The Dallas Symphony Orchestra has announced featured artists and original commissions for the second annual Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger Family SOLUNA International Music & Arts Festival, the theme of which is Myth & Legend. The festival will debut installations and works by artists Mai-Thu Perret and Anton Ginzburg, as well as an opening performance piece by Daniel Arsham, Jonah Bokaer and Pharrell Williams. Presented in collaboration with the Dallas Arts District and a number of prominent Dallas-based cultural institutions, including the Nasher Sculpture Center and Dallas Contemporary, the three-week long festival will be anchored by a series of orchestral and chamber music performances by the DSO, led by Music Director Jaap van Zweden.

Jonah Bokaer in RECESS. Photo by Michael Hart.

On Tuesday, May 17, the SOLUNA Opening Event will feature the world premiere of Rules Of The Game, a collaborative performance piece with choreography by Jonah Bokaer, set design by Daniel Arsham and an original symphonic score by Pharrell Williams. Inspired by Nobel Laureate Luigi Pirandello’s landmark absurdist play of the same title, Rules Of The Gameexplores the relationship between authors, characters and the actors who portray those characters. Performed live by members of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Rules Of The Game will be Williams’ first composition for live dance and theater.

While Williams and Arsham have collaborated in the past (most notably when Arsham cast Williams’ entire body for GIRL, Williams’ curatorial debut at Galerie Perrotin), this will be the first collaboration between all three artists. In addition to Rules Of The Game (2016), Arsham and Bokaer will stage two of their previous collaborations: Why Patterns (2011) with music by Morton Feldman and design elements by Snarkitecture, exploring pattern recognition in relation to our perceptual faculties, and Bokaer’s signature solo RECESS (2010).

On Friday, May 20 and Saturday, May 21, New York-based artist Anton Ginzburg will present a new video “Turo” for ReMix: Orchestral Myth and Legend, a program generously supported by TACA. Set to the live performances of Jean Sibelius’s symphonic poem Pohjola’s Daughter and Richard Wagner’s Waldweben (Forest Murmurs) from Siegfried, the video explores 20th-Century mythologies through an examination of Constructivist architecture; the vestiges of the radical and hopeful period of Soviet modernity represent a spatial archive of history and utopia.

Mai-Thu Perret, Figures, 2014. Photo by Annik Wetter.

In collaboration with the Nasher Sculpture Center, Swiss-born artist Mai-Thu Perret will stage two performances, her recent workFigures on Thursday, June 2 as well as a newly-commissioned piece on Saturday, June 4.

In Figures, Perret has managed to tie together the seemingly disparate identities of women throughout history through different characters that both dancer and puppet embody during the course of the performance. The performance begins with the dancer and puppet as separate entities, and as it goes on, the two gradually merge, then disappear, to be replaced on stage by a character with a typewriter. As Perret has explained, Figures presents several threads of inquiry, such as the place of women in the development of artificial intelligence and the visionary states of dissociation from one’s body achieved via meditation and ritualistic trance.

Perret commented that the June 4 piece, while still in production, “will be a kind of procession or pageant, roving about the Nasher Sculpture Center building and grounds.” Music is integral to the performance, and the piece will also blend recorded music and sounds with live vocalists, as well as musicians from the DSO.

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About The Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger Family SOLUNA International Music & Arts Festival
Anchored by DSO performances led by Music Director Jaap van Zweden, The Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger Family SOLUNA International Music & Arts Festival will showcase internationally-acclaimed guest soloists, visual artists and performing artists alongside leading Dallas-based companies and ensembles. An annual, three-week multidisciplinary event, SOLUNA will stage performances and exhibitions across such venues as the Meyerson Symphony Center, Dallas City Performance Hall, AT&T Performing Arts Center, Nasher Sculpture Center, Klyde Warren Park and Dallas Museum of Art, as well as other prominent galleries and performance spaces in the Dallas Arts District.

About The Dallas Symphony Orchestra (DSO)
The Dallas Symphony Orchestra, under the leadership of Music Director Jaap van Zweden, presents the finest in orchestral music at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, regarded as one of the world’s premier concert halls. As the largest performing arts organization in the Southwest, the DSO is committed to inspiring the broadest possible audience with distinctive classical programs, inventive pops concerts and innovative multi-media presentations. In fulfilling its commitment to the community, the orchestra reaches more than 270,000 adults and children through performances, educational programs and community outreach initiatives. A European Tour in March 2013 elevated the orchestra to national and international prominence. The DSO’s involvement with the City of Dallas and the surrounding region includes an award-winning multi-faceted educational program, community projects, popular parks concerts and youth programming. The DSO has a tradition dating back to 1900, and it is a cornerstone of the unique, 68 acre Arts District in downtown Dallas that is home to multiple performing arts venues, museums and parks; the largest district of its kind in the nation. The DSO is supported, in part, by funds from the Office of Cultural Affairs, City of Dallas.