The “Tragic” Symphony thrusts the audience into the composer’s inner world, and Mahler specialist Gustavo Dudamel has been celebrated for expertly shaping the soaring emotional peaks and valleys that run throughout the Sixth. Percussion in many ways frames the emotional extremes Mahler sought to capture, first with cowbells evoking a nostalgic image of country life and then with the famous hammer blows. Each gut-shaking strike represents a fated doom that drowns out happy memory. But while it is a dark path, sharing in this very human emotional journey is ultimately life-affirming.

A concert of Tallis' monumental masterpiece and a varied sonic showcase of music reflecting on the same spirit of hope, devotion and deliverance.

Presented by Center Theatre Group in association with Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance at The Music Center.

"Electrifying. One of Matthew Bourne’s smartest, sexiest shows yet." —The Daily Telegraph

"Your jaw will drop, there are moments so stunning that you might just forget to breathe." —Broadway World

"A seismic youthquake. A Romeo and Juliet for the millennial generation." —The Stage

Experience Shakespeare’s timeless story of forbidden love with a scintillating injection of raw passion and youthful vitality. Confined against their will by a society that seeks to divide, our two young lovers must follow their hearts as they risk everything to be together. A masterful re-telling of an ageless tale of teenage discovery and the madness of first love.

How would you dance, if you knew you were going to die? This is the central question the late choreographer Pina Bausch asked of her dancers in 1975 when she created her seminal work The Rite of Spring. The work examines unyielding ritual when the sacrifice of a “chosen one” changes the season from winter to spring. This pioneering piece, establishing Bausch's iconic approach, has flourished to become one of the 20^th century’s most significant and important works in dance. Faithful to Stravinsky’s visceral score, Bausch’s monumental choreography is given a thrilling new life by a specially assembled company of 34 dancers from 14 African countries. Dancing on a peat-covered stage, they clash and engage in a poetic struggle of life, ritual and sacrifice that pays tribute to Bausch’s unparalleled genius.

Rite is paired with a new work, common ground[s], created, performed and inspired by the lives of two remarkable women who have each juggled roles as choreographers, professors and grandmothers: Germaine Acogny, the founder of the Senegalese École des Sables, who is widely considered to be “the mother of contemporary African dance,” and Malou Airaudo, who performed leading roles in many of Bausch’s early works as a member of Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch. Their tender choreographic response to Rite reflects their shared histories, emotional experiences and common ground.

The groundbreaking Recovered Voices project returns with a pair of powerful one-act operas. The power of art triumphs over historical neglect and censorship in two 20th-century gems. First up is a rare staging of Highway 1, USA by William Grant Still, a trailblazing Jim Crow-era composer hailed as “the Dean of African-American Composers.” A hardworking couple determined to build a better life, discover that their years of sacrifices have been misguided. This new production is staged by visionary director Kaneza Schaal, who helmed the stunning 2022 production of Omar.
Next, The Dwarf, a heartbreaking tale of one-sided love in an opulent Spanish court. Last presented here in 2008 to critical acclaim, Oscar Wilde’s fable is brought to life through a lush and romantic score by Alexander Zemlinsky, whose career was cut short by the rise of the Nazi regime.

The “Tragic” Symphony thrusts the audience into the composer’s inner world, and Mahler specialist Gustavo Dudamel has been celebrated for expertly shaping the soaring emotional peaks and valleys that run throughout the Sixth. Percussion in many ways frames the emotional extremes Mahler sought to capture, first with cowbells evoking a nostalgic image of country life and then with the famous hammer blows. Each gut-shaking strike represents a fated doom that drowns out happy memory. But while it is a dark path, sharing in this very human emotional journey is ultimately life-affirming.