Dreamweaver Marketing Associates News and Views: DistinctivelyDutchFestival

Showing posts with label DistinctivelyDutchFestival. Show all posts

Friday, May 18, 2012

Global Navigators Art Exhibit at Cultural District Galleries

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Veronica Corpuz, The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust
(412) 471-6082 / corpuz@pgharts.org

Global Navigators April 27 – June 17, 2012
Wood Street Galleries / SPACE / 707 Penn Gallery
As part of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s Distinctively Dutch Festival

Pittsburgh, PA: “We navigate with ease today with online directions and satellite signaling. GPS systems guide us along our routes, correcting every wrong turn. Exploration and wayfinding in other ages, however, were fraught with difficulties and conflict,” notes curator Murray Horne in his essay on the exhibition Global Navigators on display through June 17, as part of The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s Distinctively Dutch Festival, which concludes this weekend.

The 1600s were a golden era for the Dutch, the age of Rembrandt and Vermeer and a relatively tolerant society that distinguished itself as a haven for the oppressed. It was a prosperous age, with coffers filled by the greatest merchant fleet in the world. Amsterdam became its glittering financial capital, the center of the new Dutch Empire.

In 1602, the Dutch East India Company was created to find an all-water route to Asia and occupy unclaimed lands along the way. Twelve years later, the New Netherland Company was formed and received a three-year monopoly from the Dutch government to occupy lands between New France and the English claims in Virginia. The company operated the fur trade profitably, but was unable to entice settlers into the area.

The Dutch needed permanent settlements in order to hold New World possessions against French and English competition. In 1621, the Dutch West India Company was formed to conduct activities in West Africa and the Western Hemisphere. Recipients of a 24-year monopoly, the investors began by establishing a permanent settlement on lands formerly belonging to the New Netherland Company.

In 1624, a shipload of Flemish Walloons sailed to the New World, subsequently spreading themselves throughout the claim along the Delaware, Connecticut and Hudson Rivers. Outlying ventures were under constant threat of attack by Native Americans and most were abandoned, but New Netherland emerged as areas were settled in the current Mid-Atlantic States of New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Connecticut, with small outposts in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. Its provincial capital was New Amsterdam, now Manhattan.

This spring, the Dutch occupy Pittsburgh, a city of three other rivers, throughthe Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s Distinctively Dutch Festival, a three-month festival that celebrates the culture and contemporary performing and visual arts from the Netherlands through May 2012.

Global Navigators explores and embodies our continued fascination with global cultures through various media, forms and processes. The eight exhibiting artists all hold Dutch citizenship or live in Holland, but their imagery crosses geographical, ideological, technical and aesthetic boundaries, spanning Maoist guerrilla group operating in the Philippines to a 747 descending over Hong Kong. Their works move from the North Pole to more nebulous locations, crafting and critiquing our claims to the earth and the powers that reign over its regions and inhabitants. Together, their efforts embrace and extend the historical context of Dutch exploration, charting a contemporary expedition with new media across emerging globalization.

Global Navigators
Curated by Murray Horne

Wood Street Galleries:
Peter Bogers
Guido van der Werve

SPACE:
Mark Boulos
Gerard Holthuis
Folkert de Jong
Geert Mul
Marnix de Nijs
Karen Sargsyan

707
Guido van der Werve

Gallery Details:
Wood Street Galleries is located at 601 Wood Street above the T-Station in the Downtown Pittsburgh Cultural District. SPACE is located at 812 Liberty Avenue, and 707 Penn Gallery is located at 707 Penn Avenue in the Cultural District.Global Navigators is made possible through generous support of the Mondriaan Foundation.

Hours:
Wednesday & Thursday, 11 a.m. - 6 p.m.; Friday & Saturday, 11 a.m. - 8 p.m.; Sunday 11 a.m. - 5 p.m.
For more information, call 412-471-5605 or visit woodstreetgalleries.org

Wood Street Galleries is a Project of The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and is free and open to the public

ALSO ON VIEW:
Girls’N’Guns
709 Penn Gallery
Photography by Rachel Nieborg and Ine Mulder
Through June 17, 2012

Posted on behalf of Dreamweaver Marketing Associates. Joyce Kane is the owner of Cybertary Pittsburgh, a Virtual Administrative support company, providing virtual office support, personal and executive assistance, creative design services and light bookkeeping. Cybertary works with businesses and busy individuals to help them work 'on' their business rather than 'in' their business. www.Cybertary.com/Pittsburgh

Go! Dutch: Closing Party Features Dexter, Rosa Menkman

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

GO! DUTCH: Closing Party w/ DEXTER
Saturday, May 19, 2012 at 10:00 p.m.

HOLLAND'S UNDERGROUND CLUB SCENE COLLIDES WITH DIGITAL ART FOR AN ALL-NIGHT POP UP PARTY

Pittsburgh, PA: VIA, HUMANAUT, NAKTURNAL, AND PITTSBURGH CULTURAL TRUST present GO! Dutch, a closing party for the Distinctively Dutch Festival on Saturday, May 19, 2012, at 10 p.m. The all-night pop-up party will feature Dexter, Rosa Menkman and the video installation Gentrification Battlefied. Tickets to the 21+ over event are $8 in advance, $10 at the door. Visit http://viapgh.showclix.com/

ARTISTS
Dexter came at the dance music world from the same side as you and I: the dancefloor. Well, sort of... after initially hanging out with a breakdance crew in his native Holland during the 80s, Remy Verheijen decided shifting shapes was not for him. Instead, he was more and more consumed by what the man behind the decks was doing. Being but a wide-eyed teenager, Remy couldn't afford to buy the mixes tapes said DJs were selling ''so I stole them'' he admits. ''Then I copied them and later returned them in a sneaky way, having studied and obsessed over the music they were calling 'space electro'.''

http://twitter.com/remyverheijen
http://www.discogs.com/artist/Dexter
http://www.residentadvisor.net/dj/dexter

ROSA MENKMAN
Rosa Menkman is an emerging new media artist whose videos and live performances are created by accidents in digital media (glitch). Her work emphasizes the positive, and beautiful consequences of glitches, compressions, and feedback and strives for new forms of synesthesia. Rosa has performaned and lectured internationally, including the recent 25th (2012) Transmediale Festival, Berlin: A festival concerning the role of digital technologies in contemporary society.

https://vimeo.com/r00s

GENTRIFICATION BATTLEFIELD
Recently featured in MOMA's 2011 "Talk To Me" exhibition, this video game trailer, created with Blender software, features longtime inhabitants of a neighborhood fight for possession against advancing hipsters and yuppies. The game takes place in Amsterdam-Noord, a real-life neighborhood that has become a symbolic stage for class and social conflict in the Netherlands, with artists and cutting-edge institutions existing alongside a sizable immigrant community. In Gentrification Battlefield, which has the retro aesthetic of a first-generation PlayStation game, you can either be Timo, a hipster driving a Volkswagen van, or Sjaan, an elderly resident threatened with eviction; the neighborhood battlefield is rendered complete with key landmarks. By presenting the process of gentrification as a real battle, the game provides insight into the political and social complexities of the issue. Golfstromen is planning to turn the concept into a real game.

http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2011/talktome/objects/146202/

For tickets:
$8 advance / $10 door / $5
21+ tix @ http://viapgh.showclix.com/
http://www.showclix.com/event/226299

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Cultural District Restaurants Go "Dutch"

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Cultural District Restaurants Go "Dutch"

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contact:
Diana Roth
(412) 471-8717
roth@trustarts.org

The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust presents

DUTCH DINING WEEK

Part of the Distinctively Dutch Festival

Monday, April 23 through Friday, April 27, 2012

Pittsburgh, PA:The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust presents Dutch Dining Week, as part of The Distinctively Dutch Festival, Monday, April 23 through Friday, April 27, 2012, from 5:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m.at restaurants throughout the Cultural District. Each restaurant will feature a Dutch dish and other special offerings during this week.

Participating restaurants include:

Bravo Franco Ristorante (613 Penn Avenue, 412-642-6677)
Pork tenderloin with a ginger sauce

Meat & Potatoes (649 Penn Avenue, 412-325-7007)
Specials are changing daily

Nine on Nine (600 Penn Avenue, 412-338-6463)
Yankee-Dutch cocktail

Palazzo Ristorante (144 6th Street, 412-434-6244)
Dutch cheese plate & specials on Heineken

Sharp Edge: Bistro on Penn (922 Penn Avenue, 412-338-2437)
Homemade pistachio country style pate and orange & fennel chicken terrine, with
assorted cheeses, whole grain mustard & toasted baguette, and more.

Six Penn Kitchen (146 6th Street, 412-566-7366)
Three-course tasting menu that includes a soup, a pork tenderloin, and apple pie for desert

Taste of Dahntahn (535 Liberty Avenue, 412-224-2240)
Specials on drinks, and other offerings.

Tonic Bar & Grill (971 Liberty Avenue, 412-456-0460)
Dutch shrimp & cucumber sandwich and a grilled pork tenderloin with apple leak potato pancakes, braised cabbage, and apple syrup

About the Distinctively Dutch Festival:
The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, a nonprofit arts and economic development organization at the center of Downtown Pittsburgh’s revival, will host an array of U.S. and world premieres as part of an interdisciplinary arts festival: The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s Distinctively Dutch Festival. Celebrating the culture and contemporary performing and visual arts from the Netherlands, the three-month festival will feature dance, theater, music, visual art, film, cuisine, literature and architecture. Events will be held February 18-May 20, 2012, throughout Pittsburgh’s Cultural District, as well as at select venues, including MCG Jazz, City of Asylum/Pittsburgh, Carnegie Museum of Art, Carnegie Library Lecture Hall, Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens and Carnegie Mellon University.

Presented by The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, The Distinctively Dutch Festival is supported by the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Performing Arts Fund NL, Music Center the Netherlands and Theater Instituut Nederland. In addition, The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust gratefully acknowledges the Carol R. Brown Performance Fund for support of the Festival, as well as media partners Pittsburgh City Paper and 90.5 Essential Public Media. For a listing of events and to receive updates, please visitTrustArts.org/dutchfestival or call 412-456-6666.
###

Friday, April 6, 2012

JacobTV and Fulcrum Point Ensemble Perform Reality Opera

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Dutch avant-pop composter remixes THE NEWS in unprecedented time capsule of modern culture & media

JacobTV and Chicago's Fulcrum Point Ensemble will perform world premiere at the Byham Theater on Friday, April 27, 2012

The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust in collaboration with The Andy Warhol Museum’s Off the Wall performance series proudly presents the world premiere of THE NEWS, a 90-minute “reality opera” by avant-pop Dutch composer JacobTV based on non-fiction footage from the international media. This special premiere sponsored by Joan Humphrey is part of The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s Distinctively Dutch Festival which runs through May 20, 2012.

THE NEWS is a remix of musical composition, video production and social commentary through live performances designed for two vocalists, nine musicians, soundtracks and videos. The drama is constructed using broadcasts, sampled speeches and sound bites from newscasters, politicians, scientists, televangelists, athletes, movie stars and celebrities discussing a vast array of socio-political issues. From global warming to the credit crunch, as well as matters of war and peace to mundane trivialities, THE NEWS exposes western society's obsession with public image, fame, catastrophe and morality.

Featured artists include: Kristien Kerstens (videos); Jan Boiten (stage design, lighting, videos); JacobTV (concept, music, lyrics, direction); “anchor women” Josefien Stoppelenbrug (soprano) and Lori Cotler (alto); Fulcrumpoint New Music Project; and conductor Stephen Burns.

JacobTV
JacobTV (Jacob Ter Veldhuis 1951) started as a rock musician and studied composition and electronic music at the Groningen Conservatory, where he was awarded the Composition Prize of the Netherlands in 1980. He became a full time composer and soon made a name for himself with melodious compositions, straight from the heart and with great effect. Long queues at the box office of the four-day Jacob TV Festival in Rotterdam in 2001 confirmed his growing popularity. The NRC called him the ‘Jeff Koons of new music’ and his ‘coming-out’ as a composer of ultra-tonal, mellifluous music reached its climax with the video oratorio Paradiso, premiered the day after 9-11 and released on CD and DVD by British record label Chandos.

In the last decade JacobTV’s boombox music, for live instruments with a grooving soundtrack based on speech melody, became internationally popular. Although JacobTV is one of the most performed European composers, he is still an outlaw in the established modern classical music scene, and was recently accused of ‘musical terrorism’ after a premiere at the World Harp Congress in Amsterdam. According to the Wall Street Journal his newest work ‘makes many a hip-hop artist look sedate’. In 2007 the ‘box set trilogy, an anthology of his work with 12 hours of audio and video, was released by Basta and presented at a three-day JacobTV mini festival at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.

“JacobTV is preoccupied with American media and world events and draws raw materials from those sources. His work possesses an explosive strength and raw energy combined with extraordinarily intricate architectural design,” notes Limor Tomer, Concerts & Lectures General Manager of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Fulcrum Point New Music Project
Formed by trumpet virtuoso and conductor Stephen Burns in 1998, Fulcrum Point New Music Project champions new classical music and highlights contemporary composers who are inspired and influenced by popular culture, including literature, film, dance, folk, rock, jazz, blues, Latin and world music. Through multi-disciplinary concert performances and educational programs, the Fulcrum Point ensemble seeks to encourage audiences to make cross-cultural connections between new music, art, technology and literature, gaining greater insight into today’s diverse world.

JacobTV will premiere THE NEWS at the Byham Theater (101 Sixth Street, Cultural District) on Friday, April 27, 2012, at 9 p.m. The world premiere culminates a two-day series of Distinctively Dutch events. On Thursday, April 26, The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, Kingdom of the Netherlands, Carnegie Mellon University's Remaking Cities Institute and World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh will host a panel discussion on "Rethinking Cities in the 21st Century." Panelists include Donald Carter, Director of the Remaking Cities Institute at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU); Vivian Loftness, University Professor at CMU’s School of Architecture; Paul Scheffer, Professor of Urban Sociology, Tilberg University, Netherlands; Rijk van Ark, Director of Economic Affairs, City of Amsterdam; and moderator Rob de Vos, Consul General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

On Friday, April 27, from 5:30-9 p.m., The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust's free Gallery Crawl will have a Dutch focus with four galleries exhibiting work by visual artists from the Netherlands. Featured exhibition Global Navigators, supported by the Mondriaan Foundation, highlights multimedia installations and videos at Wood Street (601 Wood Street), SPACE (812 Liberty Avenue) and 707 Penn Gallery. Dutch photographers Rachel Nieborg and Ine Mulder will present the explosive exhibition Guns'N'Girls at 709 Penn Gallery.

Tickets ($20-$30) for THE NEWS and information on all festival events are available at the Box Office at Theater Square, online at trustarts.org/dutchfestival and by calling 412-456-6666. Groups can obtain discounts by calling 412-471-6930. Student tickets are $15 and available at the Box Office and through the phone room.

For more information on JacobTV visit http://www.jacobtv.net/index.html

Trailer and information at http://dutchfestival.pgharts.org/fest_event/jacobtv/

Following the world premiere at the Distinctively Dutch Festival, THE NEWS will be performed in Chicago at the Park West, 322 W. Armitage Avenue, on Friday, May 4, at 6 and 9 p.m. For more information on the Chicago performances and the Fulcrum Point New Music Project, please visit www.fulcrumpoint.org.

The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s Distinctively Dutch Festival is supported by the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Performing Arts Fund NL, Music Center the Netherlands and Theater Instituut Nederland. In addition, The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust gratefully acknowledges the Carol R. Brown Performance Fund for support of the Festival, as well as media partners Pittsburgh City Paper and 90.5 Essential Public Media.

###

Monday, March 12, 2012

Pittsburgh Dance Council Presents US Premiere of Last Touch First

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Today's date: March 9, 2012

Contact:
Veronica Corpuz
(412) 471-6082
corpuz@trustarts.org

Diana Roth
(412) 471-8717
roth@trustarts.org

The U.S. Premiere of Last Touch First presented by Pittsburgh Dance Council

Friday, April 6 and Saturday, April 7, 2012, at 8:00 p.m., August Wilson Center, 980 Liberty Avenue

Credit: Robert Benschop

Pittsburgh Dance Council, a division of The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, proudly presents the U.S. premiere of “Last Touch First”, created by famed Dutch choreographer Jiří Kylián and expat Michael Schumacher, at the August Wilson Center for African American Culture on Friday, April 6 and Saturday, April 7, 2012, at 8:00 p.m. “...an intimate and moving performance, in which desperation, madness and loneliness touch the depths of the six characters. The dancers move almost an hour in super slow motion, situated in the atmosphere of 19th century, which reminds of the grotesque plays by Russian author Anton Chekhov” (NRC Handelsblad).

Tickets ($35) may be purchased at the Box Office at Theater Square, online at www.trustarts.org, or by calling (412) 456-6666. First Commonwealth is the proud season sponsor of Pittsburgh Dance Council, and 90.5 Essential Public Radio is the media sponsor. This performance of “Last Touch First” is also part of The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s Distinctively Dutch Festival*.

“Last Touch First” originated from a small idea from the Holland Dance Festival. Dance improviser Michael Schumacher and dancer Sabine Kupferberg were to make a duet based on improvisation systems that were developed while working together on “The Moment,” a piece created for Nederlands Dans Theater III (2001). However, this idea grew into a project of respectable size, based on Jiří Kylián’s “Last Touch,” created for Nederlands Dance Theater III (2003). Therefore, with the combined minds of Jiří Kylián and Sabine Kupferberg, Michael Schumacher created the ensemble piece “Last Touch First,” which premiered in February 2008 at Korzo Theater in The Hague.

Artistic direction for “Last Touch First” stems from the ingenious minds of Michael Schumacher and Jiří Kylián. Schumacher began his career as a dancer at various ballets including: Frankfurt Ballet, Twyla Tharp Dance, the Feld Ballet and the Pretty Ugly Dance Company. Schumacher continued his career with guest appearances for Peter Sellars, as well as productions with several artists such as Sylvie Guillem, Dana Caspersen, and Anouk van Dijk. He currently performs with an Amsterdam-based collective of improvisation artists at the Magpie Music Dance Company and also teaches workshops in improvisation techniques and movement analysis.

Prague native Jiří Kylián became increasingly interested in the performing arts by studying at the Ballet School of Prague National Theatre, Prague Conservatory, and the Royal Ballet School in London. He became the artistic director of Nederlands Dans Theatre in 1975 after creating his first choreography for the company two years prior. Kylián’s numerous works can be seen throughout the world, and his choreographies are to be found on the repertoire of numerous dance companies all over the world. In 1991, the Holland Dance Festival opened with Jiří Kylián’s first piece for Nederlands Dans Theater III, and in 2005 he celebrated his 30th anniversary at Nederlands Dans Theater by opening the Holland Dance Festival with a production for Nederlands Dans Theater II.

Jiří Kylián has received numerous awards and honors for his work, including three Nijinsky Awards, Honorary Medal from the president of the Czech Republic, Benois de la Danse in Moscow and Berlin, The Golden Lion at Venice Biennale (2008), and the Medal for Art and Science of Her Majesty Queen Beatrix (2008).

Each year the Pittsburgh Dance Council, a division of The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, showcases a world-class season of dance. As the largest presenter of international performances in the city, the Pittsburgh Dance Council continues to help make our Cultural District one of the country’s leading arts and entertainment centers.

*The Distinctively Dutch Festival is presented by The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, in collaboration with the Kingdom of the Netherlands. From February through May, 2012, throughout downtown Pittsburgh’s Cultural District, the Festival will feature a range of contemporary work that is reflective of today’s Dutch culture, including dance, jazz, visual art, film, theater, children’s theater and literature. The Festival is part of the Cultural Trust’s mission to present a wide variety of art forms, as well as companies and artists who represent our world’s rich cultural heritages. The Cultural Trust seeks to present artists of the highest quality and caliber in each discipline, particularly artists who would not normally have an opportunity to be seen in Pittsburgh or the United States. For more information visit www.trustarts.org/dutchfestival.