Welcome from BAM’s Artistic Director

Walking to work one beautiful morning recently, I was thinking about how lucky we are in the arts, because our acts of resistance are constructive and inclusive. All of the artists who’ve made revolutionary work were fighting against something in their creative statements. But rather than tearing things down, they created new opportunities for contemplation and community.

Creating revolutionary art requires a strong foundation. The Winter/Spring season at BAM brings together diverse creators from around the world in a series of wildly disparate works. What they all share in common is a conviction that making something new requires deeply understanding what came before, and then taking from it what fuels you to create a new chapter—the very definition of revolution.

You can see this in Age of Content, where the artistic collective LA HORDE works with the highly trained dancers of Ballet national de Marseille, one of the world’s great companies, connecting with younger audiences in subject matter that’s completely contemporary. The Trisha Brown Dance Company, celebrating its 50th anniversary at BAM, affirms and extends bonds among artists whose names proclaim revolution: Brown, Robert Rauschenberg, Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Laurie Anderson.

In Moby Dick, the visionary director Robert Wilson uses sound, light, and motion to restore the arresting power of a foundational American novel. Robert Hastie and the National Theatre offer a new chapter in the long saga of Hamlet at BAM with an informed yet probing interpretation certain to spark both discovery and discussion. And in Dear Everything, V (formerly Eve Ensler) offers a timely reminder that resistance is fundamentally creative—a gesture of solidarity and a source of joyful community.

Our new season includes all of that and more. We can’t wait to share it with you.

Yours,