NIMBUS DANCE DEBUTS TWO WORLD PREMIERE COMMISSIONS BY THE NEW JERSEY SYMPHONY IN MARCH 2025 AT NEW JERSEY PERFORMING ARTS CENTER AND COUNT BASIE CENTER FOR THE ARTS, with PREVIEW AT MORRIS MUSEUM’S BICKFORD THEATER
Nimbus Artistic Director Samuel Pott Interprets Igor Stravinsky’s Masterpiece Firebird, Conducted by Xian Zhang and to be Performed with the New Jersey Symphony
Composer Qasim Naqvi and Pott Create Dark Water, Third and Final Installment in Series Dedicated to Natural World, with Sets by Guggenheim Fellow, Nicola López
For Immediate Release:
01/23/2025
[Jersey City, NJ] – In the next of a multi-year series of collaborations between two creative forces of New Jersey’s arts field, the New Jersey Symphony has commissioned two new works by Nimbus Dance for March 2025 engagements at NJPAC’s Prudential Hall and at the Count Basie Center for the Arts. Nimbus Artistic Director Samuel Pott choreographs a new interpretation of Stravinsky’s Firebird, conducted by New Jersey Symphony Music Director, Xian Zhang. With additional commissioning support from NJPAC, the new Firebird follows Nimbus’ and NJ Symphony’s acclaimed 2022 joint production of Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring, which Nimbus subsequently toured nationally including to the Tanglewood Music Festival with the Boston Symphony, the Acadia Dance Festival, and the Zoellner and Walton Art Centers, among others.
“Audiences can expect to be transported by these two new creations, each depicting fantastical and highly visual worlds, whose stories are animated by the chameleon-like dancers of Nimbus,” says Mr. Pott “To bring the world class NJ Symphony musicians into direct collaboration with dance, visual storytelling, remarkable sets and costuming, truly makes a feast for the senses, for the intellect, and for the emotions of those who attend.”
In a dramatic departure from traditional renditions of Firebird, Pott’s new creation imagines the firebird as an Icarus-like character, who, along with a young girl from a modern-day family in turmoil, escapes from a world of violence and conflict to freedom and flight. The work marries ethereal and mythological storytelling with depictions of contemporary childhood and family-life, exploring the deep-seated anxiety and stresses that have come to underscore the experience of many young people in today’s world. Images of self-discovery, dreamscapes, violence, and flight collide in choreography which engages with a large-scale, interactive set piece. Keeping with the cathartic emotional range that Stravinsky’s Firebird score is known for, the new work’s narrative expresses deep themes of revelation and reconciliation in the face of trauma and loss.
In Dark Water, Pott joins with composer Qasim Naqvi and visual artist Nicola Lopez, a Guggenheim Fellow, to explore the power, depth and ubiquity of water. Dark Water is the third and final installment of a multiyear collaboration between Pott and Naqvi, revealing humankind’s fraught relationship with the natural world. Naqvi, whose musical work traverses multiple genres and traditions – electronic, jazz, orchestral, percussion – has composed a haunting score that forms a liquid-like backdrop for Pott’s movement sequences where dancers appear alternately as if submerged underwater, as if transformed into deep ocean life forms, or as if moved amidst the invisible currents and tides of the seas. Lopez, known for large scale installations which depict the unravelling and disintegration of structure, architecture and modernity, has created and shape-changing and fluid set design that uses fabric and video to reflect the ever-changing, dimensional experience of water and ocean.
“We are thrilled to collaborate with Nimbus Dance on not one, but two newly choreographed works on this program” says Erin Lunsford Norton, Vice President of Artistic Planning for the New Jersey Symphony. “This program celebrates and builds upon our long history with Nimbus Dance – ‘Dark Water,’ which accompanies Qasim Naqvi’s piece God Docks at Death Harbor on the first half, will feature a piano quintet from the Symphony; and in the Suite from The Firebird, Nimbus brings a brand-new perspective and story to this longtime orchestral favorite, allowing audiences to unleash their imaginations in new directions.”
Firebird set design by Mark Smith and Samuel Pott; lighting design by Roslyn Fulton-Dahlie
Dark Water set design by Nicola López; costumes by Sam Meredith; lighting design by Roslyn Fulton-Dahlie
Performance Dates:
New Jersey Performing Arts Center with New Jersey Symphony (Firebird and Dark Water)
Friday, March 7, 8pm, & Sunday, March 9, 3pm
Tickets range from $20 – $135
Ticket link
Count Basie Center for the Arts with New Jersey Symphony (Dark Water only)
Saturday, March 8, 8pm
Tickets range from $29 – $110
Ticket link
Preview: Bickford Theater at the Morris Museum (no orchestra)
Friday, February 21, 7pm
Tickets range from $23 – $28
Ticket link
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