Bausch, Donnellan, Monk, Rux, et al. to Participate in BAM’s 2006 Next Wave Festival

A new work from Meredith Monk, Declan Donnellan’s all-male Twelfth Night, and the return of Pina Bausch are among the theater-related highlights of the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s 2006 Next Wave Festival, which will run from October 3-December 12. This year’s festival features 18 dance, theater, music-theater, opera-oratorio, and popular music productions — the largest number presented by the festival to date.

Impermanence, which is conceived, directed, and composed by Monk, receives its world premiere at the BAM Harvey Theater from November 1-5. The work is a multimedia celebration of life and a meditation on death, and is performed by Monk and her ensemble of singer-dancers and instrumentalists.

Declan Donnellan, director of the British troupe Cheek By Jowl, teams up with the Chekhov International Theatre Festival for an all-male production of Shakespeare’s comedy Twelfth Night, November 7-12 at the Harvey. The performance is in Russian with English subtitles and features an ensemble drawn from some of Russia’s finest stage, film, and television stars.

World renowned choreographer Pina Bausch makes her tenth BAM appearance with the U.S. premiere of Nefés from December 8-16 at the Howard Gilman Opera House. The work begins in a Turkish bath, and features the critically acclaimed artist’s trademark collages of dance, music, dialogue, and stage design.

Among the other theater-related works in the festival are Mycenaean, Carl Hancock Rux’s poetic opera-oratorio that adapts texts of his recent novel Asphalt and his epic poem, “Mycenaean Born” (October 10-14); Nine Hills One Valley, a haunting and powerful theatrical allegory that confronts the turmoil in Manipur, India from director Ratan Thiyam and his Chorus Repertory Theatre (October 11-14); Violet Fire: A Multimedia Opera directed by Mabou Mines co-founder Terry O’Reilly that is inspired by the life of inventor Nikola Tesla (October 18-21); the National Theatre of Norway’s staging of Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck (October 25-29); vanguard poet Sekou Sundiata’s the 51st (dream) state, which examines what it means to be an American in the 21st century (November 8-11); Montreal-based 4D art’s production of Shakespeare’s La Tempête (The Tempest), which marries high technology with the gripping tale of Prospero (November 15-18); and German director Thomas Ostermeier’s production of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler (November 28-December 2).

For more information, visit www.bam.org.