The Elegant Variation: NY EVENT: PRINCETON AT THE VIRGINIA WOOLF CONFERENCE

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June 04, 2009

NY EVENT: PRINCETON AT THE VIRGINIA WOOLF CONFERENCE

We thought our readers might be interested in checking out the band Princeton, whose music draws inspiration from interesting literary sources. The details are below:

The Stephen Pelton Dance Theater in collaboration with the band Princeton on an evening of dance and music. Friday, June 5th, 8:00, Pope Auditorium, Lincoln Center 113 W. 60th St. Tickets are $20.

Princeton, the Los Angeles-based trio, join forces with San Francisco’s Stephen Pelton Dance Theater in it was this: it was this: an evening of songs and dances inspired by the life and work of Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury group. Princeton will perform all of the songs from their recent EP Bloomsbury, each lyrically focused upon a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Portraits of Leonard Woolf, Lytton Strachey, Virginia Woolf and John Maynard Keynes are each presented in a different musical framework with lush orchestral arrangements.

The band is comprised of twin brothers Jesse and Matt Kivel and Ben Usen. The band will be joined by 8 additional musicians in recreating their frolicsome, exuberant take on the cast of Bloomsbury characters. Stephen Pelton Dance Theater, known for known its intimate theatricality and emotional intensity, may be familiar to audiences from previous Woolf conferences.

This year the company will perform several new works including the premiere of it was this: it was this: a choreographic study of Woolf’s punctuation. Using a single paragraph from To the Lighthouse, the company dances their way from the first word to the last, pausing briefly for every comma, parentheses and semicolon in-between. The company also performs a revised version of The Death of the Moth, first seen at the Plymouth State Conference in 1997. The artists will combine forces for the premiere of Lytton/Carrington, a portrait-in-miniature of this most original of love stories.

Other Princeton tour dates:

June 5th Lincoln Center (Pope Auditorium) Virginia Woolf Conference NYC, NY
June 6th Piano's NYC, NY
June 11th El Rey w/ Au Revoir Simone LA, CA
June 12th Velvet Jones w/ Au Revoir Simone, SB, CA
June 17th Slims w/ Ben Kweller SF, CA

Posted at 03:05 PM in Events | Permalink

Comments

Is this a joke? Is it April 1? An interpretive dance about a Woolf sentence? I mean, come on.

Posted by: Rachael King | June 04, 2009 at 05:18 PM

I shit you not. Can't vouch for the dance but the tunes are quite good - check out their site.

Posted by: TEV | June 04, 2009 at 06:42 PM

The comments to this entry are closed.

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HARRY, REVISED - Get all the details here.

TOUR DATES

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."

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The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

June 04, 2009

NY EVENT: PRINCETON AT THE VIRGINIA WOOLF CONFERENCE

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog. A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog "Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

June 04, 2009

NY EVENT: PRINCETON AT THE VIRGINIA WOOLF CONFERENCE

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE: Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism