Opening Weekend Performers + Host

Opposites Abstract in art, film,
music and dance

All performances take place at the New Hazlett Theater and are free to the public and included with admission to the Children’s Museum/MuseumLab

Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra

Saturday, Feb 4, 1:00 pm

Music is filled with opposites: loud and soft, fast and slow, rough and smooth, beautiful and…ugly? PSO musicians and Assistant Conductor Moon Doh present a colorful exploration of opposites in music. Inspired by Mo Willems’ Opposites Abstract, the musicians will play with shapes, sounds, words, and movement. What pairs of musical opposites will YOU discover?  SEE FULL SET LIST DOCUMENT  

Moon Doh is Assistant Conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, appointed by Music Director Manfred Honeck in October 2021. A recipient of the Takaya Urakawa Foundation Grant awarded to promising young musicians, conductor Moon Doh has found great acclaim in various concert venues across Germany. As the Artistic Director and Conductor of the Flora Symphony Orchestra in Cologne for the past three seasons, he not only led exciting concerts but also worked closely with music pedagogues, reaching an unprecedented number of children through music.  

Born in South Korea, Moon spent much of his childhood in the Philippines, Russia, and the United States. At the age of nine, he began cello and piano studies in Russia and has since been performing with various youth and student orchestras across the globe. As a passionate advocate for young rising artists, he is the conductor of the annual European Youth Music Week where talented young musicians across Europe gather for intense music making. 

Learn more at https://pittsburghsymphony.org 

Kelsey Jumper and Treasure Treasure

Saturday, Feb 4, 4:00 pm

Kelsey and Treasure explore the curiosity of opposites and abstraction using Pablo Neruda’s Book of Questions a book containing unanswerable, fantastical questions, as inspiration.

Kelsey Jumper & Treasure Treasure are an internationally touring multidisciplinary duo based in Pittsburgh, PA.  Their work ranges from classic forms of theater, music and dance to experimental expression. They have been presented locally at New Hazlett and Kelly Strayhorn theaters and venues around North America with Broadway veterans Squonk Opera.   

 Kelsey Robinson (Vocals/Dance) is a Pittsburgh reared performance artist who performs and teaches with Quantum Theatre (Inside Passage, Looking for Violeta, Lyon’s Den) Bricolage Production Company (DODO, The Forest…, The Clearing) and is a founding member of FolkLab. She is the recipient of an Opportunity Fund grant, a Kelly Strayhorn Theater residency and Cultural Trust spotlight for Talking with Ghosts About Freedom which unearths regional Black and Indigenous histories while crossing state lines on her bicycle. 

Treasure Treasure (Vocals/Dance) is an artist and multi-instrumentalist working in music, comedy, film, and visual art. Theatre credits include Cabaret (Emcee, Hangar Theatre,) This Ain’t No Disco (Atlantic Theater Company,) Agnus Teaches Acting, an original comedy special (The Duplex,) Fiddler on the Roof (CLO).  She made her Broadway debut in the revival of Annie Get Your Gun.  She holds a BFA from the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama. Her original musical score for Shakespeare’s The Tempest was first produced by Southwest Shakespeare Company in Arizona and her debut EP, Hypnerotomachia, is available on all platforms. 

Confluence Ballet

Sunday, Feb 5, 11:00 am

The company presents three works that tell stories about different pairs of opposites. The choreography juxtaposes movements – hard with soft, exciting with calm, mechanical with organic, dark with light.

 …Goes On (mechanical, excited, hard and dark) by Kalia Carter 

This choreographic landscape is powerfully dark and explores the facets of time as a construct and how it simultaneously exists and does not exist. The movements are mechanical, using groups and movement qualities that are sharp and hard.  

• Choreographer: Kaila Carter  
• Music: “Parisot” by Martin Bresnick, performed with Ashley Bathgate; “Bird as Prophet” by Martin Bernick, performed with Lisa Moore and Elly Toyoda  
• Costume Design: Kassi Tiedjens  
• Cast: Elise Csizmadia, Indira Cunningham, Jaden Murphy, Meghan Phillips, Baylee Sullivan, Kassi Tiedjens, Kinsey Love, Shelby Walsh   

Piantina (organic, calm, soft, light) by Julie Erickson 

Our ancestral lineage seeks to find us beyond the confines of time and space. This is a journey through a soft, calm, light landscape, showcasing organic movement, and using groups to show the exclusion of two soloists until the piece’s resolution. 

• Choreographer: Julia Erickson 
• Music: “Piano Concerto No. 20 in D Minor, K466: 2.Romance–Live” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, performed by Mitsuko Uchida and the Cleveland Orchestra  
• Costume Design: Kassi Tiedjens  
• Cast: Soloists: Meghan Phillips and Kaila Carter; Jaden Murphy, Elise Csizmadia, Indira Cunningham, Jessica de Jong, Kinsey Love, Baylee Sullivan, Kassi Tiedjens

 Soliloquy (group, individual) 

Soliloquy showcases one individual as opposed to a group of dancers. The movement is calm and soft as we observe a conversation with oneself, but also show inner turmoil, the dark and light, the introvert and extrovert moments in our lives. 

• Choreography: Lea Havas 
• Music: “5 Preludes” by Heitor Vila-Lobos, performed by Dagoberto Linhares on the guitar 
• Costume Design: Kassi Tiedjens 
• Cast: Indira Cunningham 

Confluence Ballet Company was established in 2021 with the vision to create dance free from the constraints of racial inequity & stigmas surrounding body type. As stated in our mission and values, diversity and inclusion are key tenets in how Confluence Ballet Co. operates. The company strives to produce works of the highest caliber in classical, neoclassical and contemporary genres while creating a positive environment in which artists can grow, collaborate and thrive. 

 Learn more at https://www.confluenceballet.org 

Feralcat & the Wild

Sunday, Feb 5, 2:00 pm

Join the the band as they perform music that intentionally uses uncommon combinations of both musical genre and instrumentation that forces the listener to question: What of this makes sense to me?

Feralcat is an artist, composer and producer who performs for a paradigm shift away from that which exists today for saxophone. His band, Feralcat and the Wild, is a prog-rock/emo/fusion band where his sweeping saxophone melodies carry over top of driving distorted guitars and synthesizers in music that functions better around mosh pits than in jazz clubs. As a solo artist and producer, the music Feralcat creates lends saxophone melodies/harmonies to sounds in lo-fi, synth-wave and video game-inspired tracks. 

With deliberate use of a saxophone in place of a vocalist, Feralcat and the Wild treads the path of an instrumentalist who strays from pre-existing musical constructs. Our music uses sweeping lyrical melodies over heavy guitar-driven rhythms to create a sound that can be both heard and felt deeply. Influences like Underoath and Circa Survive are as treasured as those of Esperanza Spalding and Robert Glasper. The band’s songs break barriers and melt faces, stimulating the mind with improvised saxophone music that simultaneously rocks the listener onto their dancing feet. With their debut self-titled EP (2019), they made a musical style that wouldn’t be put in a box. It is chaotic and daring, yet fully-realized; and most of all, it’s punk as can be.   

Learn more at  https://f3ralcat.com/home 

Opening Weekend Host

D.S. Kinsel 

D.S. Kinsel is an award winning creative entrepreneur and cultural agitator.  He expresses his creativity through the mediums of painting, window display, installation, curating, Action-Painting, Non-Traditional Performance and #HASHTAGS. Kinsel’s work puts focus on themes of space keeping, urban tradition, hip-hop, informalism and cultural re-appropriation.  

He is the co-founder of BOOM Concepts, a creative hub dedicated to the advancement of black and brown artists representing marginalized communities.  BOOM Concepts is located in Pittsburgh and is funded by The Heinz Endowments and The Pittsburgh Foundation. BOOM Concepts focuses on youth, community artists and neighborhood partners to identify contemporary expressions of social justice through drama, dance, music, visual art and technology.

D.S is a board member of Pittsburgh Center for Creative REuse, and serves on the advisory board for The Heinz Endowments Transformative Arts Process. A former AmeriCorps Public Ally member, he has also been recognized as an awardee of the Pittsburgh Courier Fab 40, Pittsburgh Magazine PUMP 40 Under 40, Pgh Tech Council Creative of the Year, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s “Top Ten People To Meet in 2016” and the Incline’s “Who’s Next” for 2018.