Date
April 25, 2023
7:00 p.m.
Admission
Free
Location
Jerry Moss Plaza
Join The Music Center and Zócalo Public Square for an evening of ideas and conversation addressing the role of art in war. There will be a special reception following the panel conversation.
Free Public Program Presented by The Music Center in Association with Zócalo Public Square
Livestream Begins April 25, 2023, 7:00 p.m. PDT
There is a long and global tradition of artists—visual, performing, and literary—creating arresting, even beautiful works that address the horrors of war. How is art used as a form of protest, to change minds as well as hearts? What happens to its meaning over time—as war persists, and as new battles erupt? And what does it say about us all that war has inspired acclaimed works from artists as diverse as Pablo Picasso, Pussy Riot, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie?
In 1932, amid Hitler’s rise to power, the German choreographer Kurt Jooss created The Green Table, a ballet subtitled A Dance of Death in Eight Scenes. As the Paul Taylor Dance Company brings this work to The Music Center—as part of its Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance at The Music Center series—join us for a panel discussion, moderated by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen. Can such art help us now, in a moment of many international crises? And how do warmongers and politicians co-opt and commission art as propaganda? Panelists include Gelare Khoshgozaran, artist, filmmaker and writer; Michael Novak, artistic director, Paul Taylor Dance Company; Khalil Kinsey, COO, chief curator and creative director for the Kinsey African American Art & History Collection; and Nadya Tolokonnikova, creator, Pussy Riot.
Reception to follow after the discussion.
Featured Panelists
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Gelare Khoshgozaran
Gelare Khoshgozaran's work engages with the legacies of imperial violence using film and video to explore narratives of belonging outside of the geographies and temporalities that have both unsettled our sense of home.
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Viet Thanh Nguyen
Viet Thanh Nguyen is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and professor of English, American Studies & Ethnicity and Comparative Literature at USC. He currently serves as the Aerol Arnold Chair of English at USC and is also a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations.
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Michael Novak
A critically acclaimed Paul Taylor dancer from 2010 to 2019, Michael Novak became the second Artistic Director in the history of the Paul Taylor Dance Foundation in September 2018, having been chosen by Mr. Taylor to succeed him upon his death. Under Mr. Novak’s direction, the Paul Taylor Dance Company continues to be one of the world’s premier modern dance companies.
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Khalil Kinsey
Khalil Kinsey is the COO, Chief Curator and Creative Director for the Kinsey African American Art & History Collection, an international traveling museum exhibition experienced by over 16 million visitors and cited for the President’s National Award for Museum and Library Services.
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Nadya Tolokonnikova
Conceptual performance artist and activist Nadya Tolokonnikova is the creator of Pussy Riot, a global feminist protest art movement. Today, hundreds of people identify as a part of the Pussy Riot community.
Paul Taylor Dance Company
April 28-30, 2023, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
Witness Kurt Jooss' most iconic and celebrated anti-war dance, The Green Table and Paul Taylor's seminal work, Company B, both kicking off the exciting 20th season of Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance at The Music Center! Tickets now on sale.
Presented in association with
