NEW DANCE AND MUSIC SPECTACLE AT HISTORIC QUARRY
STONINGTON – We all want our piece of turf. But in reality, our “turf” is of a single piece, and so must be shared. The question, over and over again, is: how?
Following on the success of “Quarryography” in 2006-07, Opera House Arts (OHA), in collaboration with Maine artists Alison Chase, Mia Kanazawa, and Nigel Chase and local conservation group Island Heritage Trust (IHT), is proud to present the world premiere of a new “story at the quarry” August 3-8, 2010. “Q2: Habitat,” like “Quarryography” before it, is an original multidiscipline performance work commissioned and produced by Opera House Arts at IHT's historic Settlement Quarry (granite) in Stonington.
“Q2: Habitat” is the story of a place – Stonington's Settlement Quarry – and of its inhabitants–porcupines, herons, humans, machines—throughout time. It is the universal story of how a location, with its indigenous population and history, accommodates recent arrivals and new inhabitants. The performance strives to present a new kind of storytelling, employing visual images, movement, and musical scoring to uniquely interpret the diversified life of the specific site, The Settlement Quarry, in which it is performed. Creating intimate access for audience members to the quarry's animating forces, Chase, Kanazawa, and Chase draw together a community of players, allowing observance of moments often unobserved. In a story of seagulls and porcupines, herons and humans, small actions are combined with joyously grand gestures. A dancing excavator operated by Deer Isle's Rick Weed hauls recycled boat plastic and jungle gym houses to set the stage for play, and steel drums accent the rhythms of natural life. The drama of invasion and cohabitation finds its response in a generous appreciation of the preserve itself. Friends, neighbors, returning dancers, and the audience themselves populate a place we love, a place to which we are all – in ways both challenging and thrilling – inextricably linked: this beautiful Down East coast of Maine.
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A lively revue brings stars from near and far to celebrate 10 years and look to the future
STONINGTON – Opera House Arts offers a sneak preview of work-in-progress for a follow up to 2007’s Quarryography performance at Stonington’s Settlement Granite Quarry
Opera House Arts celebrates 10 years of original programs in "The Best of OHA: Looking Forward, Looking Back," a two-night revue August 14-15 which returns Opera House favorites from near and far to the stage of the Stonington Opera House. As a part of this 10th anniversary revue on Sunday, August 16 at 6 p.m. OHA will also present a double feature of two of the organization's original movies, "Tire Tracks" by John Steed and "Island Prom" by Leti Douglass and Galen Koch.
At the heart of Opera House Arts, mission "to use the performing arts to foster and promote excellence in all the ways we perform our lives"is the creation of original performance created by area community members in collaboration with some of the world's best musicians and actors. In keeping with a tradition launched with its first Gala production in 2000, "The Best of OHA " will be hosted by acclaimed actor Jeffrey Frace. Frace is an associate and tours nationally with Anne Bogart's SITI Company, and is currently a professor of theater and movement at the University of Washington in Seattle.
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