Visit the Ritual of Breath microsite to learn more about the evolution and tour of the work.

Performance

Lincoln Center's Summer for the City

The Ritual of Breath Is the Rite to Resist

New York City

July 19, 2024

This event occurred as part of the 23/24 Hop Original season. This is an archived view.

The transdisciplinary opera comes to New York City as a creative act of resistance on the 10th anniversary of Eric Garner's killing.

Summer 2024

Born from the vibrant collaboration between composer Jonathan Berger, visual artist Enrico Riley and poet/librettist Vievee Francis, the work responds to the murder of Eric Garner and the ongoing theft of Black life at the hands of the State. Music, text, projected visuals and movement interweave in a story centered on Garner's daughter, Erica. Uplifted by a 75-person choir of singers, and adapted for the outdoors, the project comes to New York City and gathers the community there as co-conspirers—to breathe and keep breathing any way we can.

Visit the Project Website

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Damrosch Park, home of Lincoln Center's Summer for the City

Ritual of Breath is more than an opera. It is an offering for the city, coinciding with the 10-year commemoration of Garner's death. Through civic partnerships from Harlem to Staten Island, we invite you to join in community activations and collective rituals of healing throughout the summer.

Civic Partnerships

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More partners and our calendar of community activations coming mid-May.

A Collaboration with

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Creative Team

The work is directed by Niegel Smith, the pioneering theater artist and artistic director of The Flea; conducted by American Prize-winning Kamna Gupta; with choreography by founder of Urban Bush Women Jawole Willa Jo Zollar. Ritual of Breath is grounded in work by the creative team with activist Dr. Shamell Bell and a group of mothers who have lost their children to state-sanctioned violence, including Gwen Carr, Eric Garner's mother.

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Jonathan Berger, Composer
Enrico Riley, Visual Artist
Vievee Francis, Librettist
Niegel Smith, Director
Kamna Gupta, Conductor
(Left to right)

View the Full Creative Team >

Commissioned and produced by Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth.
Co-commissioned by Stanford Live

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NYC - Summer 2024
Kim Whitener/KiWi Productions, Creative Producer/Tour Producer
The Flea Theater, Associate Producer
Bryan Joseph Lee, Community Producer, NYC

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The work premiered at the Hop in September 2022 and was presented at Stanford Live in October 2022. Learn more>

About the Project

Creative Team

Jonathan Berger, Composer
Enrico Riley*, Visual Artist
Vievee Francis, Librettist

Kamna Gupta, Conductor
Niegel Smith, Director

Neema Bickersteth, Co-Choreographer
Trebien Pollard, Co-Choreographer
Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Consulting Choreographer

Ahmaya Knoelle Higginson, Choir Director

Dr. Shamell Bell, Co-Social Impact Director
Gwen Carr, Co-Social Impact Director

Bryan Joseph Lee*, Community Producer, NYC

Kim Whitener/KiWi Productions, Creative Producer/Tour Producer
The Flea Theater, Associate Producer

Designers & Production

Peter Nigrini*, Scenic & Projection
Reza Behjat, Lights
Gabriel Berry, Costumes
Camilla Tassi*, Associate Projection Designer

Brian Freeland, Production Manager
Jason Kaiser, Stage Manager

Cassey Kivnick, Assistant Stage Manager
Jean-Louis Thauvin, Sound Engineer
Carla Thomas, Wardrobe Supervisor
Emanuel Cohen, Supertitle Operator
Maimouna Camara, Company Manager
Rachel Isaacs-Falbel, Hopkins Center Company Manager

Featuring

Neema Bickersteth, Soprano (Neema/Erica)
Trebien Pollard, Dancer (Eric/Many more)
Isaiah Robinson, Lead Chorister (Isaiah)
Greg Ward, Saxophone (Eric)
Fung Chern Hwei, Violin
Titilayo Ayangade, Cello
Mikael Darmanie, Piano
Bonnie Whiting, Percussion

Choir
Members of Sing Harlem, Mama Foundation and Dartmouth College Gospel Choir

Producers, Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth
Mary Lou Aleskie, Howard Gilman Executive Director
Joshua Price Kol*, Executive Producer / Managing Director
Jan Sillery, Producer / Director of Financial Operations
Michael Bodel, Producer / Director of External Affairs

NYC Community Activation & Impact Team
Jahtiek Long, Associate Community Producer
Sidney Erik Wright, Associate Community Producer
Amber Wylie
Sofia Pavan Macias
Ashlee Robinson
Annie Branch*

*Denotes Dartmouth Alumnus/a

Artists Statement

We—Enrico Riley, Jonathan Berger, Vievee Francis, and Niegel Smith—have found ourselves in an extraordinary moment where we have come together to create a work that none of us could make alone. Three of us are African-American; one of us is Jewish-American. We each fervently believe that as cultural practitioners our art must directly engage our current moment. Enrico explores in his paintings the idea of visibility—that line of demarcation that correlates to the uptick in the recording of acts of violence against people in the African-American community, which as a nation we are all witnessing. Vievee’s poignant and raw poetry highlights the interconnectedness of all violence and how it flows from people to places and vice versa. Niegel as a creator/director is consistently part of movements that involve direct action—how do you change hearts; how do you change minds? Jonathan’s music addresses the human condition and issues of social conscience, often through the perspective of an individual who is put in an impossible situation.

Eric Garner’s story goes beyond an impossible situation. This is the story of a person martyred in a society that has gone deeply awry. Bringing our multiple perspectives together has allowed the story to become multilayered and complex, making the transition from an individual to a community, from a sacred space to an open, communal space, a reflective space—into which all are invited. How can we through the use of music, visuals, poetry, and mise-en-scène invite our audience to consider—to consider the state of affairs, to consider their breath, and by extension consider the breath of others. Together we hope this piece is a call to resist violence perpetuated by racist worldviews.

Lead Artist Bios

Jonathan Berger
Composer
Thrice commissioned by The National Endowment for the Arts, Berger has also received major commissions from The Mellon and Rockefeller Foundations, Chamber Music America, and numerous chamber music societies and ensembles. Recent commissions include his operas, My Lai (commissioned by The National Endowment, the Gerbode Foundation, and Harris Theatre), and Leonardo (commissioned by the 92nd Street Y for baritone Tyler Duncan), and his song cycle, Rime Sparse (commissioned by the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society and premiered in New York and Chicago, with soprano Julia Bullock, and members of Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society). Berger's most recent recording is Smithsonian-Folkways' recording of My Lai with the Kronos Quartet, Rinde Eckert, and Van Anh Vo. A 2017 Guggenheim Fellow and the 2016 Elliot Carter Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome, Berger is the Denning Family Provostial Professor in Music at Stanford University.

Neema Bickersteth
Soprano, Co-Choreographer
Canadian soprano Neema Bickersteth was born and raised in Alberta to parents from Sierra Leone. She is known for her skills as a singer, an actor and a maker of multi-disciplinary performance. She has performed operatic roles in both Canada and Europe, and in recent years, she has specialized in contemporary projects in opera, music theater and experimental theater, including Century Song, a work she co-created and has toured in Canada, Europe and East Africa to critical acclaim. NOW Magazine (Toronto) has named her as one of the top ten theater artists in the city. She has won once and been nominated three times for Outstanding Performance at Toronto's Dora Mavor Moore awards. In addition, Neema has been honored to perform for the XIVth Dalai Lama, Shirin Ebadi and the Archbishop Desmond Tutu. She is a co-founder of and artistic producer for the experimental collective Moveable Beast. Upcoming: singing the title role in Volcano's and Moveable Beast's Scott Joplin's Treemonisha, a reworking of ragtime giant Scott Joplin's visionary 1911 blues/rag/gospel opera.

Vievee Francis
Librettist
Poet, Vievee Francis was born in San Angelo, Texas in 1963. She is currently the author of four books of poetry Blue-Tail Fly (Wayne State University Press, 2006), Horse in the Dark (winner of the Cave Canem Northwestern University Poetry Prize for a second collection, Northwestern University Press, 2016) Forest Primeval (winner of the Hurston Wright Legacy Award and the 2017 Kingsley-Tufts) and The Shared World (forthcoming, Northwestern University Press, 2022). She most recently received the 2021 Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry. Her work has appeared in numerous journals, textbooks, and anthologies, including Poetry, Best American Poetry (2010, 2014, 2017, 2019, 2020, 2022), spin.com, and the landmark anthology, Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry. A Cave Canem participant and Callaloo Fellow, she has served as an Associate Editor for Callaloo, and is an Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College.

Peter Nigrini
Scenery & Projection
Peter Nigrini has been a pioneer in the integration of projection technology and live theater. He has won the inaugural Lortel Award for Projection Design, a Drama Desk, an Obie, and been nominated for three Tony Awards. His Broadway designs include MJ: The Musical, Ain't Too Proud, Beetlejuice, The Spongebob Squarepants Musical, Dear Evan Hansen, A Doll's House Part 2, and Fela!. Projects of note in other venues include Here Lies Love by David Byrne, Grounded directed by Julie Taymor for the Public Theater, Lucia Di Lammermoor and Don Giovanni at Santa Fe Opera, and a series of adaptations with Robert Woodruff: Dostoyevsky's Notes From Underground, Bergman's Autumn Sonata, and Fassbinder's In A Year Of Thirteen Moons. He also designs in other contexts, including Deep Blue Sea, for Bill T. Jones at the Park Avenue Armory, the Grace Jones Hurricane Tour, and Hans Zimmer Live. Additionally, he was a founding member of the New York troupe, Nature Theater of Oklahoma, for which he designed every aspect of their productions including No Dice, Romeo and Juliet, and the multi-part work Life & Times. He is currently designing KPOP for Broadway, Plays for the Plague Year for the Public, and Tommy for the Goodman Theater.

Kamna Gupta
Conductor
Kamna Gupta is an American Prize-winning conductor experienced in operatic, orchestral and choral repertoires. During the 2021–2022 season, Ms. Gupta will conduct the world premiere of In Our Daughter's Eyes (Du Yun/McQuilken) featuring Nathan Gunn at L.A. Opera Off-Grand, Zolle/Cockroach (Du Yun) with International Contemporary Ensemble, and The Jungle Book (Sankaram/ O'Rourke) at the Glimmerglass Festival. She recently conducted Sandbox Figaro, a 90-minute reduction of Mozart's famous work at Mannes Opera. She will also serve as an associate conductor at the Spoleto Festival in spring 2022. In spring 2021, Ms. Gupta had her company debut with Beth Morrison Projects as the co-conductor of their Next Generation Competition, served as associate conductor for the workshop of Arkhipov (Knell/Fleischmann) at Seattle Opera, and returned to The Glimmerglass Festival to work on Il trovatore and the world premiere of The Knock (Vrebalov/Brevoort). Recent company credits include the Royal Opera in Versailles, LA Opera, the Glimmerglass Festival, Beth Morrison Projects, Spoleto Festival, Sarasota Opera, Opera Saratoga, Trinity Church Wall Street and the American Lyric Theater.

Trebien Pollard
Dancer, Co-Choreographer
Trebien Pollard is an assistant professor of Dance + Choreography. He received training at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, Florida A&M University, Florida State University, Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance, and from a number of gifted teachers and choreographers. Pollard has performed with many dance companies, including RIOULT, the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, Ronald K. Brown/Evidence, Bebe Miller Company, Urban Bush Women and Pilobolus. As a choreographer, Pollard has choreographed and toured with RASA recording artist "Nomad" and choreographed for director William "Electric" Black's "The Hamlet Project," "The Damned: A Rock Musical" and "Frankenstein: The Rock Musical." He has appeared in the feature film "Ghostlight," starring Richard Move as "Martha Graham." Pollard has been on faculty at the American Dance Festival, Queens College, Adelphi University, the University of Southern Mississippi, Goucher College, Middlebury College, Montclair State University, Marymount Manhattan College and the University at Buffalo, as well as a licensed certified GYROTONIC® and GYROKINESIS® trainer. He earned his MFA in dance from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, and his BS in mathematics education from Florida A&M University.

Enrico Riley
Visual Artist
Enrico Riley is the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, a Rome Prize in Visual Arts, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Prize in painting, and a Jacobus Family Fellowship through Dartmouth College. Exhibitions include the American Academy in Rome, Rome, Italy, The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, VA, The Columbus Museum, Columbus, GA, The Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, TX, The American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City, Hood Museum of Art, Hanover, NH, The Museum for the National Center of Afro-American Arts in Roxbury, MA, Academia di Belle Arti di Roma, Rome, Italy, Rhode Island School of Design. Riley is Professor of Studio Art at Dartmouth College.

Niegel Smith
Theater Director
Arden: But, Not Without You (The Flea), The Hang (HERE Arts Center), The Fre (The Flea), Southern Promises (The Flea), How To Catch Creation (The Goodman), Taylor Mac's Holiday Sauce (Town Hall, World Tour), Scraps (The Flea), Father Comes Home From The Wars… (The Goodman), Flea Fridays (The Flea), Syncing Ink (The Alley, The Flea), A 24 Decade History of Popular Music… (Pomegranate Arts, St. Ann's Warehouse, Melbourne Festival, et al. - Kennedy Prize & Pulitzer Prize finalist), Take Care (The Flea), Hir (Magic Theatre, Mixed Blood and Playwrights Horizons), Dream State of Affairs (The Invisible Dog), Marisol (Luna Stage), The Perils of Obedience (Abrons Arts Center), Seed (Classical Theatre of Harlem and Hip Hop Theatre Festival), Neighbors (The Public Theater), Limbs: A Pageant (HERE Arts Center), Rainy Days and Mondays (FringeNYC), Maud - The Madness (Phoenix Theatre Ensemble), We Declare You A Terrorist (Summer Play Festival). His participatory walks and performances have been produced by Abrons Arts Center, American Realness, The Brooklyn Museum, Dartmouth College, Elastic City, Jack, The New Museum, Prelude Festival, PS 122, the Van Alen Institute and Visual AIDS. A Bessie Award winning director, he is the Artistic Director of The Flea Theater in lower Manhattan; board member of A.R.T./New York; and ringleader of Willing Participant—an artistic activist organization that whips up urgent poetic responses to crazy shit that happens. niegelsmith.com

Kim Whitener
Creative Producer
Kim Whitener is an independent creative producer, working in the contemporary opera-theatre, music-theatre and other multi-genre landscapes through her company, KiWi Productions. From early 2007 to late 2018, she was the Producing/Executive Director at HERE in NYC, and was a founding co-director of the PROTOTYPE opera-theatre festival, along with partners at Beth Morrison Project, collectively directing eight festivals through January 2020. Prior to joining HERE, Ms. Whitener spent six years as an independent producer with KiWi Productions, working with a range of US artists in the contemporary theatre, opera- & music-theatre, dance-theatre and multi-media worlds, including The Builders Association, Big Dance Theater, Toni Dove, Martha Clarke, Richard Foreman's Ontological-Hysteric Theater, 33 Fainting Spells, among others. She was Managing Director of The Wooster Group for four years, and held other theatre management and producing positions in New York, Boston and Philadelphia with a specialty in new music-theatre. She has served on many grant panels and taught seminars nationally and internationally on production, management and development of projects for touring. kiwi-productions.com

Jawole Willa Jo Zollar
Co-Choreographer
In 1984, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar founded Urban Bush Women (UBW) to explore the use of cultural expression as a catalyst for social change. The company has toured five continents and has performed at venues including Brooklyn Academy of Music, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and The Kennedy Center. Using Jawole's unique approach to the arts and activism, UBW's acclaimed Summer Leadership Institute supports artists' role in cultural organizing and civic engagement. In 2010, UBW was selected as one of three U.S. dance companies to inaugurate a cultural diplomacy program for the U.S. Department of State. Jawole is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, the 2015 Dance Magazine Award, the 2016 Dance/USA Honor Award and the 2017 Bessies Lifetime Achievement Award. Jawole is currently the Nancy Smith Fichter Professor of Dance and Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor at Florida State University.

About Summer for the City

The New York premiere of Ritual of Breath will be presented as part of Lincoln Center's third annual Summer for the City festival. Over three months, the center turns its campus into a summer festival featuring hundreds of free events, thousands of artists, and food from across the city, inviting New Yorkers of all kinds to come together and celebrate the city's vibrant communities through the arts.