A tribute to composer Ursula Mamlok
The performance will be shown twice that evening.
Contemporary dance and music are synthesized in a unique project devised by choreographer and composer Miro Magloire as a tribute to composer Ursula Mamlok. Mamlok was born to a Jewish family in Berlin in 1923, and by her early teens was a precocious talent on her way to becoming a composer. Then Germany descended into Nazi oppression, and when Mamlok was 16, she and her parents made a last-minute escape to Ecuador (leaving almost immediately after Kristallnacht in 1938).
Physically and culturally displaced, Mamlok eventually made it to New York City, where she continued her studies before becoming a composer and noted teacher.
In her late 80s she finally returned to her spiritual home of Berlin, where she passed away in 2016 at the age of 93.
In the intimate setting of the Goethe Institute Boston with the audience seated up close to the performers in the round, New Chamber Ballet and an ensemble of leading musicians take us on a sonic and visual journey through Mamlok’s delicate, abstract music with dances by three choreographers (Miro Magloire, Rebecca Walden, and Mara Driscoll) revealing powerful themes of loss, displacement, rejection, and reconciliation.
With Cree Carrico (soprano), the Momenta String Quartet, Roberta Michel (flute) and Pascal Archer (clarinet), as well as the dancers of New Chamber Ballet (Anabel Alpert, Megan Foley, Nicole McGinnis, Amber Neff, and Rachele Perla). Choreography by Miro Magloire, Rebecca Walden, and Mara Driscoll. Costumes by Sarah Thea Craig.
These performances of Stray Bird are made possible in part by support from the Dwight and Ursula Mamlok Foundation.
New Chamber Ballet believes that small is beautiful and expressive. For over 18 years, the company has been redefining the way audiences experience contemporary ballet
and chamber music: performing it up-close and in-the-round in nontraditional venues. The magic of live performance, rekindled in an intimate setting without theatrical lights or curtains, reveals a profound sense of humanity and deepens the connection between artists and audience.
Praised by The New York Times as “one of the small-scale delights of the New York Dance Scene,” the company is noted for its groundbreaking collaborations with composers and musicians in choreographies by founder Miro Magloire. “It’s heartening to see work so focused on the meeting of dance and music.” (Alastair Macaulay, The New York Times)
Recently the company has created site-specific works engaging architecture ranging from Bramante’s Renaissance-Tempietto in Rome to Tadao Ando’s Clark Museum and a new building by Pritzker Prize winners SANAA.
The company has performed nationally from California to Connecticut, and internationally from Germany to Guatemala. But its artistic home remains its ongoing series in New York City. “In a city full of ballet, Magloire’s New Chamber Ballet is a welcome and unique voice… Indeed, with music and choreography that remind us of our own humanity, Magloire, with New Chamber Ballet, will continue to show us what is possible for ballet.” (Tara Lindis, Times Square Chronicle)
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