“…when the time comes, perhaps a hundred years from now, to tally up
achievements in the arts during the last several decades,
one name that seems to loom large is that of Meredith Monk.
In originality, in scope, in depth, there are few to rival her.”

- Alan M. Kriegsman, Critic Emeritus for The Washington Post

For more than four decades, a pioneering vision and a prodigious talent have propelled MacArthur “genius” grant winner Meredith Monk from music to theater to art to dance to film -- she has made her mark on contemporary American performance by deliberately stepping on the cracks and blurring all the lines. Her world is one where object, light, sound and movement combine to make masterful works of art that speak directly to all of our senses.

Impermanence

Meredith Monk’s newest multidisciplinary work features a joyful and poignant look at change and the essential experiences we all share, from “…what we leave behind, to our fears and our celebrations of life….(Dance Insider)”. Embodying a broad spectrum of emotions, the phenomenal Meredith Monk and her dynamic Vocal Ensemble take us on a poetic journey to a place where music, movement and video portraits reflect the delicacy and power of the human spirit.

Impermanence uses music, video, movement, and text to create a celebratory and moving meditation on life. Each section of the work, announced cabaret-style by a spoken title (Last Song; Liminal; Seeds; Particular Dance; Disequilibrium Song, Mieke’s Melody #5), provides a non-narrative look at the different facets of impermanence and the joy and wonder of being. Accompanied by voice, piano, clarinet, breath, bicycle tire and other inventive instrumentation, the many scenes -- a montage of video portraits of extreme close-ups of diverse faces; a playful dance of energy unbound; voices rising from the dark singing a song of beginning and opening; an elegant dance of small gestures, performers balancing on chairs, seemingly floating in space -- create a collage of emotion, image, and sound that gently transport us on a journey that is haunting and mysterious, but at its core, essentially human.

For her latest project, Meredith works once again with the multitalented singers/performers/instrumentalists in the Vocal Ensemble: Theo Bleckmann, Ellen Fisher, Katie Geissinger, Ching Gonzalez, Bohdan Hilash, John Hollenbeck, and Allison Sniffin. On the heels of Monk’s last major work, the highly acclaimed mercy, Impermanence presents another opportunity to feed our senses with Monk’s rich expression of the inexpressible. .