Chicago and St. Louis Symphonies find production success
Both the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and St. Louis Symphony found great success in a collaboration with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago. Not only did the productions garner critical acclaim, but they showed strong ticket sales making the case that the dance/music collaboration model has tremendous promise. Nicholas Phillips was charged with contributing to the successful production of the collaboration.
A theatrical lighting package was added to the symphony halls along with stage extensions to create a dance performance space. As symphony halls are not typically designed for more sophisticated productions, this creates some challenges to producing these dance/music collaborations. Our solution proved most successful as exemplified in these reviews:
Andrew Patner: The View from Here (CSO)
Slipstream
Hubbard Street Dance Chicago
Jim Vincent, choreography
Benjamin Britten, music
Nicholas Phillips,
lighting design
Birgit Rattenborg Wise,
costume design
Slipstream is a series of movement variations that follow the structure of Benjamin Britten's compositional nod to his teacher and mentor, Frank Bridge. The choreography and environment flow out of the evolution of moods from variation to variation.
Mentiras - a new Mexican Musical Hit
Mentiras opened to critical acclaim on February 11th, 2009 and has continued strong ticket sales in Mexico City. The third original musical produced by OCESA Teatro, a division of Grupo CIE, the largest producer of live entertainment in Latin America, is a Broadway style rock-musical production based around a line up of the most recognized Mexican pop music hits of the 1980's.
The production continues its open run at Teatro Mexico in Mexico City, Mexico.
