then, the piece has evolved to include excerpts from other works by Ligeti, as well as the full-length performance of String Quartet #1.

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Ligeti is renowned for exploring new ideas and pushing musical boundaries; similarly Carter has always been drawn to stylistic experimentation and fusion. In this work she draws on her training as both a musician and dancer to deconstruct Ligeti’s sonic textures, and push the limits of her own creative vision. Carter reveals, “I feel passionate about choreographing with such intricate music, where I can explore new creative territory, and take a fantastic journey with an incredible group of artists to investigate new movement, music, and methods together.” Carter is taken by the music’s incredible range of emotion that vibrates with tension between the classical and contemporary, the common and uncommon, just begging to be embodied. To create this work Carter focussed on the relationship between the performers. Rather than ‘setting’ movement on the dancers and having the musicians ‘accompany’ them, she worked closely with the dancers and musicians to analyze and deconstruct Ligeti’s music, developing choreographic structures through this dialogue. The innovation of the work lies in these unfolding relationships onstage. Essentially, Speaking in Ligeti is an imaginative reflection of Ligeti’s life-long goal of finding a new musical language, and compels the dancers and musicians to do the same by creating a new performance ‘language’ between themselves.

Vancouver New Music and The Dance Centre gratefully acknowledge the support of The Canada Council for the Arts, The Province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council and Gaming Policy and Enforcement Branch, The City of Vancouver, Tom Lee Music, Holiday Inn Downtown, and The Georgia Straight.

Media contact:

Heather McDermid - heather@newmusic.org - 604.633.0861 Vancouver New Music - 837 Davie Street, Vancouver, BC V6Z 1B7

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About MARTA MARTA Productions (MMP) As one of Vancouver’s cutting-edge new works companies, MMProductions is Artistic Director Martha Carter’s response to the vision of dance as a necessity of life. MMP is dedicated to the teaching, creation and dissemination of new works of dance, including dance on screen and dance integrated with new music and new media technologies. MMProductions started in Montréal as Marta Marta Danse, (1990-92), and in 1993 Carter co-founded the notorious performance group House of Pride (1993-1999), experimenting with the intersection of contemporary and street dance, drag cabaret and alternative musical theatre. In 2000, Carter established MMProductions (formerly mmHoP), renowned for its interactive and interdisciplinary dance performances. Since relocating to Vancouver in 2004, MMProductions has earned a reputation for creating original performance hybrids of innovative choreography, music and interactive digital technology, including ‘iDUB’ an interactive digital urban ballet (2004), ‘The Spell Remains’ (2005) and ‘ri’zilyent : an urban ballet’(2007). From 2008-2011, MMProductions evolved this vision to created several free, interactive, celebratory, site-specific dance works including mmHoP*Skip*Jump (2008), MOA MASHUP (2009), Heat the Streets (2010) and HOP•JUMP•JIVE 125 (2011). In 2009, MMP premiered ‘TWiSTED: a twisty tale of transformation’. Since then it has evolved into TWiSTED:SOLO, and has been performed across Canada and in the US. This very personal story about Carter’s struggle as dance artist with scoliosis has been an inspiration to many people, and has led to MMP’s initiation of a community service called the Twisted Outreach Project for Backcare and Scoliosis that holds performances, classes, workshops and events. www.twistedoutreachproject.com About Microcosmos Quartet Microcosmos was formed in Vancouver in the spring of 2010 to perform the rich repertoire of string quartets written in the past 100 years. The quartet takes advantage of the compactness and portability of a string quartet to present some of the greatest music of the 20th century, and of our time in intimate spaces for an audience that can experience the music close at hand, in small and sometimes unusual venues: private homes, clubs, small halls, public and commercial buildings. The six quartets of Béla Bartok form the core of the quartet’s repertoire, with one of his quartets on each program, complemented by works by master composers of the 20th and 21st centuries, including Canadian composers.

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