The White Light Festival turns six this year, and in its 2015 edition, it will feature the works of Franz Schubert, Samuel Beckett, Thomas Adès, and John Coltrane, amongst others. This multidisciplinary festival, an annual event at the Lincoln Center in New York, aims at presenting performances designed to illuminate the many dimensions of our interior lives.Musicians, dancers, and performing artists from varied cultures have found a home at the White Light Festival for the last five years, and as the event transforms into a big, bold highlight on the city’s cultural calendar, New York audiences have got an opportunity to experience such diverse acts as the Manganiyar Seduction Group from India; English composer Benjamin Britten’s “Curlew River”; and a collaborative piece between a British vocal ensemble and an Australian troupe of acrobats titled “How Like an Angel”.On the lineup this year is the five-member Irish ensemble The Gloaming; a ‘medieval music’ performance by Dialogos and Kantaduri exploring the musical traditions of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina; and dance works by choreographers Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker from Belgium and Aakash Odedra from the U.K., amongst various other productions.Blouin Artinfo speaks to Jane Moss, artistic director of Lincoln Center, about the upcoming White Light Festival, scheduled for October 14 - November 22, 2015.Would you elaborate on the significance of this festival in today’s times, and the context in which it has been set. You’ve said the idea for the festival came to you in a yoga class.Jane Moss: Everybody now is very addicted to their devices, very outward-directed, in other words people are just sitting by their cellphones waiting for the next text message to come. Art is about the opposite of that. It takes you away from that. It’s about going inside; it’s about turning off all your devices. It’s about space and it’s about time – leisurely time – not rushed time. It is not about speed. And we live in a world that is now very directed by speed. You send a text message and you expect to get a text message right back. We’re living in a world that is very connected to technology as opposed to live experience. A primary motivation for the festival was to redirect people.In today’s New York Times, Anthony Tommasini, the lead music critic at the NYT, has written about this issue; how concerts and performing arts experiences are the only places now left where people are not connected to their devices. That’s also where the yoga came in. I was sitting in a yoga class one day, and you’re not connected to your devices in the yoga class either. People probably didn’t realize that an extraordinary music or dance performance could take you to the same place that yoga takes you to. People don’t make that connection that your interior life is reached in a variety of ways.Since the White Light Festival aims to explore the theme of spirituality, do many of the performances come across as religious or devotional? How does this resonate with a city audience?Jane Moss: I would clarify that the White Light Festival is really not a spiritual festival. It is about transcendence. What we mean, or what I mean by transcendence, is actually the various dimensions of our internal lives. It isn’t strictly speaking just about spirituality. Art can illuminate many different dimensions inside yourself. For instance, if you look at the subject of love, it is a very transcendent experience but it is a secular one. The White Light is sometimes thought of as a spiritual festival. Spiritual music is one piece, but that’s not all of it. We find works that are right for the festival and some of those fall in the devotional category, but most performances are transcendent in different ways.Curiously enough, once we launched the White Light Festival, there were a lot of people at Lincoln Center that had never visited Lincoln Center before. We put this festival into the marketplace with the idea that what art really does is it tells you about you. You think you’re buying a ticket to Yo-Yo Ma, but you’re really buying a ticket to yourself. Art expands who you are.Traditionally, most forms of music in different parts of the world were created with this goal (spirituality/ transcendence) in mind. So, is classical music largely inseparable from the theme of transcendence?Jane Moss: Classical music obviously fits into it but not all of classical music would. There are works that are very particularly chosen for this festival. You could certainly say that much of the work of Beethoven is transcendent. We would put the music of Bach, or the Verdi Requiem, which will be featured in White Light 2016, for example. We’re looking for works that have this particular quality that ties in with the theme.The other thing that’s wonderful about the festival and its framework is that we can exhibit a wide range of work – from Bach to Indian dance to Samuel Beckett. We can juxtapose many wildly different events next to each other.Considering the sheer mass and endless genres of music produced nowadays, how easy is it to find contemporary expressions in music/ dance that illustrate the theme as well as classical pieces do?Jane Moss: There are many artists working in many different genres and disciplines that are interested in this issue, of one’s interior life. It is always difficult to have work of the highest excellence, which is what you want. There’s just not a lot of it in the world at any given moment. But this is no more challenging than the other things that we do. And artists love being in the White Light Festival, because it is exactly what they’re trying to achieve. They are trying to reach audiences at the deepest level. It is really a festival about human consciousness. It’s the transcendence within human consciousness.So you endeavor to strike a balance between classical and contemporary concepts?Jane Moss: Yes, we can really work with interesting juxtapositions. For instance, this year we have Franz Schubert but also Thomas Adès, who is called the Stravinsky of our age. We’re introducing jazz into the festival with the 50th anniversary of John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme”. I remember it having a profound effect on me when I first listened to it in my youth. We have Aakash Odedra, a British choreographer who practices classical Indian and contemporary dance, performing two solo pieces.Do you also commission pieces specifically for the event? How do you scout acts or musicians from different countries?Jane Moss: We do presentations that already exist and in some cases we commission pieces. It’s a mixture. There is also a whole network, for instance, we featured the Manganiyar Seduction Group from India, and they had first performed at the Holland Festival. I’m also going to India in January next year for the Chennai Music and Dance Festival, and one of the reasons for the visit is to travel and see things.In 2015, the festival is highlighting the theme of language as one of the defining aspects of the human condition. Tell us about the emphasis on Samuel Beckett’s work this year.Jane Moss: Language is an inherent component of the human experience. It enables us to reflect on and give voice to our feelings. It is the prism through which we experience our interior lives. And as a medium for artistic expression, it expands our inner worlds. The White Light Festival is exploring this theme through three presentations based on Samuel Beckett’s writing – “The End”, “Here All Night”, and “No’s Knife”. Beckett had a singular ability to unshackle language from convention, and he used his craft to expand the boundaries of the human experience beyond language. How has the festival grown in the five years since it started? Jane Moss: I should say the festival was actually quite a risky idea. It was a very different kind of idea for New York, especially for New York. But it is a huge success. I think that there is an enormous hunger in the world to find a richer interior life. And the festival attempted to deliver this very powerful message to New Yorkers.In the five years, there has been an extraordinary response to this theme. It sells very well. We have found a very dedicated audience that comes back year after year. And the White Light has established itself as a brand very quickly.Which have been your favorite performances since the beginning of the festival? Jane Moss: I’m not allowed to pick. They’re all my children and I love them all equally! But I’ll say that a major highlight of the last five years is a project that we did last year, Bach’s St. Matthew Passion of 1736 with the Berlin Philharmonic. I regard that an accomplishment of the festival. It was presented at the Park Avenue Armory, a very spacious alternative venue in the city, and it was a massive success.White Light Festival 2015 Schedule:October 14: The Lovely Mill MaidenArtists: Mark Padmore and Paul LewisVenue: Alice Tully Hall, Starr Theater, Adrienne Arsht StageOctober 15: Swan SongArtists: Mark Padmore and Paul LewisVenue: Alice Tully Hall, Starr Theater, Adrienne Arsht StageOctober 16: The GloamingVenue: Peter Jay Sharp Theatre, Symphony SpaceOctober 17: Winter JourneyArtists: Mark Padmore and Paul LewisVenue: Alice Tully Hall, Starr Theater, Adrienne Arsht StageOctober 20 - 21: Heretical AngelsArtists: Dialogos and KantaduriVenue: James Memorial Chapel, Union Theological SeminaryOctober 22 - 24: Inked and MurmurArtists: Aakash Odedra CompanyVenue: Baryshnikov Arts Center, Jerome Robbins TheaterOctober 29 - 30: Partita 2Artist: Anne Teresa De KeersmaekerVenue: Gerald W. Lynch Theater, John Jay CollegeOctober 31: TheodoraArtists: Les Arts FlorissantsVenue: Alice Tully Hall, Starr Theater, Adrienne Arsht StageNovember 1: PrayerArtists: Christine Brewer and Paul JacobsVenue: Alice Tully Hall, Starr Theater, Adrienne Arsht StageNovember 2 - 3: The End by Samuel Beckett Artists: Gare St. Lazare IrelandVenue: Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater, West Side YMCANovember 5 - 7: Here All Night featuring selected music and texts from across Beckett’s prose and plays.Artists: Gare St. Lazare IrelandVenue: Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater, West Side YMCANovember 7: White Light Conversation - Language and Human Consciousness (FREE)Venue: Stanley H. Kaplan PenthouseNovember 9 – 10: No’s Knife - Excerpts from Texts for Nothing by Samuel BeckettArtist: Lisa DwanVenue: Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater, West Side YMCANovember 13: Waiting for Beckett – A Portrait of Samuel Beckett (White Light on Film)Venue: Bruno Walter Auditorium, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, New York Public Library for the Performing ArtsNovember 14: Last SoliloquyArtist: Paul LewisVenue: Alice Tully Hall, Starr Theater, Adrienne Arsht StageNovember 17 – 18: “A Love Supreme” - Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton MarsalisVenue: Alice Tully Hall, Starr Theater, Adrienne Arsht StageNovember 20 – 22: Concentric Paths – Movements in MusicArtist: Thomas AdèsVenue: New York City CenterFollow @ARTINFOIndia
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