Carolina Performing Arts has received $750,000 from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for a yearlong project honoring the centennial of a landmark ballet and orchestral work.
Russian composer Igor Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring,” which premiered in Paris in 1913, will serve as inspiration for new works by choreographers, composers, directors and performers, all commissioned by Carolina Performing Arts. Artists will premiere the works in Carolina Performing Arts’ 2012-2013 season.
Course enrichment and two academic conferences that stimulate new scholarship about “Rite” also will be part of the project, called “The Rite of Spring at 100.” Students, faculty and visiting scholars and artists will participate.
UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences and Institute for the Arts and Humanities will collaborate on “Rite 100.” Proceedings of the conferences will be published in a book edited by UNC’s Brigid Cohen, assistant professor of music, and Severine Neff, Eugene Falk Distinguished Professor of Music.
Among artists already commissioned are Bill T. Jones, co-founder and artistic director of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in New York, and Anne Bogart, co-founder and artistic director of the SITI Company, a New York theater ensemble. The two are creating a work that the companies will perform together.
Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky will compose a work for The Silk Road Ensemble, with artistic director Yo-Yo Ma, to be performed during the ensemble’s weeklong residency at UNC in 2012-2013. French composer Marc-André Dalbavie will compose a work for mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená and pianist Yefim Bronfman.
The Mellon Foundation supports higher education and scholarship, scholarly communications and information technology, museums and art conservation, performing arts and conservation and the environment.