If you can get to it, check out the Ringling International Arts Festival in Sarasota, FL, October 7-11, 2009.  Presented by the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in association with the Baryshnikov Arts Center, the festival’s inaugural season kicks off on October 7 with an opening night concert led by renowned conductor Robert Spano, featuring the Florida State University Symphony Orchestra and pianist Pedja Muzijevic.

Events at a glance include the U.S. premiere of Peter Brook’s Love is my sin; Ella’s Hickson’s award-winning play Eight; Elevator Repair Service in their new The Sun Also Rises, First Part (a workshop premiere); the extraordinary Meow Meow in Beyond Glamour: The Absinthe Tour; a world premiere by choreographer Aszure Barton; the U.S. premiere of María Pagés’s Flamenco y Poesía; Deganit Shemy & Company; OtherShore; and two chamber concerts, each featuring a new commissioned work by composer Mason Bates.

complete info after the jump…

THEATER

Peter Brook / C.I.T.C. – Love is my sin (U.S. Premiere)

Peter Brook—considered to be one of the most influential stage directors alive—brings Shakespeare’s sonnets to life in his newest production. Performed by longtime collaborators Bruce Myers and Natasha Parry, Love is my sin reveals Shakespeare’s sonnets as intimate diaries: a key to his passions and private questions about time, aging, and death. Reveling in the intense beauty of Shakespeare’s language, Brook continues his experiment in reducing theater to its essential form.

Ella Hickson – Eight

Ella Hickson’s debut play Eight swept the major awards at the 2008 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Eight delivers a rich portrait of modern Britain through a collection of incisive monologues ranging from a single working mother to a young Iraq veteran. Exquisitely tuned to the inner voices of her characters, Hickson balances biting humor with emotional honesty as she assesses what it means to be part of the current generation. Eight’s cast includes actors from the UK and the FSU/Asolo Conservatory for Actor Training.

Elevator Repair Service – The Sun Also Rises, First Part (Workshop Premiere)

Internationally acclaimed collective Elevator Repair Service (ERS) continues its compelling experiments in 20th century literary adaptation (Gatz and The Sound and the Fury) with this new, multilayered interpretation of Hemingway’s classic novel. ERS is known for its intoxicatingly original work, tapping sources from film to novels to television, and combining slapstick comedy, hi-tech and lo-tech design, and its own unique style of choreography. The Sun Also Rises is commissioned by the Ringling International Arts Festival.

DANCE

Deganit Shemy & Company – Arena

Deganit Shemy has captured attention in her native Israel—where she was named “Young Choreographer of the Year” by the Israeli Ministry of Education (2004)—and also in New York, where she founded Deganit Shemy & Company in 2005. In Arena, five women enact an unsettling and intensely physical game governed by mysterious forces, giving a competitive edge to their world that lies somewhere between the real and the imagined. Arena is commissioned by the Ringling International Arts Festival.

Aszure Barton & Artists – Busk (World Premiere)

OtherShore – The Snow Falls in the Winter

Currently the Resident Choreographer for Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal, Aszure Barton has choreographed new works for Mikhail Baryshnikov, Sydney Dance Company, The Martha Graham Dance Company, and the Broadway stage. Drawing from classical ballet and contemporary dance vocabularies, Ms. Barton plumbs the human psyche in Busk, a new work that explores the visual architecture of movement, color, and sound. Busk is commissioned by the Ringling International Arts Festival.

Founded by Sonja Kostich and Brandi Norton, OtherShore debuted in 2008 with a program of commissioned works, including The Snow Falls in the Winter. Created by Annie-B Parson and co-directed by Paul Lazar of Big Dance Theater, The Snow Falls in the Winter is a poignant dance-theater piece that borrows from Eugene Ionesco’s The Lesson, exploring notions of training and teaching, examining the cusp between right and wrong, true and false, artifice and reality.

Compañia María Pagés – Flamenco y Poesía

María Pagés is one of Spain’s leading flamenco virtuosos. In her latest work, Flamenco y Poesía,she translates the cadences of poetry into dance, revealing a shared language between the words of José Saramago and Federico Garcia de Lorca and the rhythms of the human body. Performed by her company of nine extraordinary dancers and musicians, Flamenco y Poesía continues Pagés innovative journey into the depths of flamenco and beyond.

PERFORMANCE / MUSIC

Meow Meow – Beyond Glamour: The Absinthe Tour

International singing sensation and post post-modern showgirl Meow Meow descends on The Festival in a wild journey of obsessive love songs, tired old tricks, and gorgeous cabaret ditties. Touring globally with the Spiegeltent and a guest at venues from the Sydney Opera House to New York’s Lincoln Center, Meow Meow navigates the uncharted territory between Weimar era wit, 1930s Shanghai show tunes, ‘60s French pop, and post-punk hilarity, creating a parody of glitz that defies categorization.

MUSIC

Chamber Music

Anne-Marie McDermott, piano; Jennifer Frautschi, violin; Edward Arron, cello; Eric Ruske, horn

Program A:

C. Debussy: Sonata for Violin and Piano

Mason Bates: Horn Trio (World Premiere)

F. Mendelssohn: Piano Trio in D Minor, op. 49

Program B:

Mason Bates: Horn Trio

A. Dvorák: Piano Trio in F Minor, op. 65

These hour-long programs of chamber music masterworks include an addition to the horn trio repertoire by acclaimed young composer Mason Bates. They are performed by a group of internationally renowned musicians:  pianist Anne-Marie McDermott, violinist Jennifer Frautschi, cellist Edward Arron, and French horn player Eric Ruske. Mason Bates’s music has been performed by The National Symphony Orchestra (at both the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall), San Francisco Symphony, and the Atlanta and Phoenix Symphonies. Mason Bates’s new work is commissioned by the Ringling International Arts Festival.