Alverno Presents and Lynden Sculpture Garden Eiko & Koma – Raven –Lynden Sculpture Garden (2145 W. Brown Deer Rd. Milwaukee, wi 53217) – Saturday, July 23, 2011, 6: 00 p m

June 15, 2011 Contact: David Ravel

For Immediate Release 414-382-6150
Alverno Presents and Lynden Sculpture Garden - Eiko & Koma – Raven –Lynden Sculpture Garden (2145 W. Brown Deer Rd. Milwaukee, WI 53217) – Saturday, July 23, 2011, 6:00 p.m.

http://www.eikoandkoma.org
Alverno Presents opens its 52^nd Season three months earlier than ever before to bring you Eiko and Koma-Raven, in partnership with the Lynden Sculpture Garden. Raven will be performed at the Lynden Sculpture Garden (2145 W. Brown Deer Rd. Milwaukee, WI 53217) on Saturday, July 23, 2011, at 6:00pm (Garden opens at 5:00pm) and will be followed by a post-performance picnic supper with Eiko and Koma at 7:00p.m. You can bring your own feast or purchase a picnic from us. Artist jpegs may be downloaded at http://alvernopresents.alverno.edu/media

Raven is the centerpiece of Eiko & Koma’s recently inaugurated Retrospective Project, a three-year, multi-site project, which includes performances, exhibitions, installations, lectures, videos and publications. Raven is primarily made for a gallery space, to be performed without theatrical lighting and with the audience in close proximity. However, Raven is also malleable—“radically scalable” in length and configurable for venues as diverse as proscenium stages, black boxes, and outdoor sites. For Alverno Presents, Eiko and Koma will perform Raven at the Lynden Sculpture Gardens.
The motifs of Raven originate from their 1991 work Land where Eiko & Koma created their own archaic landscape, a site of perseverance actively imagined and kinetically felt by performers and audience alike. For Raven, Eiko & Koma also draw on themes from their newest work Hunger (2008) (seen at Alverno Presents on October 18, 2008), showing that it is not only humans who are hungry—land, animals and spirits are also hungry for nourishment and intimacy. Raven meditates on how land, though often assaulted by humans, perseveres while also remembering its past. By evoking the image of a raven, an animal recognized in many cultures as a source of power and myth, the work will take on new meaning—both individual and universal—at each performance site.
Since 1972, Japanese-born choreographer/dancers Eiko & Koma have created a unique and riveting theater of movement out of stillness, shape, light and sound. Eiko & Koma dance about what matters to them. Their subjects are elemental; their message pitiless yet humanistic. Both their choreography and stagecraft are characterized by bold, highly theatrical strokes. The result is stark, infused with relentless stillness that subverts and transcends our everyday notions of time and space. Eiko & Koma want the vulnerability of their own dancing bodies to invite the audience's empathy.

Eiko & Koma studied with Kazuo Ohno in Japan, Manja Chmiel in Germany and Lucas Hoving in the Netherlands before moving to New York in 1976 with their first piece White Dance. Since then, they have presented their works at theaters, universities, museums, galleries and festivals world-wide, including numerous appearances at the American Dance Festival and five seasons at BAM's Next Wave Festival. Eiko & Koma have also created two “living” gallery installations: Breath, commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1998, and Naked, commissioned by the Walker Art Center in 2010. For both of these engagements, Eiko & Koma performed for four weeks during all open museum hours.

Eiko & Koma’s noted stage collaborations include Hunger (2008, with Cambodian painters-turned-performers Peace and Charian)( seen at Alverno Presents on October 18, 2008), Mourning (2007, with pianist Margaret Leng Tan), Cambodian Stories (2006, with the Reyum Painting Collective of young Cambodian artists), Be With (2001, with Anna Halprin and Joan Jeanrenaud), When Nights Were Dark (2000, with Joseph Jennings and a Praise Choir), the proscenium version of River (1997, with Kronos Quartet, who performed Somei Satoh’s commissioned score live), Wind (1993, with Chanticleer), and Land (1991, with Robert Mirabal and Sandra Lerner). Eiko & Koma are now embarked on a three-year Retrospective Project that considers the arc of their four-decade career as a springboard for moving forward.

Eiko & Koma have received two “Bessies” (1984 and 1990) Guggenheim (1985), MacArthur(1996) and United States Artists (2006) Fellowships. They were honored with the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award (2004) and the Dance Magazine Award (2006) for lifetime achievement in modern dance.

Single tickets are $15.00. Season subscriptions are still available for 15% off single ticket prices when purchasing three (or more) events. Tickets may be purchased through the Alverno Presents Box Office at 414-382-6044 or on-line at http://alvernopresents.alverno.edu. (Summer box office hours are Tues-Thurs from noon-3pm) Guests who choose to purchase a picnic supper from us may do so for $15.00. You may choose a turkey sandwich (with or without Swiss) on whole wheat, or veggie (with or without havarti) on ciabatta. Each sandwich comes with salad, fruit salad, and a brownie. Drinks are available at cash bar. Deadline for ordering picnic is Wednesday, July 20

Sponsors
Sponsors include Wisconsin Arts Board, National Endowment for the Arts, New England Foundation for the Arts/National Dance Project and Pepsi America. Media Sponsors are WMSE, WUWM and The Onion.
Alverno Presents

Alverno Presents, the performing arts series of Alverno College, is celebrating its 52^nd year. The series has innovated beyond our history as the longest running, continuous arts presenter in the city, to our niche of presenting National and International artists with a focus on excellence. Alverno Presents shares the school’s mission by ensuring broad access to and participation in learning, experiencing and developing the arts for the learning community of Alverno, and our community as a whole. For more information on Alverno Presents, special projects, media reviews and more, visit alvernopresents.alverno.edu, contact Alverno Presents Director David Ravel at 414-382-6150, or e-mail [e-mail].

Lynden Sculpture Garden

The Lynden Sculpture Garden offers a unique experience of art in nature through its collection of more than 50 monumental sculptures sited across 40 acres of park, lake and woodland. The Lynden Sculpture Garden is committed to promoting the enjoyment, understanding, and appreciation of art, sculpture and the environment through the exhibition of art and sculpture, educational experiences and connections with the community. For more information on educational programming, tours, gallery exhibitions and performances, visit http://lyndensculpturegarden.org.