OZ Arts brings the world to Nashville
OZ Arts Nashville, the modern arts middle recognized for its groundbreaking dance, music, theater and multimedia performances, has introduced its lineup for the 2022-23 season, full of worldwide performers.
Although OZ Arts Nashville is celebrating its tenth season, it’s additionally making a comeback to commonly scheduled programming for the primary time since 2020. In response to Govt and Creative Director Mark Murphy, the return to the stage with a full viewers and world performers seems like a homecoming of kinds – and the thrill within the air is palpable.
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“There was nonetheless some COVID hesitancy final yr and the performing arts are nonetheless recovering, however I am thrilled that we’re capable of function worldwide artists within the upcoming season, which is one thing that has been fairly uncommon in the previous couple of years,” Murphy stated. “As a result of we have been by way of a time once we could not have that shared expertise, you respect it much more – it is modified many issues in a great way as a result of just about each efficiency expertise that I’ve had just lately has felt new and recent.”
Murphy moved from Southern California to Nashville in 2019 to take the helm at OZ, simply earlier than the pandemic shut down the world in early 2020, dealing the performing arts a serious blow.
“I really like Nashville. It was an odd time to maneuver right here as a result of it is exhausting to get to know a brand new metropolis and new folks throughout a pandemic,” he stated. “However I’ve discovered town to be extremely welcoming and to be rising in a approach that’s creating the type of viewers I really like – an viewers that’s curious, that wishes to find new issues and needs to be a part of artistic risk-taking.
“A metropolis that has lengthy been recognized primarily as the house of nation music has been shortly reworking right into a metropolis that’s taking part in an necessary function in setting the tempo for the event of latest performing arts.”
OZ Arts Nashville’s tenth season will spotlight extra worldwide artists than ever, together with ensembles from South Africa, Algeria, Australia, Ukraine, Guinea, France and Canada, alongside completed American artists from New York, Los Angeles and, after all, Tennessee.
The season kicks off with Kyle Abraham and his celebrated dance firm, Abraham in Movement (A.I.M.), in his first efficiency since his acclaimed 2015 Nashville debut. Set to the R&B music of Grammy-winning artist D’Angelo, the brand new manufacturing, “An Untitled Love,” is sensual, refined and breathtaking.
“Many of those items have been made in the course of the pandemic or began earlier than – these artists are discovering sensible methods to have a good time a way of reconnecting – this efficiency manages to be humorous and likewise horny in the way in which it explores folks having the ability to contact one another once more – it has taken on a fair larger which means,” Murphy stated. “It’s the begin of an expansive and sturdy season that I’m very enthusiastic about.”
The season’s various storytelling continues to discover the function the viewers has within the performing arts with a collaboration between acclaimed Nashville dance collective New Dialect and the American Trendy Opera Firm presenting “Damaged Theater,” a compelling dance and music work that imagines a bunch of artists wrestling with identification and function after their viewers disappears.
The season consists of an look by legendary singer-songwriter and Nationwide E book Award-winning creator Patti Smith; revered blues and soul singer Martha Redbone performing music impressed by her multicultural upbringing and Cherokee legacy within the Appalachian Mountains; and on the anniversary of the Ukraine-Russia battle, Kyiv’s DakhaBrakha, a Ukrainian folk-punk quartet that Murphy describes as “spellbinding, energizing and constructive.” The season closes with considered one of South Africa’s premier performers, Gregory Maqoma, with a bit about hope after loss of life that includes a novel variation of Ravel’s Boléro.
Amongst Murphy’s proudest accomplishments since becoming a member of OZ Arts Nashville has been making ticket costs considerably extra inexpensive. In 2019, Murphy slashed ticket costs from $85 to $20-$35 per ticket. Season ticket packages begin at $120.
Tickets for this season go on sale at 9 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 6; go to www.ozartsnashville.org.
“I am very pleased with the way in which we have been capable of enhance entry by reducing ticket costs and that it resulted in additional than doubling the viewers, …” Murphy stated. “The viewers is youthful and extra various in consequence and it consists of numerous artists as a result of it is extra inexpensive.
“The creative decisions that we make are sometimes made with artists in thoughts, not simply audiences. What do artists in Nashville want with a view to turn out to be a part of the bigger dialog in regards to the evolution of latest tradition? Bringing artists into that dialog is crucial. With most occasions that we have completed, greater than half of the viewers was experiencing OZ Arts for the very first time.”
By way of music, dance, theater and multimedia performances, OZ Arts Nashville has hosted artists who interpret the world in artistic methods and supply significant engagement with audiences, college students and civic leaders – greater than 50,000 of them over the previous decade.
“The work we embody should be important and related. Lots of the initiatives are regarding necessary points we’re coping with immediately: a concentrate on human rights, racial justice and variety generally, with most of the artists voicing their very own distinctive tackle their cultural identification or the facility of embracing the previous to make a brighter future,” Murphy stated.
“They’re combining totally different artwork types to create a brand new language, and I discover that extremely thrilling. I am tremendous fortunate to have the ability to work with artists who’re inventing new types and merging creative disciplines to reply to and make sense of all of the adjustments taking place on this planet proper now.”
The schedule
A.I.M. by Kyle Abraham’s An Untitled Love, Oct. 20-22
Meow Meow (in partnership with TPAC), Oct. 28
Fable Cry’s Competition of Ghouls, Oct. 29
New Dialect & American Trendy Opera Firm’s Damaged Theater, Nov. 17-19
Patti Smith’s Songs & Tales (in partnership with Parnassus Books), November 21, 2022
Martha Redbone’s Bone Hill, Dec. 2-3
Compagnie Hervé Koubi’s What the Day Owes to the Evening (France/Algeria), Feb. 2-4
DakhaBrakha (Ukraine), Feb. 25
Child Koala’s The Storyville Mosquito – A Theatrical Cinema Expertise (Montreal), March 23-25
The Yeli Ensemble, Windship Boyd & Christophe Konkobo’s Timbuktu Inside (Guinea), April 14-15
Gregory Maqoma’s CION: Requiem of Ravel’s Boléro (South Africa), Could 4-6
