NEW YORK, NY.- Park Avenue Armory announced today its first full season of cultural programming, comprising productions of visual art, dance, theater and music that are conceived and performed outside the box of conventional theaters and museums. Dedicated to presenting works that cannot be realized in traditional institutions, Park Avenue Armorys season will include monumental, immersive installations by visual artists Peter Greenaway and Ryoji Ikeda; Tune-In, a contemporary music festival featuring new music ensembles curated by and including eighth blackbird, the New York premier of Inuksuit by John Luther Adams and a new site-specific commission by Sympho; a six-week residency by the Royal Shakespeare Company in a full-scale Shakespearean theater built inside the Drill Hall; and free-form performances by Shen Wei Dance Arts, Streb, and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. With its soaring 55,000-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall and array of dramatic period rooms, the Armorys unique spaces enable artists to createand the public to experienceunconventional work in all genres that could not be realized elsewhere in New York City.
Since the day we first saw the Armorys industrial-scaled drill hall and dramatic period rooms, our driving vision has been to provide a home in New York City where artists of all disciplines can create without the restrictions of proscenium theaters and white wall galleries, stated Rebecca Robertson, President and Executive Producer of Park Avenue Armory. There is so much extraordinary work in site-specific installations, video art, opera, dance, music, and theater that thrives in non-traditional settings particularly settings of scale. Until we opened our doors to the arts, there was no place in the city for such presentations.
At Park Avenue Armory, the audience enters the work and becomes part of it, altering the way viewers respond and interact with the art. It is always a very special experience. In the last three years, we have enabled such epic and acclaimed productions as Zimmermanns Die Soldaten, Christian Boltanskis No Mans Land, Ernesto Netos anthropodino, and Ariane Mnouchkines les Ephemeres. We are now presenting our first full season of music, sound and video, theater, and dance, with each production offering an experience that dynamically connects the artist and the audience.