Press Release North American Premiere of William Kentridge's "The Great Yes, The Great No" - Exclusively for Miami Art Week! December 5-7, 2024

The Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County Presents
Exclusively for Miami Art Week 2024

The North American Premiere of

William Kentridge’s
THE GREAT YES, THE GREAT NO

Created in collaboration with Phala O. Phala and Nhlanhla Mahlangu

December 5-7, 2024
Knight Concert Hall

Miami, FL – (August 5, 2024) – For three days only during Miami Art Week 2024, the Arsht Center exclusively presents the latest creation by internationally acclaimed contemporary artist William Kentridge. The Great Yes, The Great No is Kentridge’s new breathtaking performance, combining live music, dance, projections, sculptural costumes and the South African artist’s own animated drawings. The Arsht Center performances (December 5, 6 and 7) will mark the North American premiere of the work and only the third presentation since its world premiere in Provence, France this summer.

The Great Yes, The Great No will be performed in the Arsht Center’s Knight Concert Hall at 8 p.m. on December 5, 6 and 7. Tickets range from $50-$226 and can be purchased online at arshtcenter.org or by calling the Arsht Center Box Office at (305) 949-6722.

The Great Yes, The Great No marks the Arsht Center’s second collaboration with Kentridge, who is internationally acclaimed for his visual art and theater productions. In 2022, the Center co-commissioned and presented The Head & the Load, which became a “must see of Miami Art Week” (The Miami Herald).

Co-commissioned by the Arsht Center, The Great Yes, The Great No is a chamber opera set on a 1941 sea voyage from Marseille to Martinique. Conceived in collaboration with theater maker Phala Ookeditse Phala and choral conductor and dancer Nhlanhla Mahlangu, The Great Yes, The Great No fictionalizes the historic wartime escape from Vichy France by, among others, the surrealist André Breton, the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, and the Cuban artist Wifredo Lam—and adds a distinguished and colorful cast of characters to the passenger list, like Aimé Césaire, Josephine Baker, Leon Trotsky, and Joseph Stalin. In Kentridge’s hands, the ship becomes a fantastical menagerie of thinkers, makers, and revolutionaries in a production that merges surrealist imagery with real-life events, lush South African choral music, dance, poetry and anti-rational approaches to language and image. Kentridge’s breathtaking visual inventiveness combines animated drawings, video projection, masks, shadow play and bold sculptural costumes with spoken and projected text that explores the relationship between surrealism and the anticolonial Négritude movement.

The Great Yes, The Great No is commissioned by lead commissioner LUMA Foundation with co-commissioners, the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County with lead sponsor support from Adrienne Arsht; CAL Performances; and Centre d’Art Battat. Foundational commissioning support for the development and creation of The Great Yes, The Great No is provided by Brown Arts Institute at Brown University. The Great Yes, The Great No acknowledges the kind assistance of Goodman Gallery, Lia Rumma Gallery and Hauser & Wirth in this project. It is co-produced by Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg and Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen in Germany.

The Great Yes, The Great No is produced by THE OFFICE performing arts + film.

The Great Yes, The Great No is a project of the Centre for the Less Good Idea.    

ABOUT KENTRIDGE

William Kentridge is an internationally acclaimed South African artist, renowned for the evocative power of his work, which has thrilled audiences around the globe. His exhibitions and large-scale, staged performances delve into the history of colonialism in Africa and the aspirations and failures of revolutionary politics, while engaging a wide range of visual and aural references - from European high modernism to African traditional and contemporary music and dance. Operating on a grand scale, his work has been shown and collected by museums all over the world. For more information on Kentridge, visit here.

Kentridge’s work has been seen in museums and galleries around the world since the 1990s, including Documenta in Kassel, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Albertina Museum in Vienna, Musée du Louvre in Paris, Whitechapel Gallery in London, Louisiana Museum in Copenhagen and the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid.

Opera productions include Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Shostakovich’s The Nose and Alban Berg’s Lulu, and have been seen at opera houses including the Metropolitan Opera in New York, La Scala in Milan, English National Opera in London, Opera de Lyon, Amsterdam opera and others. Summer 2017 saw the premiere of Kentridge’s production of Berg’s Wozzeck for the Salzburg Festival.

The 5-channel video and sound installation The Refusal of Time was made for Documenta (13) in 2012. Since then, it has been seen in cities around the world. More Sweetly Play the Dance, an 8-channel video projection shown first seen in Amsterdam in April 2015, and Notes Toward a Model Opera, a three-screen projection looking at the Chinese Cultural Revolution, made for an exhibition in Beijing in 2015. Both have been presented in many other cities since. Kentridge’s ambitious yet ephemeral public art project for Rome, Triumphs & Laments (a 500 m frieze of figure power-washed from pollution and bacterial growth on the walls of the Tiber River) opened in April 2016 with a performance of live music composed by Philip Miller and a procession of shadow figures.

Kentridge is the recipient of honorary doctorates from several universities including Yale and the University of London, and in 2012 he presented the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard University. In 2010, he received the Kyoto Prize. In 2015 he was appointed an Honorary Academician of the Royal Academy in London. In October 2017, he received the Princesa de Asturias Award for the arts, and in 2018, the Antonio Feltrinelli International Prize. In 2019 he received the Praemium Imperiale award in painting in Tokyo. In 2021 he was made a Foreign Associate Member to the French Académie des Beaux Arts, Paris. In 2022 he was presented the Honour of the Order of the Star of Italy and, in 2023, he received the Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Opera for Sibyl in London.    

For more information, visit: www.kentridge.studio/

@ArshtCenter                        #ArshtCenter

 *All programs, artists, ticket prices, availability, dates and times are subject to change without notice. Visit arshtcenter.org for up-to-date information.

The Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County is made possible by the public support of the Miami-Dade County Mayor and the Board of County Commissioners, the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Tourist Development Council and the City of Miami Omni Community Redevelopment Agency. The Adrienne Arsht Center also receives generous support from individuals, corporations and local, state and national foundations.

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AboutUs

Set in the heart of downtown Miami, the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County is committed to welcoming and connecting ALL people to the arts, to the Arsht Center and to each other. Our stages are alive year-round with artists from around the world, innovative programming from our resident companies and local arts partners, free community events that reflect Miami’s unique identity and arts education experiences for thousands of Miami children each year.

 Since opening in 2006, the Arsht Center, a 501C3 non-profit organization, has been recognized as a catalyst for billions of dollars in new development in the downtown area, a leader in programming that mirrors South Florida’s diversity, a host venue for historic events and Miami’s hub for arts education.

Each year, we serve more than 60,000 young learners and offer more than 100 culturally diverse and inclusive education programs — many enhanced by the Arsht Center’s relationship with Miami-Dade County Public Schools, local teaching artists and Miami-based arts organizations.

The Arsht Center is also a home stage for three resident companies — Florida Grand Opera, Miami City Ballet and New World Symphony — and a launch pad for local artists to make their mark on the international stage. Our 300+ events each year include the Center’s Signature Series of classical, jazz, Broadway, local theater and much more. We present a robust series of touring Broadway musicals direct from New York, the largest jazz series in South Florida, a major annual Flamenco Festival and an award-winning Miami-based theater program. In addition, our Family Fest, Free Gospel Sundays, CommuniTEA LGBTQ+ celebration and Heritage Fest are among dozens of free events that bring together people from all corners of our community. For more information, visit arshtcenter.org.