Bowerbird and FringeArts present Pure Lucia – Night 2: Duende Otherness, the second night of a two-part program celebrating the work of composer Lucia Dlugoszewski. This program traces Dlugoszewski’s artistic trajectory from her mid-career works, composed after firmly establishing her collaboration with choreographer Erick Hawkins, to the culminating masterworks of her later years. Featuring chamber music, solo works, and choreography, the evening highlights Dlugoszewski’s radical approach to sound, her inventive instrumentation, and her lifelong pursuit of new sonic possibilities. Performers include Either/Or Ensemble, trumpeter Peter Evans, Arcana New Music Ensemble, pianist Agnese Toniutti, the Daedalus Quartet, and the Erick Hawkins Dance Company.

Lucia Dlugoszewski’s name is pronounced LOO-sha dwoo-goh-SHEF-skee.

CONCERT PROGRAM

All music by LUCIA DLUGOSZEWSKI (1925 – 2000)

Lords of Persia (1965)
Either/Or
– Christa Van Alstine, clarinets
– Tiago Linck, trumpet
– Matt Melore, bass trombone
– Lauren Cauley, violin
– Russell Greenberg, percussion
– Chris McIntyre, conductor

Space is a Diamond (1970)
Peter Evans, trumpet

Excerpts from Black Lake (1969)
Arcana New Music Ensemble
– Jonathan Leeds, clarinet
– Molly Germer, violin
– Ju-Ping Song, timbre piano
– Andy Thierauf, percussion

INTERMISSION

Exacerbated Subtlety Concert (Why Does a Woman Love a Man?) (1997/2000)
Agnese Toniutti, timbre piano

Disparate Stairway Radical Other (1995)
For string quartet with five dancers; choreography *Elusive Pierce* by Katherine Duke

Daedalus Quartet
– Min-Young Kim, violin
– Matilda Kaul, violin
– Jessica Thompson, viola
– Thomas Kraines, cello

Erick Hawkins Dance Company
– Jason Hortin
– Hayley Meier
– JR Gooseberry
– Halie Landers
– Rylee Lucero

This event is part of PURE LUCIA, a retrospective of the life and work of Lucia Dlugoszewski. View the program for the previous night: Pure Lucia – Night 1: Quidditas Suchness

PROGRAM NOTES

The program opens with Lords of Persia (1965), performed by the New York-based Either/Or Ensemble. Written for a dance by Hawkins, the piece reflects Dlugoszewski’s deep interest in the Japanese concept of Nageire, which she described as a process of “flinging in” musical materials with a sense of reckless asymmetry.

Space is a Diamond (1970), performed by trumpeter Peter Evans, is one of Dlugoszewski’s most celebrated works. Composed for Gerard Schwarz, an early champion of her music, it remains one of the few pieces she published commercially and one of the most widely recognized in her catalog. The work demands extraordinary virtuosity, employing extended trumpet techniques, including extreme registers, rapid mute changes, and sweeping glissandi. Through these innovations, Dlugoszewski transformed the trumpet’s sonic identity, expanding its expressive range in ways that were groundbreaking for the time.

Philadelphia’s Arcana New Music Ensemble presents excerpts from Black Lake (1969), another work composed for a Hawkins dance. Dlugoszewski’s compositional style often reflected a fusion of Eastern and Western philosophical ideas, and Black Lake is no exception. Structured as a series of short movements, the work incorporates forms such as the fugue and chaconne alongside concepts drawn from Eastern aesthetics, including sabin, wabi, and p’o—ideas that emphasize imperfection, transience, and the expressive qualities of restraint. The piece also showcases some of Dlugoszewski’s most distinctive invented percussion instruments, including Ladder Harps, Tangent Rattles, and Square Drums, which lend the music an unmistakably original timbral palette.

Following intermission, pianist Agnese Toniutti performs Exacerbated Subtlety Concert (Why Does a Woman Love a Man?) (1997/2000), one of Dlugoszewski’s final completed works. This composition represents the culmination of nearly five decades of exploration and refinement in her approach to the timbre piano, a radical reimagining of the instrument that she developed through extended techniques and unconventional playing methods.

The evening concludes with Disparate Stairway Radical Other (1995), a work of rhythmic intensity and vivid textures for string quartet and five dancers, performed by the Daedalus Quartet and the Erick Hawkins Dance Company. Originally composed for Hawkins’s dance *Journey of a Poet*, this performance features new choreography by Katherine Duke, current artistic director of the Erick Hawkins Dance Company and a direct artistic descendant of both Hawkins and Dlugoszewski. A defining work in Dlugoszewski’s late career, the music brims with energy, constantly shifting between bold instrumental colors and striking timbral contrasts.

Duende, a concept famously explored by Federico García Lorca, speaks to an almost mystical force in artistic expression—an intensity that arises from deep emotional, physical, and even existential struggle. It is not simply passion or virtuosity but something raw, primal, and unpredictable, emerging from the tension between beauty and darkness, control and surrender. Otherness, in contrast, suggests a state of being outside the familiar, an estrangement from conventional frameworks that allows for new modes of perception and experience.

The program title Duende Otherness reflects Lucia Dlugoszewski’s pursuit of music that resists the expected and embraces the unknown. Duende evokes the visceral, almost physical energy of sound as a living force, while Otherness signals her commitment to breaking away from inherited traditions, whether through new instrumental techniques, unconventional structures, or her rejection of narrative in favor of pure sensory immediacy. In her work, sound does not represent or signify—it becomes, vibrating at the edge of the unfamiliar, inviting the listener into an experience beyond certainty.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Lucia Dlugoszewski (1925–2000) was an American composer, poet, and performer whose work challenged the conventions of postwar music. Born in Detroit to Polish immigrant parents, she moved to New York in 1949, where she studied with Edgard Varèse and became immersed in the city’s experimental arts scene. She developed a radical performance practice called the “timbre piano,” which used mallets and objects to activate the strings and frame of the instrument, and she built an ensemble of invented percussion instruments in collaboration with sculptor Ralph Dorazio. For nearly fifty years, she was composer-in-residence for the Erick Hawkins Dance Company, creating over twenty scores in close dialogue with choreography. Her concert works—commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, Library of Congress, and others—expanded the expressive possibilities of acoustic instruments and often centered timbre and gesture over melody or harmony. Long overlooked, her legacy is now being rediscovered as a vital voice in 20th-century experimental music.

Erick Hawkins (1909–1994) was born in Trinidad, Colorado. He graduated in 1932 from Harvard University. German dancer Harald Kreutzberg so impressed him that he went to study with him in Austria. Then he studied with George Balanchine at the School of American Ballet. In 1937 he choreographed Show Piece which was performed by Ballet Caravan. Hawkins was the first man to dance with Martha Graham performing the male lead in a number of her works, including Appalachian Spring in 1944. Not long afterwards, he met and began collaborating with the experimental composer Lucia Dlugoszewski. Together they moved towards an aesthetic vision detached from realistic psychology, plot, social or political agenda and redefining dance technique according to newly understood principles of kinesiology, creating a bridge to later somatic studies. On October 14, 1994, one month before he died, he was presented with the National Medal of Arts by President Clinton.

Either/Or (EO) is a flexible chamber ensemble based in New York City advancing a repertoire drawn from a wide spectrum of experimental traditions. Winner of the 2015 CMA/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, EO presents inclusive concert experiences such as surveys of composers like Tālib-Rāsúl Hākím, Ana-Maria Avram, Chiyoko Szlavnics, and Anthony Braxton; explorations of graphic score approaches by artists like Mendi+Keith Obadike, Joanna Ward, and Raven Chacon; and carefully curated sets or works with titles such as Perspectives and Disclosures and Time | Again. EO’s Directors Richard Carrick and Chris McIntyre draw on a broad collective of 10 regular soloists (and guests) to realize the specific requirements of each project. Since forming in 2004, the group has premiered more than 300 works (as well as dozens of student compositions), toured throughout the US and Sweden, and recorded for labels such as New Focus, New World Records, Starkland, and Sterling Classics.

Peter Evans (b. 1981) is a visionary trumpeter, composer, and bandleader. Known for his fearless blend of genres and sounds, he leads several different projects, most notably the quartet Being & Becoming (with Joel Ross, Nick Joz and Tyshawn Sorey). Working in formats ranging from solo trumpet to large ensembles, Evans’ engagement with the creative process moves beyond traditional distinctions of style. A prolific recording artist, he has released 20 recordings under his name, mostly through his own label More is More Records. Evans has worked with a wide range of artists such as John Zorn, Ellliott Carter, Evan Parker, Craig Taborn and many more. A 2022 Guggenheim Fellow in Music Composition and the recipient of other major commissions from institutions such as the Donaueschingen Musiktage and Venice Biennale, Evans tours internationally and has been based in New York City since 2003.

Arcana New Music Ensemble is a Philadelphia-based chamber group dedicated to performing contemporary classical music. Founded in 2016 by musicians, academics, and curators, Arcana champions living composers, revives overlooked masterpieces, and sheds light on lesser-known historical works through concerts, workshops, and residencies. Originally a project of Bowerbird, Arcana has operated independently as a 501(c)(3) since 2019. Drawing from a flexible roster of over fifty musicians, the ensemble adapts its instrumentation to suit each program. In recent seasons, Arcana has collaborated with Pig Iron Theatre Company, Prometheus, and Variant 6, and presented nearly 30 programs featuring works by composers such as Morton Feldman, Pauline Oliveros, Julius Eastman, Claude Vivier, and Raven Chacon.

Agnese Toniutti is an Italian pianist specialized in contemporary and 20th Century music. She dedicates herself to the exploration and research on peculiar piano repertoire, often revolving around the concept of sound and its role in musical composition. Her work investigates the complementarity of composition and improvisation in musical creativity, both as an author and interpreter. Cage, Scelsi, Cardini are some of her favorites; incursions into the territory of improvisation, performance and extemporary composition, are also encouraged by studying Seventies’ art movements. Her collaborations often include other artistic disciplines (acting, photography, dance, visual arts, and multimedia). Among her recent projects is the release of Subtle Matters (Neuma Records, 2021), a recording where she re-interprets the “timbre-piano” invented by Lucia Dlugoszewski, and the verbal scores by Philip Corner, and the recording of Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano by John Cage (Neuma Records 2023), both Best Bandcamp Contemporary Classical of the month. As a soloist and chamber music pianist she has performed in several venues and international festivals in Europe and the USA.

Daedalus Quartet is praised by The New Yorker as “a fresh and vital young participant in what is a golden age of American string quartets.” The group has established itself as a leader among the new generation of string ensembles. Since winning the top prize in the Banff International String Quartet Competition in 2001, the quartet has performed in many of the world’s leading musical venues and won plaudits for its adventurous exploration of contemporary music. To date the Daedalus Quartet has forged associations with some of America’s leading classical music and educational institutions: Carnegie Hall, through its European Concert Hall Organization (ECHO) Rising Stars program; Lincoln Center, which appointed them as the Chamber Music Society Two (now the Bowers Program) quartet and awarded them with the Martin E. Segal Award; and the University of Pennsylvania, where they have served as Quartet-in-Residence since 2006. At Penn, the Daedalus Quartet has been widely praised for their innovative programming and interdisciplinary collaborations, especially in their Beethoven Quartet cycle, Music and Migration, and Bartok’s Monster projects.

Erick Hawkins Dance Company, founded in 1951, has been touring the world since the 1960’s. With unwavering integrity and uncompromising working methods, Hawkins choreography is based on a collaboration of music, art, and dance. The dances are performed to live music, often composed especially for each dance, along with commissioned sets by artists and sculptors. Known for a fluid, effortless style of movement, each dance is energetic yet poetic, serene yet harmonious. These works with significant musicians and artists have made considerable cultural contributions. Dedicated to preserving the legacies of choreographer Erick Hawkins and his partner, composer Lucia Dlugoszewski, the company continues to develop dances based on Hawkins’ pioneering movement theory. Reconstructing and reimagining their work is critical to keeping the form and aesthetic of mid-century modern dance alive. A valuable piece of dance history would be lost to future generations without Hawkins’ and Dlugoszewski’s unique vision.

Katherine Duke began her study with Erick Hawkins and Lucia Dlugoszewski in 1983. She made her professional debut in 1986 with the Erick Hawkins Dance Company at Lincoln Center. Jamake Highwater wrote “…Katherine Duke represents the idealization of Hawkins’s four decades of creating dance.” Duke became Artistic Director of the Erick Hawkins Dance Company in 2001. To preserve and perpetuate the musical, compositional, and choreographic legacies of both Dlugoszewski and Hawkins, Duke has facilitated the reconstruction of classic repertory and new works for many universities and professional companies. Her passion is to share, in its purest form, the beauty of the technique, the unique approach to choreography, and the principles of this legacy through intensives, workshops, and commissions. She continues to bring the Erick Hawkins Dance Company into the present with archival research enriching the Company’s repertory through unexplored works by Hawkins and Dlugoszewski, commissioned choreographers, and her own work.

JR Gooseberry is a distinguished dancer, choreographer, and educator. Embarking on 13 international tours in over twenty countries with advocates of music education, The Young Americans, J.R. experienced national television exposure early on and has now become its Associate Director and Choreographer. Under Bill and Robyn Brawley, J.R. performed alongside Broadway stars Brian Stokes Mitchell, Kelli O’Hara, Susan Egan, and Hugh Panero. He has danced with CalliOpus Contemporary Dance, the Contempo Ballet Company, and currently serves as the choreographer for HEART Global. His dance mentorships include Ms. Brawley, Heidi Jarrett, Alex Little, Jose Costas, Linda Sohl-Ellison, Jason Hortin, Louis Kavouras, Cathy Allen, and Rachel Berman. J.R. received a BFA from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he was introduced to the Hawkins technique and aesthetic and performed Hawkins’ Cantilever for the Martha Graham University Showcase 2023 at the Joyce Theater in New York City.

Jason Hortin studied dance in Olympia, Washington, with Debbi Waits Halfhill. Hortin earned a BFA from University of Nevada, Las Vegas and MFA from the University of Arizona. While at UNLV, Hortin performed Hawkins’ Black Lake and Lucia Dlugoszewski’s Radical Ardent in Las Vegas and New York. Hortin also performed with Moving People Dance Theatre, Robert Moses, and Ronn Stewart. With River North Dance Chicago, Hortin performed works by Frank Chavez, Lynn Taylor-Corbett, Lauri Stallings, Harrison McEldowny, Daniel Ezralow, Randy Duncan, Kevin Iega Jeff, and Julia Rhoads. Hortin danced with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago performing over 60 masterworks by Lou Conte, Jiri Kylian, Crystal Pite, William Forsythe, Kyle Abraham, Mats Ek, Sharon Eyal, Ohad Naharin, Nacho Duato, and Twyla Tharp and is now répétiteur for Penny Saunders, Chaves, and Robyn Mineko Williams. Hortin choreographs for HSDC, Bolles High School, Extensions Dance Company, Snowy Range Dance Festival, UNLV, and UA.

Halie Landers is a dynamic performer with extensive training in modern, ballet, jazz, contemporary, aerial silks, and musical theater. Over the past 19 years, Lander’s pursuits in dance and choreography have provided her with incredible opportunities including performing the leading role in Hawkins’ Agathlon, the leading role in Martha Graham’s Heretic, as well as performing at the University of South Korea. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in dance performance and choreography from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Landers also received UNLV’s  Outstanding Graduating Senior Award.

Rylee Lucero began her dance training in her hometown of Puyallup, Washington. For the last sixteen years Lucero has studied ballet, modern, jazz, contemporary, tap, hip-hop, and musical theater. She graduated from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in dance performance and choreography, as well as a Pilates certification. UNLV is where she was introduced to the Hawkins technique and aesthetic. In the spring of 2024, Lucero had the opportunity of closely working with Louis Kavouras and Katherine Duke for a performance of Hawkins’ Agathlon. Lucero was the recipient of UNLV’s Outstanding Choreographer Award and the Emilee Barker Award. She is now an instructor of the university’s dance and Pilates programs. Lucero has also performed in the Dance in the Desert Festival, as well as with the Elemental Dance Company in their first ever Pseudo Serenity show about mental health in Las Vegas.

Hayley Meier is a performing artist, choreographer, and educator. Her early training was under Timothy M. Draper. In 2009 she earned a BFA in dance from the University of Arizona on full scholarship where she was honored with the inaugural Hayley Meier Award (now known as the Triple Threat Award). Upon graduation, Meier danced with Rochester City Ballet. She then joined Frank Chaves’ River North Dance Chicago performing works by Adam Barruch, Ashley Rowland, Garrett Moulton, Hanna Brictson, Ivan Perez, Kevin Iega Jeff, Mauro Astolfi, Randy Duncan, Robert Battle, Sherry Zunker, and Sidra Bell. Receiving her MFA from the UA, Meier was awarded the Creative Achievement Award for the School of Dance and Arizona Arts Undergraduate Advising/Mentoring Award as an Assistant Professor of Practice at UA. At South by Southwest in Austin, Texas she contributed to the widely praised StellarScape production blending music, science, visual art, dance, and technology.

Major support for PURE LUCIA: THE MUSIC OF LUCIA DLUGOSZEWSKI has been provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage with additional support from the Amphion Foundation. Presented in collaboration with FringeArts.