Event
Andrea Peña & Artists
UAQUE
Andrea Peña & Artists
Edward Burtynsky, photographer
Naples Philharmonic
Alexander Shelley, artistic and music director
Experience the unique artistry of Colombian-Canadian choreographer Andrea Peña, noted for her meticulous conceptual creations and ability to foster deep dialogue between the body and materiality.
With UAQUE, Peña creates a dialogue between disciplines of dance, visual arts and music as Artistic and Music Director Alexander Shelley conducts the Naples Philharmonic. In the background, artist and photographer Edward Burtynsky’s astonishing images paint a fascinating self-portrait of our planet, illustrating the duality between beauty and the environmental crisis. Ten dancers, in tension and conversation with these images, create a moment suspended in time — one in which humanity and nature are united.
This evocative performance asks us to slow down and contemplate a sustainable future, leaving a glimmer of hope in the dancers’ wake.
The Artistic and Music Director position is generously endowed by Sharon and Timothy Ubben.
Andrea Peña
Andrea Peña
Andrea Peña is a Colombian, Montreal-based multidisciplinary artist within the fields of choreography and design.
Peña interweaves her career as a dancer and choreographer with her training as an industrial designer. At this juncture, she reflects upon interstitial spaces, counter-forms and the choreographic connotations of everyday objects. By analyzing and cataloging, Peña raises questions about the levels of imposition or dialogue that these objects provoke in our movements. In her work, the objects are seen as prosthetic relationships between body, movement and space.
Artistic director of Andrea Peña & Artists, founded in 2014, the Canadian dance company is recognized nationally and internationally. Peña’s work has been commissioned by Montreal’s prestigious Musée des Beaux Arts, Canadian Center for Architecture, PHI Center, Laval Symphony Orchestra, Pro Arte Danse and Salt Contemporary Dance Company.
Peña has been a resident artist at DanseDanse & Arsenal Gallery, Circuit- Est Centre Choreographic Technical Residency, Marie Chouinard, Ionion Arts Center, HKICAROS – Hong Kong, AADK Centre, Topological Media Lab Concordia and Hexagram Concordia. Peña’s artistic creations are financially funded by the Conseil Des Arts et Lettres Du Quebec and Canada Arts Council.
Alexander Shelley
Alexander Shelley
Sharon and Timothy Ubben Artistic and Music Director
A “natural communicator, both on and off the podium” (The Daily Telegraph), Alexander Shelley performs across six continents with the world’s finest orchestras and soloists. A passionate and articulate advocate for the role of music in society, he has spearheaded multiple award-winning and groundbreaking projects unlocking creativity in the next generation and bringing symphonic music to new audiences.
With a conducting technique described as “immaculate, everything crystal clear and a tool to his inborn musicality” (Yorkshire Post), Alexander is known for the precision and integrity of his interpretations, for his creative programming and for the breadth of his repertoire. He collaborates with artists such as Lang-Lang, Joshua Bell, Daniel Hope, Hélène Grimaud, Itzhak Perlman, Renée Fleming and Thomas Hampson alongside some of the finest orchestras of Europe, the Americas, Asia and Australasia.
As of January 2015, Alexander has served as principal associate conductor of London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, with whom he curates an annual series of concerts at Cadogan Hall and tours both nationally and internationally. In September 2015, Alexander succeeded Pinchas Zukerman as music director of Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra, the youngest in its history.
In 2016, Alexander was awarded the ECHO prize for his second Deutsche Grammophon recording, Peter and the Wolf, and both the ECHO and Deutsche Grunderpreis in his capacity as artistic director of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen’s Zukunftslabor, a visionary project of grass-roots engagement, which uses music as a source for social cohesion and integration.
He has a wealth of experience conducting and presenting major open-air events; in Nuremberg alone, he has, over the course of nine years, hosted more than half a million people at the annual Klassik Open Air concerts — Europe’s largest classical music event.
Meet Alexander
ass="h3lh dark-blue">Sharon and Timothy Ubben Artistic and Music Director
