PROGRAMS
One Story, Six Chapters:
The Roots of World Class Performance
This year Duke Performances presents six series and over 60 events, each highlighting a different facet of the connection between art and place, innovation and tradition, the time-honored and the groundbreaking.
From the Kronos Quartet to the Blind Boys of Alabama, from the Classical Theatre of Harlem to Bill T. Jones, this season showcases the work of artists whose pioneering efforts reach back to predecessors while redefining performance in the contemporary era.
Founded as Trinity College in 1859, Duke is part of that story too, linked to central North Carolina since the years when Durham tobacco warehouses ran full of brightleaf. With this year’s bookings, Duke Performances honors the university’s roots at the same time that it respects Duke’s world-wide reach in the twenty-first century.
Shuttling between music and theater, dance and multimedia performance, the 2007–2008 season also moves among cultures and contexts, acknowledging the multiple influences that make art strong. Programs alight on the European classical tradition, music from the Indian subcontinent, the rhythms of modern day Brazil, and African American blues, jazz, and soul, among many others.
Tradition matters most when it moves forward. These six series testify to that fact, bringing what is simply the world’s best performing arts to Duke and the Durham community.