23 July 2022

Summer 22 Update

July 23, 2022 Update:

5/16-29: Miami City Ballet  As co-regisseur with beloved dance pal Peggy Lyman Hayes of Martha Graham Resources, I had the pleasure of teaching Graham’s 1948 buoyant and love-filled work, “Diversion of Angels” to two casts of terrific dancers. Miami Beach is a trip…another world compared to my last visit there in 1978. The Art Déco hotels and delis are now dwarfed by high rises and condos. I also was able to reconnect with longtime colleagues Danny Lewis and Cameron Basden while there. 

6/12: Winterreise: At long last and after two years of postponements, Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival hosted a screening of my 24-section take on Schubert’s monumental song cycle at Detroit Institute of Arts Film Auditorium. I had the supreme gift of having Nickolas Phan, tenor and Paul Watkins, piano, perform the score live and in exquisite sync to my video. 

6/13-26: Parsons Center for Arts & Sciences/Interlochen: This best-kept secret of an arts retreat center just NW of Interlochen, MI, provided me two weeks’ use of a home on a lake and spacious studio for painting and testing greenscreen and video projection. I was summoned by the nearby alma mater, Interlochen, to teach a workshop on improvisation; I realized it was exactly 50 years to the day that I’d spent the summer of ’72 on the National Music Camp Dance faculty! 

Upcoming:

8/15: Four of my paintings will be installed in Baker College’s new center in Royal Oak, MI: “Hommage a Fragonard” and three “Motion Pictures” have found a new home via Embrace Creatives/Andrea Bogart. See my site:  https://embracecreatives.com/artist/petersparling/

8/30-9/4: I’ll return to the Crooked Tree School of Ballet (CTSB) in Petoskey, MI to set my Valley of Sighs (Valley of Sighs prototype: https://vimeo.com/693630662 password: VOS ) and new works to Frank Pahl and Poulenc (Poulenc Sonata prototype: https://vimeo.com/697913488 password: CTAC) combining video projection of painted figurescapes and live performance. Performance will be at Harbor Springs High School on 11/13.

10/6-11/6: Ann Arbor’s Kerrytown Concert House will host an exhibit of my works on paper including the Lacrimoso series (Lacrimoso: https://vimeo.com/687281614) and Motion Pictures.

10/30-11/4: I will visit Orange County, CA and old friend and former Peter Sparing Dance Company member Julianne O’Brien Petersen for a guest residency/interdisciplinary panel at Chapman University presenting a variation of the CTSB program and process.

 

New screendances:

Videos for the Void: https://vimeo.com/709484316

Performing the Interdisciplinary Self: https://vimeo.com/632960944