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AMOC's Run AMOC Festival: Pushing Boundaries of Modern Opera and Dance

The Run AMOC Festival, presented by the American Modern Opera Company, is set to captivate audiences at Lincoln Center this July and beyond. Featuring a slate of New York premieres, this festival brings together dance, music, and opera in innovative collaborations with renowned artists like Matthew Aucoin, and Peter Sellars. From the lyrical exploration of 'Music for New Bodies' to the whimsical narrative of 'Rome is Falling,' each performance offers a unique artistic celebration that challenges and enriches the cultural landscape.

Jul 10, 2025
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1. “Dance in the Park” – Run AMOC
Enjoy the New York premiere of Dance in the Park, a tender, joyful, and fiercely experimental performance featuring dancers Julia Eichten and Bret Easterling. With music by Strauss and Juniper, this piece embraces phases, geographies, and dreams—glitching between dimensions to celebrate the evolution of movement.
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9 - 10 Jul, 2025
AMOC / American Modern Opera Company

New York City, NY · Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts

2. “Music for New Bodies” – Run AMOC
A New York premiere and first collaboration between AMOC* Co-Founder Matthew Aucoin and director Peter Sellars, this major new work is a “vocal symphony” with music by Aucoin, directed by Sellars, and a libretto based on poems by Jorie Graham, collaboratively assembled by Aucoin and Sellars.
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10 - 12 Jul, 2025
AMOC / American Modern Opera Company

New York City, NY · Lincoln Center

3. “The Cello Player” – Run AMOC
The Cello Player is a dance-music piece led by AMOC* dancer/choreographer Or Schraiber and AMOC* cellist Coleman Itzkoff that excavates the complexity of ancient relationships: the tortured conception of friendship as a messy amalgam of love, hatred, insecurity, and neediness. Each performer attempts to share their tales, the scarring curiosity of the unknown, and the haunting sensations that come as a consequence of their actions.
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Jul 12, 2025
AMOC / American Modern Opera Company

New York City, NY · Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts

4. “Rome Is Falling” – Run AMOC
AMOC* presents the New York premiere of Rome is Falling, conceived and composed by AMOC* bassist Doug Balliett. Rome is a zany lesson on the absurdity of what can happen when influential people lose power. In his ever-prescient, ever-joyful way, Balliett brings audiences of all ages on a musical journey through a world that includes lollipops, an absurd number of characters, and an emperor with a chicken fetish. Rome was one of the world’s great civilizations, yet, like all empires, it fell. Why and how? The story is a mixture of politics, betrayal, immigration, religion, climate, pandemic, natural disaster, xenophobia, and bad luck–so much of what makes us human and that we continue to face today.
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Jul 13, 2025
AMOC / American Modern Opera Company

New York City, NY · Lincoln Center

5. “the echoing of tenses” – Run AMOC
AMOC* presents Anthony Cheung’s the echoing of tenses, a large-scale song cycle for tenor, violin, piano/keyboard, and pre-recorded sounds, that sets the texts of seven prominent, intergenerational Asian-American poets. These poets perform their words live within the production, sharing reflections on memory, cultural and personal identity, family, migration, and loss. the echoing of tenses was conceived for the company by AMOC* violinist Miranda Cuckson and serves as the epic conclusion to the Run AMOC* Festival at Lincoln Center, the American Modern Opera Company’s most significant artistic endeavor to date with a bold slate of opera, dance, and music.
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Jul 16, 2025
AMOC / American Modern Opera Company

New York City, NY · Lincoln Center

6. “Music for New Bodies” at Tanglewood
Matthew Aucoin’s Music for New Bodies (2024) is an uncategorizable work of music-theater: part opera, part song cycle, part vocal symphony. Based on poetry by Jorie Graham, the piece is a portrait of our moment in history as seen through the eyes of a cancer patient undergoing a drastic medical procedure. As the patient experiences the transformation of her own body, she meditates on questions that range from the personal to the cosmic: in a time when life is more and more virtual, what does it mean to have a body? And above all, after our species has poisoned the planet with uncountable toxins, can we still listen to what the earth has to tell us?
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Aug 7, 2025
AMOC / American Modern Opera Company

Lenox, MA · Tanglewood Music Center

7. “Julius Eastman: A Power Greater Than” at the Barbican
Barbican artist-in-residence Davóne Tines performs a multidisciplinary all-Julius Eastman program curated by Seth Parker Woods, alongside AMOC* & Kyle Marshall Dance Company.
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Oct 28, 2025
AMOC / American Modern Opera Company

London · Barbican Centre

8. “Music for New Bodies” at Meany Center
Matthew Aucoin’s Music for New Bodies (2024) is an uncategorizable work of music-theater: part opera, part song cycle, part vocal symphony. Based on poetry by Jorie Graham, the piece is a portrait of our moment in history as seen through the eyes of a cancer patient undergoing a drastic medical procedure. As the patient experiences the transformation of her own body, she meditates on questions that range from the personal to the cosmic: in a time when life is more and more virtual, what does it mean to have a body? And above all, after our species has poisoned the planet with uncountable toxins, can we still listen to what the earth has to tell us?
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Nov 1, 2025
AMOC / American Modern Opera Company

Seattle, WA · Katharyn Alvord Gerlich Theater

9. “The Seasons” at Opera Philadelphia
You could say Vivaldi had a kind of synesthesia when writing The Four Seasons. What does being cold feel and sound like? MacArthur Award-winning playwright and librettist Sarah Ruhl joins Anthony Roth Costanzo to co-conceive a tapestry of Vivaldi’s music, telling an original story about a world in which the seasons are completely out of order. Tony Award-winning set designer Mimi Lien collaborates with M.I.T. materials technologist Jack Forman to fuse art and science, bringing atmospheric events to the stage. Celebrated choreographer Pam Tanowitz creates a maelstrom of dance, director Zack Winokur helms the production, and Corrado Rovaris conducts the rapturous piece, which stars Costanzo.
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19 - 21 Dec, 2025
AMOC / American Modern Opera Company

Philadelphia, PA · Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts

10. “Canto Ostinato” – Cal Performances
A New York premiere and co-production between AMOC* and Sandbox Percussion, Dutch composer Simeon ten Holt’s Canto Ostinato feels like the long-lost cousin of beloved American Minimalist works like Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians or Terry Riley’s In C. Encountering it for the first time is like meeting an unknown relative—you’re struck by uncanny resemblances: the tilt of a nose, the rhythm of a laugh, echoes that stretch across time and space.
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Feb 22, 2026
AMOC / American Modern Opera Company

Berkeley, CA · University of California, Berkeley

Conclusion
The Run AMOC Festival exemplifies the transformative power of contemporary opera and dance, blending traditional narratives with modern themes and diverse artistic voices. Its performances at Lincoln Center, Tanglewood, and beyond are not just events; they are dialogues that invite audiences to reflect on complex issues of identity, humanity, and our shared future. With a commitment to innovation and collaboration, AMOC promises to leave a lasting impact on the world of performing arts, inspiring both creators and audiences to explore new dimensions of expression.
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2025 Artelize