The Music Center is stepping out.
Downtown Los Angeles’ performing arts hub will present three days of music and dance at the newly renovated historic Ford Theatres as part of the Music Center on Location, Friday through Sunday. Featured artists include dance choreographers Aszure Barton and Jacob Jonas and musicians Tim Hecker, Kara-Lis Coverdale and Rufus Wainwright.
“We will never be able to have the entire county come to us, but we can serve more people in the county by going to them,” says Rachel Moore, CEO of the Music Center. “The Ford fit beautifully in this overarching notion that we’re not just a place but an idea around creativity and innovation and the arts.”
For its first On Location, the Music Center and its co-presenter, the Ford Theatres as part of its Ignite @ the Ford! Series, present choreographer Barton’s “Awáa,” a celebration of Mother Nature through the movements of one female and seven male dancers. The work includes video footage of a woman floating on a rocking chair underwater, which Barton borrowed from a dream.
“That helped solidify the world that I wanted to create,” says Barton, who along with her husband relocated from New York to L.A. six months ago for new challenges. “It carries us through this world of water, and the feminine, and the discovery of what it means to be born.”
On Saturday, Jacob Jonas The Company splits the bill with Hecker and Coverdale, who present a mix of past and new material in an entirely new configuration designed for the unique outdoor location of the Ford Theatres.
Jonas, who discovered his love of dance on the Venice boardwalk as a teen, will premiere “On Me,” a commission by the Music Center On Location set to the experimental music of Hecker. The work combines contemporary ballet, break dance and acrobatics as it explores the idiom “to carry the weight of the world on one’s shoulders.”
“I like to portray society and use themes that most people deal with on an everyday basis, and so this feeling of carrying weight was one thing I was playing around with in my life,” he says. “I wanted to explore what that meant both physically and emotionally.”
Capping off the weekend is Wainwright’s only U.S. performance of “Northern Stars” honoring Canada’s 150th anniversary and his first L.A. performance in three years.
The opera-composing singer-songwriter has curated a collection of songs by great Canadian singer-songwriters Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and Leonard Cohen, whose death last November inspired the concept.
“When he passed away, I wanted to do something to honor him,” says Wainwright, father of Cohen’s granddaughter, 6-year-old Viva Katherine, with Lorca Cohen. “In the song ‘Suzanne,’ there’s that line ‘our lady of the harbour,’ and that is an actual church in Montreal. My great fantasy would be to sing that song in that church as my own personal way of tipping the hat to him.”
Wainwright got to perform “Suzanne” at Our Lady of the Harbour for Montreal’s 375th anniversary. The show also commemorated the 50th anniversary of Cohen’s recording debut, “Songs of Leonard Cohen,” which features “Suzanne.” And in L.A., he’ll sing it again.
Other works include “Talk to Me of Mendocino” and “Heart Like A Wheel,” written by his mother, the late Kate McGarrigle, and his aunt, Anna McGarrigle, and popularized by Linda Ronstadt. He also covers his sister, Martha Wainwright (who joins him onstage), Arcade Fire, Celine Dion, Robbie Robertson and Buffy Sainte Marie, among others.
On Location picks up again Oct. 18-22 with its next installment, featuring choreographer Akram Khan’s “Until the Lions,” based on poet Karthika Naïr’s reimagining of the Mahabharata, at the Culver Studios.
“We absolutely expect On Location to continue into the future,” Moore says. “I would love to make sure that we go into the Pasadena area and the San Pedro area. We can stretch across the county because we really do think that the arts transform lives, and we want to be part of that throughout the county.”
