The Dogwood audience will be immersed in live multimedia and dance, emotional animated film, and recorded music from cutting edge string quartets to Brooklyn-based digital productions. The program features six athletic dancers of Grand Rapids Ballet, and artists from Satellite Collective of New York.
"Liar Lear King" is a bright modern ballet set in the New York City of 1972, adapted from Shakespeare's story of family betrayal and tragedy, "King Lear." It directly faces the impact of narcissism and bullying on our society. The story is focused not on King Lear and his tragedy, but on Cordelia and her epic journey as she becomes a force who can mount an invasion of her own country, only to die at the hands of her own sisters.
Because Satellite Collective combines so many arts forms, music lovers will find themselves entranced by dance, dance lovers will find themselves surprised by the film and visuals, and those who favor music will see in different ways how dance and art can fuse with it to make a new experience.
The score comes from Ellis Ludwig-Leone, a young composer whose star is rising at the New York City Ballet and Metropolitan Opera. The music is fresh, by turns compelling and uplifting, it is a string quartet piece. The film scores within the dance capture both the challenge of modern classical music, and the sound of Brooklyn's current EDM scene. Local artists Kevin Draper and Lora Robertson developed the short film which accompanies the ballet and is integrated into it.