Its 10 performers grapple with reveries of life, death, and the mysteries in between. The ingenious and multi-talented Greek artist Dimitris Papaioannou creates productions that can be seen as moving still lifes, always with a strong, distinct visual intensity. Papaioannou does not see himself as a dancer or a choreographer, but as a visual artist, a painter on the stage who creates worlds of astounding beauty from the human body, imbuing life with magic. While he became widely known as the creator of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies for the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, his poetic, wordless allegory on the passage of time is a different kind of spectacle.
Please Note: The Great Tamer contains frontal male and female nudity.

The origins of Past Tense lie in Weems’s powerful work Grace Notes, which was inspired by President Obama singing “Amazing Grace” in the wake of the 2015 shooting that killed nine African-American members of a church in Charleston, SC. Weems says, “While working on Grace Notes for months it occurred to me that I was telling the story of Antigone, wherein an innocent man dies by unjustified means, and his sister fights for the right to bury him honorably. But the wider community refuses her; her right to justice, and to peace, is denied.” Weems, looking for permission to “bury our brothers,” incorporates video of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and Eric Garner, among others, into this work that mourns those lives of unknown potential that were ended by those who were supposed to protect them.

Thirty years after photographer and visual artist Robert Mapplethorpe’s untimely death, we still cannot turn away from the compelling emotional complexity of his influential body of work. In American Wedding, music, poetry, and photography come together in a theatrical context, exploring the impact of the work Mapplethorpe had on the lives and careers of composer Bryce Dessner (The National) and librettist Robert O’Hara, both natives of Cincinnati.

Centered around three of Shakespeare’s most vivid characters — Caesar, Brutus, and the young Mark Antony — the play contrasts a vast historical canvas with the private fears and dreams of men whose words can change the world. In this production, French director Arthur Nauzyciel adopts the look and style of the late 1960s, when the world is in flux and the national psyche is in turmoil after President Kennedy’s assassination.