The Luckman Fine Arts Complex will present the world premiere of Seeds of Rain by choreographer Raiford Rogers, music by Philip Glass and Zbynek Mateju, with organist Mark Alan Hilt, pianist Helena Sucharova Weiser, and art projections by Mike Nava.
The music for Seeds of Rain (part 1) is a special arrangement of Philip Glass’ masterwork Mad Rush performed by Los Angeles organist Mark Alan Hilt and recorded at the First Presbyterian Church in Santa Monica.
Seeds of Rain (part 2) is set to Czech composer Zbynek Mateju’s Three Stones Concerto featuring pianist Helena Sucharova Weiser with the Hradec Kralove Philharmonic Orchestra recorded specifically for this ballet collaboration.
The title for the ballet-diptych Seeds of Rain is a line from the D.H. Lawrence poem Autumn Rain about hope and renewal.
The artwork by painter Mike Nava is projected animations showing the chronologic evolution of a series of paintings each photographed layer by layer. The hundreds of stages of the painting’s development slowly fade from one to the next without a static moment providing a living environment for the dancers and visual embodiment of the music.
