MEMORYHOUSE Comes to the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts

The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts and Los Angeles Ballet will present Memoryhouse, a full-evening work by LAB’s Artistic Director Melissa Barak, performances will take place in the Bram Goldsmith Theater at the Wallis in Beverly Hills January 30 – February 1, 2025. 

This presentation of Memoryhouse is the start of a new partnership between The Wallis and Los Angeles Ballet.

Memoryhouse is an abstract work composed of vignettes commemorating World War II and in particular, the Holocaust. Set to Max Richter’s powerful album of the same name, Memoryhouse will reflect on both the somber as well as more heroic moments that illuminate this period in human history.

     

“Dance is tricky in a sense,” said Barak. “The story of the Holocaust has such a darkness and a weight to it, the last thing you would want is for dance to take something of that nature too literally. For me, it was all about keeping it symbolic, removing the personal emotion as performers and to approach it as a ballet that focuses on symbolism and poetry.”

Robert van Leer, Executive Director and CEO and The Wallis said, “To program The Wallis, we are seeking to give Los Angeles’ signature performing arts companies a home where audiences can regularly expect to see their work and experience their artistic growth.  It is important to us to be able to showcase companies as accomplished as Los Angeles Ballet with important work like Memoryhouse.” 

The Wallis along with the Holocaust Museum LA is also presenting a screening of Making of Memoryhouse on Thursday, January 23 at 6:30 PM in The Wallis Lovelace Studio Theater.  This documentary film follows choreographer Melissa Barak as she dives in headfirst with her creative team to bring this ballet inspired by the Holocaust to emotional life. Through performance and rehearsal clips, as well as interviews and powerful survivor testimony, audiences are brought into the creative process where Barak works on building a theatrical dance experience like no other.  The post-screening conversation will feature Barak, Holocaust survivors, and HMLA’s Chief Impact Officer Jordanna Gessler. 

To post a comment, you must register and login.