MCA season to feature Baryshnikov, Bernhard, among others
The Museum of Contemporary Art’s 2013-2014 performance season is as follows:
“Taylor Mac: A History of Popular Music” (Sept. 27-28): The New York-based cabaret performer and drag artist will perform a musical collage drawn from American popular music.
Timbre 4 in “Tercer Cuerpo (Third Wing)” (Oct. 3, 5 and 6): This Buenos Aires-based troupe will turn the MCA stage into an abandoned office building where forgotten employees complete obsolete tasks.
ICE/International Contemporary Ensemble: Oct. 26 will be a celebration of avant-garde saxophonist/ composer John Zorn’s 60th birthday with a recent work based on Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.” On March 21-22, 2014, ICE will pay homage to pioneering composer Alvin Lucier.
Rainpan 43 in “Elephant Room” (Nov. 2, 3 and 7-10): A work of dance, magic and deception about three duped illusionists.
Nassim Soleimanpour: “White Rabbit, Red Rabbit” (Nov. 3-5 and 9): A play about a young Iranian conscientious objector now forbidden to leave his country, to be read by different “theater personalities.”
Chicago Dancemakers Forum (Nov. 16): The Forum’s 10th anniversary celebration featuring works by 30 choreographers presented throughout the day.
Sandra Bernhard in “Everything Bad and Beautiful” (Dec. 5 and 7): The stand-up comedian/singer in a mix of political satire and pop culture commentary.
Tsukasa Taiko: Taiko Legacy 10 and Reduction (Dec. 21-22): Two programs celebrating Taiko’s 10th anniversary — one with three generations of drummers, the other a look at early 1970s music and theater experimentations of Tokyo.
Lola Arias: “El ano en que naci (the year I was born)” (Jan. 23-26, 2014): Eleven performers born during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile reconstruct their parents’ youth.
Kyle Abraham: “The Radio Show” (Feb. 20-22, 2014): The Pittsburgh hip- hop choreographer explores two hometown events.
eighth blackbird in “Columbine’s Paradise Theatre” (March 8-9, 2014): The ensemble performs its new commedia dell’arte-style music-theater piece.
Elevator Repair Service in “Arguendo” (March 14-16, 2014): The acclaimed theater troupe behind “Gatz” returns with a new work based on the 1991 Supreme Court case about go-go dancers in South Bend, Ind., who claimed a First Amendment right to dance totally nude.
Rabih Mroue: “30 rounds and a few seconds” (April 10-12, 2014): A semidocumentary theater work about a young Lebanese man whose suicide mobilizes a broken society.
Maud Le Pladec: “Democracy” (May 1, 3 and 4, 2014): The acclaimed young French choreographer’s high-energy dance to “Dark Full Ride” by Julia Wolfe, cofounder of Bang on a Can.
Baryshnikov Productions: “Man in a Case” (May 14-18, 2014): Mikhail Baryshnikov stars in this sophisticated multimedia dance-theater piece based on two Chekhov stories adapted and directed by Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar of Big Dance Theater.
For tickets and more information, visit mcachicago.org.