May 15, 2007

MASS MoCA Features Dutch Artists as part of NL: A Season of Dutch Arts in The Berkshires

(North Adams, Mass.) For its 2007 summer season MASS MoCA will host some of the Netherlands' leading visual and performing artists as part of NL: A Season of Dutch Arts in the Berkshires. These artists, dancers, choreographers, musicians, and theater groups have been invited to collaborate on new works and present new interpretations of classic works as part of this unprecedented creative partnership.

MASS MoCA is the site of the opening of the county-wide celebration on Friday, June 15, at 8:30 PM with a range of Dutch art and culture. The evening begins with music from ZAPP! a string quartet that combines exuberant energy on stage with a style that includes heavy metal, Bulgarian folk, and jazz. They will perform works from their new program Passaggio which includes newly commissioned music from renowned Dutch musicians and composers. After ZAPP! performs, the festivities continue with Dutch DJ/VJ Micha Klein spinning music and videos well into the night. Weather permitting; the celebration will take place outside under a new pavilion designed by Dutch artist Dre Wapenaar. Known for his inhabitable tent structures, Wapenaar has designed a site-specific tent for MASS MoCA's Courtyard C which will include oak flooring, sail-like partitions, and a canopy combining to create a gathering and social space museum visitors can enjoy for years to come.

Also on view beginning June 15 is an installation by textile artist Fransje Killaars. Killaars will create a vivid, textured environment that will also serve as a functional lobby for the museum's Hunter Center. This is the first U.S museum exhibition of Killaars, who has shown throughout Europe.

One of the Netherlands' most prominent visual artists, Erik van Lieshout, will exhibit several videos and recent drawings at MASS MoCA through Fall 2007. Known for provocative video works that offer an unflinching view of daily life, van Lieshout will mount an exhibition that includes a piece examining his struggles with work and family, and another looking at the influence of hip-hop on Ghana.

MASS MoCA will also present a broad range of work by Dutch performing artists including dance, theater, film, and live music performances. On Friday, June 29, at 9 PM a program of shorts from Holland's vibrant film industry will play in MASS MoCA's cinema courtyard. Among many films the selection includes Oblomov's Cat, a darkly humorous, animated film; Metelosis Maligna, a faux-documentary about surgical implants run amok; and a heartbreaking auto-revenge fantasy. Finishing out June's programming will be artist-in-residence Ulrike Quade with her work-in-progress showing of The Wall on Saturday, June 30, at 8 PM. Quade's experimental piece combines puppetry, dance, theater, live music and visual art.

In July internationally acclaimed music ensemble Electra will perform to a collection of short films on Friday, July 6 at 8 PM. Program highlights include Electra's soundtrack of composer Louis Andriessen and director Hal Hartley's short film collaboration The New Math(s), and Andriessen's score to Betsy Torenbos's Shopping List of a Poisoner, Witches & Bitches, which cooks up choreography, film, mirrors, soundtracks, high heels, water kettles, witchcraft, girl power and Marilyn Monroe in a bubbling cauldron of mischief. Later in July, New York City-based contemporary chamber ensemble Bang on a Can will return to MASS MoCA for its annual Summer Music Institute featuring works by prominent Dutch composers. New work commissioned from Cornelis de Bondt will be presented at the Bang on a Can All-Stars concert on Saturday, July 21, at 8 PM, and the Bang on a Can Marathon Concert on Saturday, July 28, from 4 to 10 PM will feature works by composers Louis Andriessen, Mayke Nas, Martijn Padding, Diederik Wagenaar, and others.

Concluding the NL season at MASS MoCA will be choreographer Nanine Linning and theater troupe Dood Paard. On Saturday, August 11 at 8 PM Linning will present Cry Love, a work inspired by the painter Francis Bacon. This collaboration - which will delve into human instinct, mood and emotion - includes music by Jacob ter Veldhuis, video by Erik Lint and Roger Muskee, and an installation/set design by the choreographer herself. On Saturday, August 25, at 8 PM Amsterdam-based theater group Dood Paard will present their contemporary version of a classic Greek myth in MedEia. The play is written in a poetic form of broken English and will feature lyrics from American and British pop musicians, as well as mini high-speed slide shows which divide the acts.

For more information about NL: A Season of Dutch Arts in the Berkshires please visit www.NL-Berkshires.org. Also hosting Dutch visual and performing artists are major arts organizations Tanglewood, Jacob's Pillow Dance, the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, and The Colonial Theatre.

MASS MoCA, the largest center for contemporary visual and performing arts in the United States, is located off Marshall Street in North Adams on a 13-acre campus of renovated 19th-century factory buildings. For ticket information please visit www.massmoca.org, or call the MASS MoCA box office at 413-662-2111.

For Immediate Release
Contact: Katherine Myers
(413) 664-4481 x8113
katherine@massmoca.org