Creative Exchange for a Sea Change: CalArts Center for New Performance Announces Partnership with AltaSea at the Port of Los Angeles

Video: Click here for a video announcing the CNPxAltaSea partnership.

Through residencies with artists and scientists, and the development of fully produced new performances, the AltaSea collaboration will seek to engage audiences in the ecological issues of today

LOS ANGELES (Oct. 15, 2020) – The CalArts Center for New Performance (CNP) has partnered with AltaSea at the Port of Los Angeles -- developer of one of the most innovative ocean research campuses in the world -- to connect scientific inquiry with creative expression, it was announced today.

Through active research and exchange between artists, scientists, educators and entrepreneurs, the new collaboration, CNPxAltaSea will experiment with new forms of live performance to engage audiences in the urgent issues of today and invite them to discover the sea’s uncharted potentials for the future.

“CNP shares with AltaSea a respect for inquiry, a quest for new possibilities, and an understanding that there remains vast depths to chart in both the sea and ourselves,” said Travis Preston, CNP Artistic Director and Dean of the CalArts School of Theater. “Our goal is to do more than build awareness of the critical issues that we confront on our planet: climate change, energy supply, food security, and the profoundly inequitable way that communities of color are impacted by these issues. Our work is to creatively inspire action and to build deep commitment to fostering change.”

 ”CNPxAltaSea is truly an innovative collaboration for the future of our oceans and importantly is a new and unique way to engage the next generation in AltaSea’s ocean conservation work. All of us at AltaSea are grateful to CalArts Center for New Performance for creating this avenue for engagement through the arts,” said Jenny Krusoe, Founding Executive Director of AltaSea.

The multi-year partnership will place the power of art—of story, image and shared experience—in direct exchange with scientific data, thought and innovation. Through residencies with artists and scientists, and the development of fully produced new performances, CNPxAltaSea will serve as a laboratory for future-making.

The new partnership was celebrated this past weekend during “The Blue Hour,” a unique drive-in event celebrating Los Angeles as the global capital of “Blue” economy and education and supporting AltaSea’s Project Blue educational programs.

To view a video announcing the CNPxAltaSea partnership, please click here.

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For its 2020–2021 season, CalArts Center for New Performance continues its commitment to artists and audiences through new offerings that both dive into past projects and experiment with new forms of engagement, continuing to support artists in the development of original works through dynamic process and new modes of presentation. Look for participatory workshops, podcasts, screenings, artists talks and other digital events.

CNP will host a range of resident and guest artists, inviting each to reimagine artmaking in this current landscape, as CNP approaches its 20th anniversary season in 2021-22. 

Artists and project partners for 2020-21 include Daniel Alexander Jones, Monty Cole, Natalia Lassalle-Morillo, Rickerby Hinds, Kati Hernandez, Chris Kallmyer, STUDIO teatrgaleria, Ray Sun and Chen Wu-kang, Condola Rashād, Nataki Garrett, Andrea LeBlanc, Dahlak Brathwaite, Ron Cephas Jones, Octavio Solis, and Chi-wang Yang.

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CalArts Center for New Performance is the professional producing arm of California Institute of the Arts, established to provide a unique artist- and project-driven framework for the development and realization of original theater, music, dance, media and interdisciplinary projects. Extending the progressive work carried out at CalArts into a direct dialogue with professional communities at the local, national and international levels, CNP offers an alternative model to support emerging directions in the performing arts. It also enables CalArts students to work shoulder-to-shoulder with celebrated artists and acquire a level of experience that goes beyond their curriculum.

AltaSea at the Port of Los Angeles, a nonprofit corporation, is dedicated to accelerating scientific collaboration, advancing an emerging blue economy through business innovation and job creation, and inspiring the next generation, all for a more sustainable, just, and equitable world. For more information on AltaSea, please visit altasea.org.

California Institute of the Arts has set the pace for educating professional artists since 1970. Offering rigorous undergraduate and graduate degree programs through six schools—Art, Critical Studies, Dance, Film/Video, Music, and Theater—CalArts has championed creative excellence, critical reflection, and the development of new forms and expressions. As successive generations of faculty and alumni have helped shape the landscape of contemporary arts, the Institute first envisioned by Walt Disney encompasses a vibrant, eclectic community with global reach, inviting experimentation, independent inquiry, and active collaboration and exchange among artists, artistic disciplines and cultural traditions.