Ice Theatre of New York performed at 85th Birthday Celebration for Philip Glass at The Rink at Rockefeller

Ice Theatre of New York (ITNY) performed at the 85th birthday celebration for legendary American composer and pianist Philip Glass at The Rink at Rockefeller on Monday, January 31, 2022, presented by Rockefeller Center and Pomegranate Arts. The evening of festivities on and around The Rink included a party hosted by multimedia artist and creative pioneer Laurie Anderson, and an afterparty beginning DJ’d by Anderson. https://www.icetheatre.org/

At the top of the evening, Ice Theatre of New York Ensemble performed an Edge Class piece, set by company member Liz Yoshiko Schmidt, to “Aguas da Amazonia” by Philip Glass. The ensemble continued to skate atmospheric, freeform elements alongside the public throughout the evening.

“I am honored to have had my company involved with such an auspicious project as the celebration of composer Philip Glass’ 85th Birthday at the Rink at Rockefeller Center,” said Moira North, Founder and Artistic Director, Ice Theatre of New York. Laurie Anderson was the artistic director of the evening and we were thrilled to collaborate under her direction. I have loved Laurie’s work ever since hearing about her early violin performances while wearing ice skates with the blades frozen into a block of ice, where the performance ended when the ice had melted. The piece was entitled Duets on Ice. Genius!”

Philip’s Birthday happened to coincide with the 85th anniversary of The Rink, which began as a temporary skating pond at Rockefeller Center. ITNY has been fortunate to have performed at The Rink since its inaugural season in 1985.

About Ice Theatre of New York
Founded by Moira North, ITNY’s mission is to celebrate and advance dance on ice as a performance art. Through its performances in both traditional and site-specific venues, ITNY presents ice dance that helps to open one’s eyes to seeing skating in new and unexpected ways. ITNY was the very first ice dance company to receive dance program funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. www.icetheatre.org. For biographies on the ITNY Ensemble members, visit https://icetheatre.org/performers.html.

City Skate Pop-Up Concerts are supported, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature. ITNY is also supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council, and NYC Council Member Mark Levine and by Dance/NYC’S Coronavirus Dance Relief Fund. Additionally, ITNY receives funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, Lisa McGraw Figure Skating Foundation, the Will Sears Foundation, and its generous private patrons.

About Laurie Anderson
A Grammy Award-winning musician, performer, writer, and artist, Anderson has an international reputation as an artist who combines the traditions of the avant-garde with popular culture. Anderson’s theatrical works combine a variety of media, including performance, music, poetry, sculpture, opera, anthropological investigations, and linguistic games, to elicit emotional reactions. As a visual artist, Anderson is currently presented at the Hirshhorn Museum in the largest-ever solo exhibition of the artist’s work. She has been shown at the Guggenheim Museum, SoHo, and extensively in Europe, including the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. She has also released seven albums for Warner Brothers, including Big Science, featuring the song “O Superman,” which rose to No. 2 on the British pop charts. She is currently Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University.

About Pomegranate Arts
Pomegranate Arts is an independent production company based in New York City dedicated to the development of international performing arts projects. As a creative producing team, Pomegranate Arts works in close collaboration with contemporary artists and arts institutions to bring bold and ambitious artistic ideas to fruition. With a hands-on approach, Pomegranate creates unique structures and partnerships in all performance mediums. Whether creating a new work with established artists at the peak of their career or introducing the vision of a younger artist, Pomegranate specializes in producing provocative performance events of the highest quality. Pomegranate Arts has worked in close collaboration with Philip Glass since the company’s founding in 1998 and has produced his live works from the intimate Complete Piano Etudes to the Olivier Award winning 2012 production of Philip Glass and Robert Wilson’s opera Einstein on the Beach.

About Tishman Speyer (www.tishmanspeyer.com)
Tishman Speyer is a leading owner, developer, operator and investment manager of first-class real estate in 30 key markets across the United States, Europe, Asia and Latin America. We develop, build and manage premier office, residential and retail spaces for industry-leading tenants, as well as state-of-the-art life science centers through our Breakthrough Properties venture. With global vision, on-the-ground expertise and a personalized approach, we are unparalleled in our ability to foster innovation, quickly adapt to global and local trends and proactively anticipate our customers’ evolving needs. By focusing on health and wellness, enlightened placemaking and customer-focused initiatives such as our tenant amenities platform, ZO., and our flexible space and co-working brand, Studio, we tend not just to our physical buildings, but to the people who inhabit them on a daily basis. Since our inception in 1978, Tishman Speyer has acquired, developed, and operated 484 properties, totaling 219 million square feet, with a combined value of over $121 billion (U.S.). Our current portfolio includes such iconic assets as Rockefeller Center in New York City, The Springs in Shanghai, TaunusTurm in Frankfurt and the Mission Rock neighborhood currently being realized in San Francisco.