PERFORMANCE

The Ringling International Arts Festival presented 21 performances of eight stage productions. We intensified our engagement with “New Circus” by presenting The Pianist by Circo Aereo of Finland and the Australian troupe, Gravity and Other Myths. Both were received with great enthusiasm, and many performances were sold out. The Israeli cellist, Matt Haimovitz provided a Baroque/ New Music conversation with performances in the Ca’ d’Zan, Museum of Art, and Historic Asolo Theater; and the Grammy-awardwinning ensemble Eighth Blackbird attracted large audiences for their compelling program entitled Hand Eye. Genre-bending performances drew cheers from audiences that included many “younger people;” both 17 Border Crossings by conceptual artist, Thaddeus Phillips, and the LMnO3 creation, B.A.N.G.S.: made in america added bursts of creative energies in unconventional ways. Finally, RIAF’s ENCORE engagement of doug elkins choreography, etc. did not fail to please as Ringling audiences embraced the performances of this winning ensemble.

At the end of the calendar year, the Historic Asolo Theater was closed in order to facilitate five months of renovation, conservation, and maintenance done in conjunction with the construction of the Kotler-Coville Glass Pavilion. The closure both necessitated and accommodated an innovative three-part exploration of performance in alternative spaces. Presented under the rubric New Stages: New Sincerity, the series marked the curatorial debut of Sonja Shea, who developed the project as a Fellow at the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance at Wesleyan University. The outdoor performance spectacle of SEESAW by Wise Fool New Mexico opened the series. It was followed with the idiosyncratic and intimate EXPERIMENT #42.000 (RINGLING) as conceived by the Institute for Psychogeographic Adventure. The series concluded with the powerful and wildly popular presentation of CAPTIVE by the British acrobatic ensemble, Motionhouse.

A final tabulation: more than 50 guest artists from seven nations were presented in eleven genre-defying productions. Additionally, a large number of performances and programs were staged in conjunction with Curators of the Circus Museum and Education, Volunteer Services, and Artist Series Concerts of Sarasota. In total, 126 performances of 32 productions were staged for 30,000+ ticket holders.

ART OF PERFORMANCE

50 GUEST ARTISTS

7 NATIONS

11 PRODUCTIONS IN TOTAL @ THE RINGLING

126 PERFORMANCES

32 PRODUCTIONS

30,000 TICKET HOLDERS