CalArts Center for New Performance

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CalArts Center for New Performance

The CalArts Center for New Performance (CNP) is the professional producing arm of the California Institute of the Arts.

CalArts Center for New Performance (CNP) is the professional producing arm of California Institute of the Arts, established to provide a unique artist- and project-driven framework for the development and realization of original theater, music, dance, media, and interdisciplinary projects. Extending the progressive work carried out at CalArts into a direct dialogue with professional communities at

the local, national, and international levels, CNP offers an alternative model to support emerging directions in the performing arts. It also enables CalArts students to work shoulder-to-shoulder with celebrated artists and acquire a level of experience that goes beyond their curriculum. Seminal artists from around the world are brought to CNP to develop work that expands the language, discourse, and boundaries of contemporary theater and performance. CNP fosters the future of live performance by infusing the work of such transformative artists with the talent, vitality and impulses of emerging artists in the CalArts community.

07/29/2024

CNP celebrates "Follow the Artist" a new book celebrating 20 years of CalArts Center for New Performance.

centerfornewperformance.org/projects/follow-the-artist

“Follow the Artist” charts the deep, daring, and imaginative legacy of a place unlike any other – one committed to supporting artists, rather than their output. The work of CalArts Center for New Performance has resulted in heralded premiere productions, but more often the unseen – risk-encouraging workshops, exploratory artistic research, and forward-thinking initiatives. This visually lavish publication documents two decades of steadfast creative incubation and commitment to artist-driven experimentation, featuring an astonishing array of seminal, seasoned, and emerging artists from the greater CalArts community.

Featuring newly authored essays and reflections from creative makers and thinkers, including Yareli Arizmendi, P. Carl, Marissa Chibás, Nataki Garrett, Daniel Alexander Jones, Douglas Kearney, Joanna Klass, Natalia Korczakowska, Stan Lai, Anne LeBaron, Carey Lovelace, Juan Meliá, Deborah Paradez, Travis Preston, Jin Qiu, Carl Hancock Rux, and Judy Yin Shih.

Designed by Jessica Fleischmann, Still Room

06/24/2024

It is with a heavy heart that we share the news that longtime CNP Producing Director Carol Bixler passed away. Carol retired from California Institute of the Arts in 2014, serving our community since 1999 as a producer, teacher, leader, and creative tour de force.

Carol set the standard for producing at CalArts and in the wider world. Together with Travis Preston and Susan Solt, she helped launch CalArts Center for New Performance, and served as Producing Director for its first 15 years. Select producing highlights include CNP’s inaugural production of "King Lear" at the Brewery in Los Angeles and the Frictions Festival in France; "11 septembre 2001" by Michel Vinaver; "Macbeth (A Modern Ecstasy)" starring Stephen Dillane; "What to Wear" directed by Richard Foreman; "Timboctou" directed by Martín Acosta; and "Prometheus Bound" starring Ron Cephas Jones and performed at the Getty Villa.

Her leadership brought seminal artists to CalArts, and students into direct dialogue with artists from around the world, guiding several outstanding creative producers into the professional arena. Please join us in extending our CalArts prayers and thoughts to her family, friends, and the many lives she touched.

04/04/2024

Check out the trailer for “Passage of the Spiral (Pasadizo en Espiral)", premiering April 11 at 8:30pm at REDCAT - Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater. Get your tickets today! centerfornewperformance.org/projects/passage-of-the-spiral

03/22/2024

CNP/Duende CalArts presents the world premiere screening of "Passage of the Spiral (Pasadizo en Espiral)", a documentary film directed by Natalia Lassalle-Morillo, on April 11 at 8:30pm at REDCAT - Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater.

centerfornewperformance.org/projects/passage-of-the-spiral

“Passage of the Spiral (Pasadizo en Espiral)” follows students and artists separated by real and imagined borders, but united by the need to tell stories. From Santo Domingo Yanhuiltán to California to the liminal space of the theater, we experience transnational migration and creative collaboration through the lens of young people based in the Mixteca Region of México and Los Angeles, California. These journeys emerge from a concentric point of a spiral – Yanhuitlán and its ghosts – addressing the complexities of representation, of who is telling whose story and why.

The film draws upon the multi-year creation of the theatrical play ”El Camino Donde Nosotros Lloramos (The Road Where We Weep)” led by celebrated Mexican theater company Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol.

Presented in English and Spanish, with English and Spanish subtitles.

The event features a post-screening talk with Natalia Lassalle-Morillo, moderated by Daniela Lieja Quintanar (Chief Curator and Deputy Director, Programs at REDCAT).

03/14/2024

CNP welcomes celebrated Taiwanese dance phenomenon Chen Wu-kang and Lucille Lortel award-winning performance maker Sun Ruey-horng, who are developing a new project entitled “Closed Tomorrow” at CalArts.

The collaborative duo conjure the ongoing neurological impacts of pandemic on our expressions of liveness — the body, its aura and its spiritual core. In a technology-driven collaboration that charts new dimensions in live dance and video performance, “Closed Tomorrow” makes legible the dancers’ real-time adaptations to a rapidly changing, heavily mediated performance space. At the same time, fast-fire live-editing allows bodies to break through the limits of physiology, invoking new possibilities for our emergent world.

centerfornewperformance.org/projects/residency-chen-wu-kang-and-sun-ruey-horng

12/14/2023

Episode Seven of the CalArts Center for New Performance Podcast features director Monty Cole in conversation with CNP Producing Artist Daniel Alexander Jones. Cole directed the CNP world premiere of Adrienne Kennedy’s “Etta and Ella on the Upper West Side”, which premiered at REDCAT in Downtown Los Angeles in February 2023. Over the project’s three year incubation at CalArts, Cole and his collaborators dug deep into Kennedy’s trademark embrace of symbolism, lyricism, and mythic figures to capture the Black experience in 20th century New York.

centerfornewperformance.org/podcast

12/04/2023

CNP presents “HA-M-LET” in China this month, first at the Shenzhen Contemporary Theatre Biennale, and then at the Zhejiang Culture Theatre.

centerfornewperformance.org/projects/ha-m-let

The current tour continues CNP’s relationship with Chinese festivals and artists. CNP Executive Artistic Director Travis Preston serves on the Artistic Committee of the Wuzhen Theatre Festival, where he directed the CNP world premiere of “Fantomas: Revenge of the Image”. Festival Director Stan Lai wrote and directed the CNP world premiere of “Nightwalk in the Chinese Garden” at The Huntington Botanical Gardens.

“HA-M-LET” is a multilingual, multimedia performance housed within a projection cube. Themes of madness, deceit, and familial conflict take digital form as artist/performer Peter Mark grapples with tumbling thoughts and images that reach a vivid state of saturation. With materials sourced from Shakespeare’s play, internet culture, home videos, and 3D animation, the interwoven imagery morphs between landscape and body, narrative and biography – shifting at a rate that pays homage to Hamlet’s own velocity of thought. The artist’s Brazilian parents appear in the roles of King, Queen, and Ghost, rendering a conflict both textual and real – simultaneously liberated and confined by layers of media.

09/12/2023

Experience Visions2030: Earth Edition, presented September 15-24 across the CalArts campus. The festival is a first-of-its-kind immersive experience where artists, thinkers, and community stakeholders will come together to engage the climate conversation through an appeal to the imagination, sustainability, and positive futures.

https://www.eartheditionfestival.la/

The experience is made possible by CNP Advisor Carey Lovelace, founder of Visions2030, an initiative collaborating across cultures and disciplines, cultivating bold and transformative visions for more equitable, sustainable futures. Earth Edition aims to counter the “catastrophic storytelling surrounding the environmental crisis, and foster imagination to envision and prototype new eco-outcomes.”

08/30/2023

It may be summer, but CNP is already back on the CalArts campus, continuing development of a thrilling new work entitled “Augustine Machine ou Encore Une Nuit d’Insomnie”.

Travis Preston (CNP’s Executive Artistic Director) leads a creative team of students, faculty, and alumni from across the institute in a new devised project. Using the history and origins of hysteria as an entrypoint, the ensemble examines the breadth of possibilities of the human body. A visible alphabet of dance, video projection, and collage become tools for physical expression. The company moves through Hysteria, Ecstasy, and Revolt in this metaphorical testament to the collective experience.

Developed in the U.S. and France, “Augustine Machine” features creative contributions from Amanda Shank, Marie Darrieussecq, Tom Gunning, and more.

centerfornewperformance.org/projects/augustine-machine

08/21/2023

It is with a heavy heart that we share the news that Ron Cephas Jones has passed away. A dynamic artist and force of nature, he memorably played the titular role in CNP’s “Prometheus Bound”.

Ron was a luminous presence, on stage and in the world. He was an artist through and through, and brought music, grace, and light to every space he entered. As Prometheus, his voice carried across the Malibu hills with such power and humanity.

He had a prolific career across the stage and screen, playing characters of astonishing range and depth. His commercial success came later in life, with the rest of the world discovering what his friends and collaborators knew all along: Ron was great. He was cool. He was true.

We miss him already, and will love him forever.

04/26/2023

Please join us in congratulating CNP Advisor José Luis Blondet on his appointment as Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA).

A seasoned museum professional, Blondet joins MOCA from Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), where he has served as Curator of Special Initiatives since 2015. Blondet has strong networks in Latin America, deep connections to the art scene in Los Angeles, and a background in education. He has been teaching as visiting faculty in the CalArts School of Theater since 2014, and sits on the Artistic Council of the CalArts Center for New Performance. moca.org/about/press-room

Address

24700 Mcbean Pkwy
Valencia, CA
91355

Telephone

+16612537853

Website

http://centerfornewperformance.org/

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