Jedediah Wheeler

On January 19, PEAK Performances will release Alla Kovgan’s innovative films of five works premiered at the Alexander Kasser Theater at Montclair State University in the 2021-22 season.

PEAK Performances at Montclair State University will present the world premiere of The Night Falls, choreographed and directed by Troy Schumacher (New York City Ballet and BalletCollective), with story and lyrics by Karen Russell (Swamplandia!, Vampires in the Lemon Grove), and music and lyrics by Ellis Ludwig-Leone (San Fermin), February 9–12.

PEAK Performances at Montclair State University will welcome back Bill T. Jones / Arnie Zane Company for the world premiere of Curriculum II, a timely new work conceived and directed by the iconic, Tony-winning, and currently-Tony-nominated Bill T. Jones and choreographed by Jones with Janet Wong and the Company. 

PEAK Performances at Montclair State University today announces its 2022-2023 season, a series of works confronting a world of chaotic imbalance, acknowledging that only by facing the past and present can we move into the future.

PEAK Performances at Montclair State University will present Familie Flöz’s Hotel Paradiso, May 5–8, rescheduled from 2020 and, for the first time ever, bringing the Berlin-based mask theater company’s gorgeously peculiar and awe-inspiring vision to U.S. audiences.

PEAK Performances today launches the reimagined version of its innovative PEAK Journal as an online, multimedia publication.

PEAK Performances and WNET's ALL ARTS today announce the initial lineup for PEAK HD, a partnership formed last year to broadcast performances produced at PEAK Performances' state-of-the-art home, The Alexander Kasser Theater at Montclair State University, to audiences across the country.

PEAK Performances and WNET's ALL ARTS today announced the initial lineup for PEAK HD, a partnership formed last year to broadcast performances produced at PEAK Performances' state-of-the-art home, The Alexander Kasser Theater at Montclair State University, to audiences across the country.

As part of a year-long contemporary performance series Assemblage, Detroit-based performance company The Hinterlands presents Double Edge Theatre (Ashfield, MA) in their hallucinatory work Leonora & Alejandro: La Maga y el Maestro April 2-5 at the Jam Handy Building. The production is a co-presentation by Detroit Public Theatre.

PEAK Performances presents the world premiere production of Kate Soper's opera The Romance of the Rose, directed by Michael Rau.

Peak Performances presents the Martha Graham Dance Company, comprising the “most skilled and powerful dancers you can ever hope to see” (The Washington Post), dancing the revolutionary choreographer's Appalachian Spring. The company celebrates the 75th anniversary of this enduringly powerful work with a dynamic, lyrical new dance that resonates with Graham's classic: Peak Performances commission The Auditions, choreographed by Troy Schumacher to an original score by composer Augusta Read Thomas, and performed by seven Martha Graham Dance Company members.

In Celebration of the 75th Anniversary of Appalachian Spring, Martha Graham Dance Company Returns to its Founder's Iconic Dance, with its Pulitzer Prize-Winning Score by Aaron Copland, and Debuts The Auditions, a New Work by Schumacher and Thomasa?"Commissioned by Peak Performancesa?"Devised to Resonate with Graham's Classic

The November installment of the Martha Graham Dance Company's popular Studio Series takes audiences inside the creative process of The Auditions, a new work by choreographer Troy Schumacher and composer Augusta Read Thomas, commissioned by Peak Performances.

Peak Performances presents Lena Herzog's Last Whispers, an immersive AV experience dedicated to vanishing languages, accompanied by panel discussions on select days, October 16-20 at the Alexander Kasser Theater at Montclair State University. Trained in linguistics and philosophy, Herzog, also as an acclaimed photographer, has taken an ongoing interest in indigenous languages, which are disappearing at an astonishing rate. By 2050, half of roughly 7,000 languages spoken around the world will fall silent. Herzog's a?oehaunting and singulara?? (The New Yorker critic Alex Ross) immersive oratorioa?"situated at the intersection of installation art, music, and filma?"features spoken and sung recordings of more than 40 endangered or lost languages. www.lastwhispers.org

Peak Performances announces its 2019-2020 season, considering the vocabularies of the body, genre and form, artistic practices and legacies, cultures, and language itself-how they persevere, disappear, or shift over time with new influences and perspectives. This season, Peak Performances offers its state-of-the-art platform to artists who work with-and sometimes against-these established vocabularies in the creation of exhilarating new performance works and the reinvigoration of preexisting texts, compositions, and choreographies. All performances take place at the Alexander Kasser Theater (1 Normal Ave, Montclair, NJ 07043).

Peak Performances continues a season of iconoclastic works with the U.S. premiere of Romeo Castellucci's Democracy in America, freely inspired by the writing of Alexis de Tocqueville (May 9-12). In a moment where the words "democracy in America" themselves read as a question, the firebrand director looks back on Tocqueville's canonized impressions of America's sociopolitical structure, and the potential, vulnerabilities, flaws, and dangers embedded in its roots.

Peak Performances continues its convention-defying 2018-19 season with a world premiere work from choreographer, performer, and director Faye Driscoll, the season's recipient of Peak's vital PeARL (Performing Arts Research Laboratory) residency.

Peak Performances today announces a groundbreaking venture with Catapult Opera, the new chamber opera company led by Neal Goren, the internationally acclaimed former artistic director of Gotham Chamber Opera. This ongoing collaboration will launch in Fall 2020 with the world premiere of Robert Wilson's staging of Gian Carlo Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors, conducted by Goren, and will include the development and premiere of two Catapult productions each season at Peak Performances' home, the Alexander Kasser Theater at Montclair State University (1 Normal Ave, Montclair, NJ 07043).

Peak Performances continues its galvanizing 2018-19 season with Liz Gerring Dance Company's field (October 18-21), the final installment in a trilogy of works Peak Performances has commissioned from the acclaimed choreographer. This work of movement, sound, and light marks the third collaboration between Liz Gerring, composer Michael J. Schumacher, and designer Robert Wierzel, following 2013's glacier and 2015's horizon.

Peak Performances continues its 2018-19 season of genre-and-convention-defying performances with the U.S. premiere of Cut the Sky, from Marrugeku, Australia's preeminent dance theater ensemble of Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists. A rock concert, a work of modern dance, and a plea for environmental action and the rights of Indigenous peoples, Cut the Sky addresses humanity's frailty in the face of its own actions. The "multi-faceted, fast moving, and dark" (The Guardian) performance follows a group of climate refugees living in a landscape scorched by climate change, facing yet another extreme weather event. The piece, collaboratively conceived by Marrugeku co-artistic directors Dalisa Pigram, Rachael Swain (concept) and Edwin Lee Mulligan (poems); directed by Rachael Swain;and choreographed by Dalisa Pigram and Serge Aime Coulibali, comes to the Alexander Kasser Theater at Montclair State University (1 Normal Ave., Montclair, NJ) November 15-18.