This week in On The Arts, KALW’s radio magazine for the Bay Area performing arts, host David Latulippe talks with choreographer Joanna Haigood and composer Walter Kitundu about Love, A State of Grace by Zaccho Dance Theatre, at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral (Feb 11-18). Also, director Kevin Free and actor Eddie Ewell, from the Marin Theatre Company’s production of Pass Over (Jan 27-Feb 20). Plus, we talk with French cellist Gautier Capuçon, who is in town to perform the Cello Concerto No. 2 by Dmitri Shostakovich, with the San Francisco Symphony under the baton of Michael Tilson Thomas himself (Jan 20-22).
Choreographer and Zaccho Dance Theatre’s artistic director Joanna Haigood talks to host David Latulippe about Love, A State of Grace, a performance/installation that combines aerial dance, meditation, small rituals, and live music, February 11-18 at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral. The performance features some of the Bay Area’s most talented aerial dancers, using specially designed props, including an anchored 90-foot ladder and a 70-foot swinging pendulum.
The performance/installation is accompanied by an original sound score by composer Walter Kitundu, who also joins the conversation. His score incorporates recorded material, live acoustic instruments, the Cathedral’s massive pipe organ, and voices of a small choir, all in conversation with the Cathedral’s cavernous space and reverberation.
Artist theologians Yohana Junker and Claudío Cavalhaes have designed a series of meditations and small rituals for the audience to engage with. Love, A State of Grace runs on February 11, 12, 17, and 18 in one-hour cycles, during which the audience can move freely through the Cathedral.
From the Marin Theatre Company, we talk with director Kevin Free and actor Eddie Ewell, about the West Coast premiere of Antoinette Chinoye Nwandu’s acclaimed drama, Pass Over.
Hailed by critics as ‘powerful and provocative’, Pass Over tells the story of Moses (Ewell) and Kitch, two young Black men who pass the time talking smack and hoping that maybe today will be different. As they dream of their promised land, a stranger wanders into their space and disrupts their plans.
Pass Over runs at Marin Theatre Company (397 Miller Avenue, Mill Valley) January 27—February 20.
Plus, we talk with French cellist Gautier Capuçon, who is in town to perform the Cello Concerto No. 2 by Dmitri Shostakovich, with the San Francisco Symphony under the baton of Music Director Laureate Michael Tilson Thomas. Also on the program: Symphony No. 5 by Sergei Prokofiev. Concerts are on January 20, 21 and 22 (7:30pm) at Davies Symphony Hall.
Dmitri Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 2 dates from 1966 and was dedicated to legendary cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. Following the November 2015 release of Gautier Capuçon’s recording of Shostakovich’s two cello concertos on the Erato label, BBC Music Magazine praised Capuçon’s “passionate and rhythmically incisive accounts”.
On The Arts, with host David Latulippe, heard live on January 20 at 1pm, to be archived at this location until the internet dies. Listen now or anytime…