Prior Performing Arts Center at Holy Cross to present varied season of acclaimed artists

The Prior Performing Arts Center at the College of the Holy Cross has announced its 2023-24 visiting artists series, Prior Presents, which includes international artists, concerts, lectures, installations, and educational and community activities.

Among the performers featured are the string quartet Brooklyn Rider,  singer, musician, composer, and activist Rhiannon Giddens, and the French dance company French company Hervé Koubi.

The Prior Performing Arts Center includes the Luth Concert Hall, a 400-seat proscenium theater, and the Boroughs Theatre, a 200-seat flexible theater space. The center opened last fall.

“This season’s internationally acclaimed artists embody our vision for programming at the Prior Performing Arts Center: they possess extraordinary artistry, they defy disciplinary boundaries, and they speak urgently to our shared present,” Prior Performing Arts Center interim director Kyle Frisina said in an announcement. “Tackling subjects from borders to climate, from immigration to incarceration, and from family ties to romantic love, these artists make space for new stories and for challenging ideas. Their performances, artist talks, and installations offer an exhilarating complement to the creativity and innovation of emerging student artists and Holy Cross faculty and staff also featured in our season this year,” Frisina said.

The season is as follows:

Sept. 19 and 20 — The visiting artists series begins with the region’s first public readings of Lloyd Suh’s 2023 Pulitzer finalist and off-Broadway hit play “The Far Country,” which follows an unlikely family of immigrants in the wake of the Chinese Exclusion Act at the turn of the 20th century.

Sept. 30 — Brooklyn Rider takes the stage in the Luth Concert Hall with its new “Four Elements”project, an exploration of the four classical elements (earth, air, water, fire) as metaphor for both the complex inner world of the string quartet and the current health of planet Earth.

Mid-October — New England choreographer Deborah Goffe will offer educational and community residency activities based on her new work “Liturgy|Order|Bridge,” which was co-commissioned by the Prior Performing Arts Center.

Nov. 1 — Public lecture by artist-activist LaToya Ruby Frazier. According to the announcement, "On the eve of a major career survey at the Museum of Modern Art, the photographer will discuss her decades-long efforts to capture our cultural blind spots, in particular her documentation of post-industrial cities riven by poverty, racism, healthcare inequality, and environmental toxicity."

Jan. 30 and 31 — Dancers of the French company Hervé Koubi perform their signature work, “What the Day Owes to the Night." The piece returns to Holy Cross, one of its first U.S. presenters in 2016, for a pair of intimate performances in the Boroughs Theatre.

Feb. 26 — Public lecture by Reginald Dwayne Betts, author of three acclaimed collections of poetry as well as a celebrated memoir. Betts is also a lawyer and the founder of Freedom Reads, a first-of-its-kind organization working to radically transform access to literature in prison.

March 11-16 — The center presents a performance installation, “Cultural Exchange Rate,” by the Lebanese artist Tania El Khoury, whose live art engages audiences in close encounters with narratives drawn from the political realities of borders, displacement, and state violence.

March 14 — Rhiannon Giddens will perform selections from her first album of entirely original songs, “You’re the One,” alongside other work from her expansive repertoire.   In the spring of 2023, the Prior Performing Arts Center hosted a sneak peek of her opera “Omar”with the Boston Lyric Opera shortly before its sold-out Boston run and the announcement of its Pulitzer Prize win.

April 6 — The season closes with “The Wanderer’s Tethering,” a new work commissioned by the Boston Lyric Opera which unites Boston Poet Laureate Porsha Olayiwola and Boston-based composer Mason Bynes.

Season tickets go on sale on August 17 at priorperformingartscenter.org.

The Prior Performing Arts Center will also have community collaborations with groups such as Broadway In Worcester, and hold dozens of student performances and exhibitions throughout the year by Holy Cross’ Music, Theatre & Dance, and Visual Art departments. It will additionally host several visiting artists in the “Working Writers” reading series produced by the Creative Writing Program.

The center is also now home to the College’s Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Art Gallery, which has relocated from O’Kane Hall. The Cantor will host a variety of interdisciplinary exhibits in 2023-2024, beginning with “Always Be Around: Corita Kent, Community, and Pedagogy,” which features the work of pop artist, educator and social justice advocate Sister Corita Kent (1918-1986). The exhibition will be on view from Oct. 2, through Dec. 15.

The 84,000-square-foot, $110-million facility is named for lead donor and alumnus Cornelius B. Prior, Jr. ’56, whose cornerstone contribution represents Holy Cross’s largest gift in support of the arts.

For more information, visit https://priorperformingartscenter.holycross.edu.

This article has been edited to correct the date of the Rhiannon Giddens concert.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Prior Performing Arts Center at Holy Cross announces artists series