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Rogovoy Report 8/17/18

The cultural highlights in our region this weekend include modern dance, Russian classical, rock ‘n roll, chamber music, and a whole lot more.

A special program on Saturday night at the Guthrie Center in Great Barrington, Mass., pays tribute to the legendary songwriter Doc Pomus, featuring Marshall Crenshaw, Willie Nile, and Christine Ohlman. Born Jerome Felder in Brooklyn, Doc Pomus penned an entire catalog of R&B and rock n’ roll hits, including Dion’s “A Teenager in Love,” the Drifters’ “This Magic Moment” and “Save the Last Dance”, Elvis Presley’s “It’s Now or Never”; “Viva Las Vegas”; and “Little Sister”; Leon Russell’s “Youngblood”, and Ben E. King’s “Here Comes the Night,” which was also a hit for Van Morrison.

Also on Saturday night, Tannery Pond Concerts, on the grounds of the Mount Lebanon Shaker Village and the Darrow School in New Lebanon, N.Y., presents classical accordionist Hanzhi Wang and the Omer Quartet at 8 pm.  The program will include works by Astor Piazzolla, Bach, and Grieg, among others, and it will conclude with Béla Bartók's String Quartet in A minor, Op. 7, No. 1.

Jaimeo Brown and his ensemble Transcendence bring their unique fusion of jazz, hip-hop, and blues to MASS MoCA in North Adams, on Saturday at 8pm.

And then on Monday at 7pm, Concerts at 7 at the Plainfield Congregational Church in Plainfield, Mass., presents a free concert featuring innovative cellist Matt Haimovitz, performing works by Bach, Isang Yun, and Vijay Iyer.

Choreographer John Jasperse brings his newest work, “Hinterland,” to Hudson Hall tonight through Sunday, in a presentation by Catskill, N.Y.-based Lumberyard. In the program, a group of dancers, including Jasperse himself, comes together with a commissioned score by Hahn Rowe to build what they call “a micro-community, where dance is both celebration and a refuge from the wreckage of culture and history.” And for all you math geeks out there, the program apparently is somehow based on the Fibonacci sequence.

While John Jasperse and company are dancing to Fibonacci numbers in Hudson, over at PS21 in Chatham, N.Y., the Dušan Týnek Dance Theatre presents a program tonight and tomorrow night that includes “Romanesco Suite,” which is inspired by the theory of fractals and geometric shapes that occur in nature. The program also includes a dance called “Middlegame,” said to take its inspiration from the game of chess and 19th century café life, employing tactics of game strategy and seduction.

Why the reliance on nature and math by these choreographers? I’ll tell you why. It's a good way to avoid narrative, which modern dance is often afraid of or fighting against. So math, nature patterns, and other abstract forms are appealing. How do I know all this? My daughter Anna, a modern dancer and choreographer herself, told me.

It’s the second and final weekend of the 29th annual Bard Music Festival – “Rimsky-Korsakov and His World,” investigating the seminal Russian Romantic and those he influenced. To launch the weekend, tonight at 8pm in the Fisher Center at Bard College, the Virtual Village, an ensemble of musicians and musicologists from Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Conservatory, makes its U.S. debut with an exploration of the relationship between Russian folksong and art music, from Beethoven’s Second “Razumovsky” Quartet to Stravinsky’s Petrushka. Other highlights of the weekend include a rare opportunity to see Rimsky-Korsakov’s tenth opera, The Tsar’s Bride. The semi-staged production, on Sunday at 4:30pm, provides a fitting end to Bard’s probing and far-reaching exploration of “Rimsky-Korsakov and His World.”

Seth Rogovoy is editor of the Rogovoy Report, available online at rogovoyreport.com