Upcoming Events of the SeventyFourth Season of The William

Nelson Cromwell and F. Lammot

Belin Concerts

Inscape

Music by John Harbison, Chen Yi,

Asha Srinivasan, and Toru Takemitsu

April 24, Sunday, 3:30

West Building, West Garden Court

PostClassical Ensemble

Music by Daniel Schnyder and

Min Xiao-Fen. Presented in honor

of Asian Heritage Month

May 1, Sunday, 3:30

West Building, West Garden Court

Oran Etkin, clarinet

"Reimagining Benny Goodman"

Presented in honor of In Celebration of

Paul Mellon

May 8, Sunday, 3:00, 4:15

West Building, West Garden Court

Ariel Quartet, with Alon Goldstein, piano 

Music by Brahms and Mozart. Made

possible by the Gottesman Fund in

memory of Milton M. Gottesman

May 15, Sunday, 3:30

West Building, West Garden Court

Aphrodite Mitsopoulou, pianist

Music by Chopin, Liszt, Konstantinidis,

and Skalkottas. Cosponsored by the

Embassy of Greece for the European

Month of Culture

May 19, Thursday, 12:30

West Building, West Garden Court

General Information

Admission to the National Gallery of Art

and all of its programs is free of charge,

except as noted.

The use of cameras or recording equipment

during the performance is not allowed.

Please be sure that all portable electronic

devices are turned off.

Concerts are made possible in part

through the generosity of donors to the

National Gallery of Art through The Circle.

Reserved seating is available in recognition

of their support. Please contact the

development office at (202) 842-6450 or

circle@nga.gov for more information.

www.nga.gov

www.instagram.com/ngadc

www.twitter.com/ngadc

www.facebook.com/nationalgalleryofart

The department of music produced these

program notes. Copyright © 2016 Board of

Trustees, National Gallery ofArt, Washington

Cover Mary Cassatt, The Banjo Lesson (detail),

1938, National Gallery of Art, Washington,

Gift of Mrs. Jane C. Carey as an addition to the

Addie Burr Clark Memorial Collection

74TH SEASON

OF CONCERTS

APRIL 23, 2016 • NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART
PROGRAM

2:00 • West Building, West Garden Court

A performance dialogue between dance and architecture

Jen Shyu, multi-instrumentalist

Petr Zuska, dancer

Prague-New York Effects

The Performers

Petr Zuska is a renowned dancer, artistic director, and choreographer of the Czech National

Ballet. Following his career as a classical ballet dancer, he now explores new ways of performing and researching physical language in a more intimate scale of the performing arts.

From 1992 to 1998, Zuska was a soloist of the Czech National Ballet. In 1998, he worked

for the Munich Ballet and in 1999 joined the ballet company of the Augsburg Theatre. In 2000,

he was named a soloist of Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montreal. Since 1990, Zuska has 

created choreographies for more than fifty productions for both foreign and Czech companies, including the Hamburg Ballet, Ballet Augsburg, Mariinsky Theatre, the Royal Danish

Ballet, the Finnish National Ballet, Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, and the Boston Ballet. He has

received numerous awards for his performances and choreographies, including the Thalia

Prize (1993 and 1997), the Prix Dorn Perignon (1999), the Original Choreography Prize within

the Modern Dance Competition, the Choreography of the Year Award, and the Czech Literary

Fund and Opera Plus prizes.

Jen Shyu is an experimental jazz vocalist, composer, multi-instrumentalist, dancer,

producer, Fulbright scholar, and 2014 Doris Duke Impact Award recipient. She has produced

five albums as a bandleader, and is the first female artist and vocalist as bandleader on the

Pi Recordings label with the widely praised album Synastry, with legendary bassist Mark

Dresser. Shyu became the vocalist of saxophonist Steve Coleman's Five Elements from 2003

to 2011 and has presented her own music at the Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music,

Bimhuis (Netherlands), Salihara Theater (Indonesia), and the National Gugak Center and

National Theater of Korea. Shyu currently leads her band Jade Tongue and is touring her solo

opera called Solo Rites: Seven Breaths, directed by renowned Indonesian filmmaker-director

Garin Nugroho and inspired by Shyu's travels and fieldwork over the past decade. Larry

Blumenfeld of the Wall Street Journal writes, "Shyu is among New York's most invigorating

vocal presences... and perhaps the most enigmatic."

2 • National Gallery of Art

Program Notes

A performance dialogue between dance and architecture

This is a site-specific contemporary dance performance where the dancer and musician

have direct dialogue with the external space.

The audience witnesses how two elements of the space (acoustic and spatial)

influence dance choreography and music composition. The performance is partly conceptually structured and partly interactive as the performers adapt to the new environment. The

piece explores different perspectives and ways of looking at the spatial architecture through

the lens of musical resonance and physical accents. We view the performers as objects articulating the space and see their response to how sound bounces off the surfaces of ceiling and

walls, affecting their creations. We see how the performers create resonance and dissonance

within the space, with a highly articulated body resembling detailed sculptures and a unique

composition that inhabits every corner of the space. Dynamic, abrupt changes occur as the

body of the dancer flies through the space, leading the spectators' focus to different corners,

angles, columns, and cornices. We experience many layers of sound produced by original

string instruments, overwhelming colors of vocal dexterity that change from angel-like

soprano to Asian ritualistic mumbling. We see how the body transforms unexpectedly from

the pedestrian to highest classical aesthetic.

Prague-New York Effects

Through this international exchange project, Czech and American artists collaborate to

develop new works. Each original piece features one dancer and one musician from the

Czech Republic and the United States. The goal of the project is to create a cross-cultural

exchange of artists coming from different social, cultural, ethnic, and contextual environments and through the art process to produce a performative language based on common

learning and mutual understanding.

Developed by the Czech Center in New York and coproduced by Art Frame Akropolis

Palace s.r.o, the project is held under the auspices of the Czech ambassador to the United

States, Petr Gandalovic, and United States ambassador to the Czech Republic, Andrew Schapiro. 

Partners include the Fulbright Commission, the New York Philharmonic, the European Union

National Institutes for Culture, and others.

74th season