Redfern Arts Center Offers Exciting Spring Season
Redfern Arts Center continues its dynamic 2015 season celebrating risk, thrill and public participation.
Season line-up includes a spectacular journey through the 20th century, a jumpin’ family music show, a modern dance about America’s liberation movements, and much more.
Redfern Arts Center at Keene State College returns this February to offer an exciting spring season of multidisciplinary live performance that explores a range of relevant themes such as love, liberation and civil rights, human perseverance, the grand spectacle of history, the joy of family music, and the awe-inspiring wonder of evolution.
To complement the performance season and foster meaningful experiences between artists and audiences, the Redfern will also offer engaging activities with our visiting artists that are free to the public, ranging from workshops and conversations with the artists, post-show discussions, lobby receptions, and art exhibits.
The Redfern’s diverse spring season comprises six performances.
Voice: If Music Be the Food of Love with Special Guests, Wednesday February 4, 7:30 p.m. in the Main Theatre, tickets $5-$25. Celebrate the coming of Valentine’s Day with the wonderful British ensemble Voice, sharing songs of beauty, heartache and the humor of love. In their limited U.S. tour, Voice shares the idea that love, in all its forms, has inspired human beings for centuries. The acclaimed trio will be joined by the Keene State College Concert Choir and choreographer Candice Salyers in a first-time collaboration celebrating the soaring music of German abbess and visionary mystic Saint Hildegarde von Bingen.
Dogs of Rwanda by Sean Christopher Lewis, Wednesday, February 11, 7:30 p.m. in the Alumni Recital Hall, tickets $5-$20. Based on interviews Iowa City playwright and actor Sean Christopher Lewis did in Rwanda, this riveting and intimate performance focuses on David, a man who cannot forget his experiences as a young missionary in Uganda 20 years beforehand. Co-presented with the Keene State College Cohen Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the KSC Diversity and Multiculturalism Office.
The Grand Parade (of the 20th Century) created by Double Edge Theatre, Wednesday, February 18, 7 p.m. in the Main Theatre, tickets $5-$35. The Grand Parade depicts major events of the 20th century in a theatrical style inspired by Marc Chagall’s kaleidoscopic vision of humanity at play, at war, and at rest. Trapeze, circus, dance, projections, and popular culture fill the height and breadth of the stage in a spectacle of history populated by people in acts of grace and destruction. History is recounted with a variety of iconic images from film, television, and photography. Time both shrinks and expands as the 20th century unfolds in a dream-like rush of juxtapositions that include the ecstasy of landing on the moon, the frenzy of war, the skilled escapes of Houdini, the atomic bomb, Kennedy’s assassination, and Hitler’s brutalization of Europe among others. The Grand Parade is about individual and collective experience of a period of history in which people developed knowledge that produced both great development and massive destruction. It is a work of memory, memorial, and celebration that shows us to ourselves and makes us consider where we are now by examining where we have come from. (Recommended for children ages 10 and up.)
Vanessa Trien and the Jumping Monkeys, Saturday, February 28, 11 a.m. in the Alumni Recital Hall, all tickets $5. The Redfern’s family show is back! Boston based singer-songwriter and children’s performer Vanessa Trien and her lively band, the Jumping Monkeys, have become local rock stars among the young and young at heart. The under-10 crowd and their families sing and dance in the aisles at these packed shows and can’t get enough of Trien’s award-winning children’s CDs, including her latest, Bubble Ride.
Nevabawarldapece created and performed by Robert Moses’ Kin dance company, Wednesday, March 25, 7:30 p.m. in the Main Theatre, tickets $5-$25. A New England premiere, Nevabawarldapece is a major collaborative project among Artistic Director Robert Moses, Obie and Bessie award-winning writer and performer Carl Hancock Rux, and Afro-Celtic, Folk-Funk, Hip-Appalachian vocalist Laura Love. This stirring piece explores critical moments of change in America’s liberation movements, protests, insurrections, and revolts, from John Brown to today’s populist Occupy movement.
This World Made Itself created and performed by Miwa Matreyek, Wednesday, April 8, 7:30 p.m. in the Alumni Recital Hall, tickets $5-$20. This World Made Itself combines projected animation and the artist’s own shadow silhouette as she interacts with the fantastical world of the video. This World Made Itself is a visually and musically-rich journey through the history of the earth, from the universe’s epic beginnings to the complex world of humans. The piece is semi-scientific yet rich in surrealism, metaphor, and fantasy.
To find out more about these performances and free activities surrounding each event, check out the information and video clips on the Redfern’s website. For tickets, call the Box Office at 603-358-2168, stop by between 12 and 6 p.m. Monday to Friday, or order online at www.keene.edu/racbp.
About Redfern Arts Center at Keene State College
The Arts Center is named in honor of Dr. Leo F. Redfern, Keene State College President from 1969 to 1979 for his vision, commitment, and eloquence on behalf of the arts that made funding and construction of the facility a reality. In 1981, KSC inaugurated this new performing arts center, with the goal of providing unforgettable artistic encounters for the campus and community. Now in its 33rd year, the Redfern Arts Center presents and fosters dynamic, multifaceted arts experiences through performances, residencies, and related programs that deepen the connection between the arts and audiences, both from the campus and the greater Monadnock region.
