Duke Performances

IN DURHAM, AT DUKE, A NATION MADE NEW. 

Born in revolution and tested in struggle, America is more a process than a thing: a process of shedding old skin, of honoring the past while breaking into the future. Call it hope or moxie or do-it-yourself verve: it's the spirit of a country that took what came before and out of it made something the world had never seen.

I'm proud to present a season that honors the distinctly American tradition of repurposing older traditions.  From the countryside modernism of singer-songwriter Jim White to Wayne Shorter's take-no-prisoners innovation; from Ralph Lemon's Mississippi futurism to the maverick partnership of the Kronos Quartet and Steve Reich, this season takes measure of the bristling diversity of American art today.

It also accounts for inspiration arriving from abroad: with Ireland's Abbey Theatre, say, or with Guillermo Klein, the jazz force born in Buenos Aires, living in Spain, and arriving in Durham for his first ever southeastern date. All of American art's dynamic power crystallizes in the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, the iconic modernists whose singular vision took place in Black Mountain, NC, circa 1953, and had continued renovating dance until this, the company's last appearance in the state that ushered it into the world.

This season announces what I see as a distinctly American brand of performances. In this old, weird, and as-yet-unimagined national tradition, Witnesses, Inventors, Travelers, Liars/Thieves/Bigshot Ramblers, and The Sanctified all travel the same road, without hope of ever arriving home.

Welcome.

Aaron F. Greenwald
Director, Duke Performances