If you’re looking for classical art, this isn’t it, and that’s exactly the point. ToUch Performance Art is making the classics accessible by yanking them from the theater and throwing them down on the dance floor of a pulsing night club. It’s sexy, it’s interactive, and it’s all based on classical art. Imagine sipping a beer and shaking your booty while a *hot* aerialist twists and slides to electronic music from silks above your head, and a trifecta of go-go dancers makes symbolic love to a conductor on the other side of the room. Makes that worn, velvet-upholstered, slightly musty auditorium seating at the symphony seem a little less appealing, doesn’t it?

The two ultra talented girl-bosses behind this organized madness are Marissa Rae Roberts and Elizabeth McGuire. They’ve been dead set on revolutionizing the way you experience theater since they met while working towards their BFAs at the Boston Conservatory of Art at Berklee. Although coming from two very different worlds of performing art—Marissa from musical theater and Liz from dance and choreography—the two shared an insatiable urge for the immersive, for meshing their art forms together to create a truly dynamic, visceral outcome. “We needed to create something where we could honor the classics and also break the rules,” says Roberts, “and put it into a context that a contemporary audience would really enjoy, and be inspired to listen to an opera or watch a ballet after our show.” Six years later, ToUch is reinventing your fine art experience to be electric, interactive, booze-infused, and, frankly, way more fun.

Photo courtesy of ToUch Performance Art

ToUch’s claim to fame is their six-years-running show, AcousticaElectronica, a strobe-light-glitter-encrusted intersection of old art, contemporary vices, and timeless tropes in classical theater. The AcousticaElectronica storyline draws inspiration from a number of pieces and symbols in classical art, theater, and music, while integrating modern dance and electronic music in a club setting with a full bar. Arnold Schöenberg‘s Pierrot Lunaire, Oscar Wilde‘s The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Georges Bizet‘s Carmen are just a few inspirations for Acoustica that the average classical theater and opera buff might notice. Unfamiliar with the revered work AcousticaElectronica draws upon? No problem. The delightful sensory overload of music, lights, and performers whirring around you begs you to succumb and indulge anyway. “One of our goals was to bring classical art to a group of people that wouldn’t normally experience or see it,” says Roberts. “From the beginning, we’ve had people who are fist pumping at an opera singer who have no idea what opera she’s singing, but they’re enjoying it.”

Much like a favorite bar or club, this show is deserving of more than just one go. “It’s like Cubism,” McGuire says. “In a sculpture that’s Cubist, there’s 360 degrees of something. And that’s how AcousticaElectronica is. You come once, you’re gonna see many faces of that sculpture, but you’re not gonna get it all. That’s part of the reason people love to come back and should come back.”

Photo courtesy of ToUch Performance Art

It’s not all glitter and roses for the ToUch folks, however: they’ve come up against some challenges gaining popularity. “It’s hard to own a theater company in the United States,” explains Roberts. “We don’t have the financial support from the government that a lot of other countries have, so our decision to be a for-profit arts company was a risk. I think we had to work really hard to crack the code of what would make us financially sustainable, but also allow us to create the work we want to create. Through collaboration, we solved that puzzle. What we came up with is art and immersive theater that takes place in a commercial setting, in a nightclub where people can drink. It’s not a theater setting.”

In a deliberate pursuit to reject the “starving artist” stereotype, Roberts and McGuire founded a sister company of ToUch Performance Art to supplement and support their livelihoods as creators, called ToUch Events. So far, this immersive event design company has created custom event experiences for The Trevor Project, Boston Lyric Opera, and the Breast Cancer Research Fund, among others. “We’ve been engaging in philanthropic events more and more,” says McGuire. “We did a fall fundraiser event with The Trevor Project, which is an LGBT outreach organization, and that really inspired us. So I think we’re trying to turn our focus to those philanthropic events that we believe in, and that we feel are really important.”

BLO Gala 2015: La Traviata | photo courtesy of ToUch Performance Art

ToUch Performance Art is like seeing the symphony, opera, and ballet combined, where you can bust a serious move with a glow stick hanging from your neck and a craft cocktail sloshing onto the floor from your hand. It’s classical art that stays true to its origin while going out of its way to appeal to the modern consumer. Touch them and they’ll ToUch you back.

AcousticaElectronica has returned to its favorite local haunt, Oberon of the American Repertory Theater. Upcoming show is one June 2nd. Reserve your tickets here.

ToUch Performance Art – theater company
Boston, Massachusetts
Website
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram

Top photo courtesy of ToUch Performance Art

The post Fist Pumping at an Opera Singer appeared first on Take Magazine.

Opera can be a tough sell even in an urban setting. Put it in a New Hampshire town with a population of 13,000 and some might think that very ill-advised indeed.

But Opera North, located in Lebanon, New Hampshire, has been defying the opera odds for years. And now with a new director, the multi-talented Evans Haile, who joins Artistic Director Louis G. Burkot (who’s been at Opera North since 1987), the venue’s future is looking even brighter. This summer’s season features a trio of musical theater offerings: Mozart’s comic The Abduction from the Seraglio; Copland’s coming-of-age-in-the-Great-Depression opera The Tender Land, and Bernstein’s West Side Story, a musical equally at home on the Broadway and opera stages.

Evans Haile | Photo courtesy of Opera North

Before joining Opera North this spring, Haile was the producing artistic director of The Cape Playhouse from 1999 through last season. His credits include a similar stint at the North Shore Music Theatre in Beverly, Massachusetts. A Juilliard-trained pianist and conductor, he’s been music director of the Gainesville Orchestra in Florida since 2000, and dramaturg for Florida Grand Opera.

Haile was attracted to Opera North because it’s a professional company that has attracted the best young opera singers such as Nathan Gunn. “We’re an American opera company committed to producing American operas like The Tender Land [and] American musicals like West Side Story alongside the classics,” Haile says in our phone chat. He was in Cincinnati previewing Ricky Ian Gordon’s new opera Morning Star, which Haile would like to produce at Opera North.

Opera North has a budget of a little over $1 million. Haile would like to double that. “Last year, over 6,000 people came to see our three shows, and our performance schedule is structured so people can see three different productions over a weekend,” he says.

Evan Pappas | Photo courtesy of Opera North

Evan Pappas, the Broadway musical theater star best known for his performances in A Chorus Line, My Favorite Year, Parade, and the London production of Follies, makes his Opera North directorial debut with West Side Story. Several years ago, the much-sought-after actor turned to directing when an auto accident sidelined him for a year. He’s directed West Side Story before, and he and Haile collaborated when Pappas was directing in Florida. “My Tony and Maria come from the opera world, my Bernardo and Anita come from Broadway, and my cast comes from musical theater,” says Pappas. “This is Opera North’s first collaboration with the Boston Conservatory and choreographer Cathy Young, the conservatory’s director of dance, who has turned the chorus of singers into dancers.”

Opera North had its beginnings as the Light Opera of Norwich, which started performing operetta as an adjunct to a community theater. Founder David Strohmier joined forces with Burkot, a voice teacher at Dartmouth, to begin producing opera with musical theater. By 1988, it was a full-fledged opera company. Opera North performs at the 800-seat Lebanon Opera House, built in 1924 and renovated in 2001. It features the largest proscenium theater in the Upper Connecticut River Valley.

The post Granite Opera appeared first on Take Magazine.