WHAT TO WEARWHAT TO WEAR

Richard Foreman wrote, directed, and designed over fifty of his own plays both in New York City and abroad. Five of his plays received Obie awards as Best Play, and he received five other Obies for directing and for sustained achievement. He received the annual Literature award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, a Lifetime Achievement in the Theater award from the National Endowment for the Arts, a MacArthur Fellowship, and was elected officer of the Order of Arts and Letters of France. He collaborated with composer Stanley Silverman on 8 music theater pieces produced by The Music Theater Group & The New York City Opera.

Photo by: Joseph Moran

Michael Gordon is known for his monumental and immersive works. Decasia, for 55 retuned spatially positioned instruments (with Bill Morrison’s accompanying cult-classic film) has been featured on the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Minimalist Jukebox Festival and at the Southbank Centre. Timber, a tour-de-force for percussion sextet played on amplified microtonal simantras has been performed on every continent, including by Slagwerk Den Haag at the Musikgebouw and Mantra Percussion at BAM. Natural History, a collaboration with the Steiger Butte Drum of the Klamath tribe, was premiered by the Britt Festival Orchestra and Chorus on the rim of Crater Lake (Oregon) by conductor Teddy Abrams and is the subject of the PBS documentary Symphony for Nature. Gordon’s vocal works include Travel Guide to Nicaragua, an autobiographical choral work for The Crossing; the opera What to wear with the legendary director Richard Foreman; and the film-opera Acquanetta with director Daniel Fish. Recent recordings include Clouded Yellow, Gordon’s complete string quartets performed by the Kronos Quartet.

Paul Lazar is a founding member, along with Annie-B Parson, of Big Dance Theater. He has co-directed and acted in works for Big Dance since 1991, including commissions from the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Walker Art Center, Dance Theater Workshop, Classic Stage Company and Japan Society. Paul’s one person performance, Cage Shuffle, premiered at the American Realness Festival in 2017 and continues to tour the U.S. and Europe. https://www.cageshuffle.com 

Outside of BDT Paul has directed The Barbarians by Jerry Lieblich at La Mama; Christina Masciotti’sSocial Security at the Bushwick Starr in 2015, Elephant Room at St. Ann’s Warehouse for the company Rainpan 43 in 2012, and Young Jean Lee’s Obie Award winning We’reGonna Die in 2011. He also directed a version of We’reGonna Die in 2015, featuring David Byrne, at the Meltdown Festival in London; Bodycast: An Artist Lecture by Suzanne Bocanegra starring Frances McDormand for the 2014 BAM Next Wave Festival; and Major Bang for The Foundry Theatre at St. Ann’s Warehouse. Paul has acted in over 40 feature films, including Snowpiercer, The Host, Mickey Blue Eyes, Silence of the Lambs, Beloved, Lorenzo’s Oil and Philadelphia. Stage Acting; Macbeth on Broadway; Tamburlaine at Theatre For A New Audience, Young Jean Lee’s Lear, The Three Sisters at Classic Stage Company; Richard Maxwell’s Cowboys and Indians at Soho Rep; Richard III at Classic Stage Company; Svejkat Theatre for a New Audience; Irene Fornes’ Mud at the Signature Theater and Mabou Mines; Mac Wellman’s 1965 UU at The Chocolate Factory. Paul has performed with The Wooster Group, acting in Brace Up!, Emperor Jones, North Atlantic and The Hairy Ape. Awards include two Bessies (2010, 2002), the Jacob’s Pillow Creativity Award in 2007, and the Prelude Festival’s Frankie Award in 2014, as well an Obie Award for Big Dance in 2000. Paul currently teaches at New York University. He taught in the Theatre, Dance and Media Department at Harvard University (Spring 2018). He has also taught at Yale, Rutgers, Barnard, The William Esper Studio and The Michael Howard Studio.

Annie-B Parson is artistic director of the OBIE award winning Big Dance Theater. She co-founded Big Dance in 1991 with Molly Hickok and Paul Lazar and with the company she has co-created over 25 large scale works for such venues as BAM, The Japan Society, The Old Vic/London, Sadlers Wells/London, The Walker, The National Theater in Paris, Japan Society and The Kitchen. Outside of her company, Parson has also made choreography for rock shows, marching bands, movies, museums, objects, television, augmented reality, opera, ballet, theater, symphony orchestras, string quartets, and a chorus of 1,000 amateur singers. Some of the artist she has worked with include Lorde, David Byrne, David Bowie, St. Vincent, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Kim Deal, Wendy Whelan, Anne Carson, Laurie Anderson, Nico Muhly, Esperanza Spalding, Jonathan Demme, and Spike Lee. Parson has two works in the repertory of The Martha Graham Dance Co. Parson choreographed and staged David Byrne’s Tony award winning American Utopia, which toured the world, was on Broadway, and was made into a movie directed by Spike Lee. Her work with David Byrne has spanned over 15 years and includes dance-making for his tours with Brian Eno and with St. Vincent. She also made dance for Byrne’s musical Here Lies Love on Broadway in 2023. Parson recently choreographed Elektra on the West End, Candide at Lyon Opera, and The Hours at the Met. With director Alex da Corte, Parson choreographed the St. Vincent video Broken Man, and Kim Deal’s video Nobody Loves You More. Parson has published three books on choreography, as well as many articles on dance. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Paris Review and Art Forum. Her most recent book, The Choreography of Everyday Life, was published by Verso Press. She teaches and lectures on the body in space, dance- making and the virtuosity of structures in art making. Parson received a TONY nomination, an Olivier nomination, a Guggenheim Fellowship award, Bessie Awards, The Jacobs Pillow Dance Award, a USA Artist Award, The Doris Duke Award, and the Chita Rivera Critic's Choice Award.

Alan Pierson is the Artistic Director and conductor of the acclaimed ensemble Alarm Will Sound, and served as the Artistic Director and conductor of the Brooklyn Philharmonic. As a guest conductor, Pierson has appeared with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, L.A. Opera, Nationaltheater Mannheim, the London Sinfonietta, the Steve Reich Ensemble, the Orchestra of St. Luke's, the New World Symphony, and the Silk Road Project, among other ensembles. He is co-director of the Northwestern University Contemporary Music Ensemble, and has been a visiting faculty conductor at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, the Eastman School of Music, and at the Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity. Pierson regularly collaborates with major composers and performers, including YoYo Ma, Steve Reich, Dawn Upshaw, Osvaldo Golijov, John Adams, David T. Little, Augusta Read Thomas, David Lang, Donnacha Dennehy, La Monte Young, Tyshawn Sorey, and choreographers John Heginbotham, Christopher Wheeldon, Akram Khan and Eliot Feld. He has spearheaded critically acclaimed cross-genre collaborations with artists like Yasiin Bey, Erykah Badu, and Medeski Martin and Wood. Beyond his work in the concert hall, Pierson is an avid recording producer and artist, having released 30 albums on Nonesuch Records, Sony Classical, Cantaloupe Music, Oehms Classics, and Sweetspot DVD. Mr. Pierson received bachelor degrees in physics and music from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a doctorate in conducting from the Eastman School of Music. In 2022, he received the Eastman School of Music Centennial Award.