Scott Ordway

 
Proposal for New Work: SQUARES [working title]

Choreography by Matthew Neenan
Music by Scott Ordway

16 dancers
20–30 minutes

Amplified vocal ensemble with synthesizers

2025–2026 season or later

OVERVIEW

Emerging from the pandemic, we find ourselves longing for connection, togetherness, collaboration, and cooperation.

Inspired by the beauty and the power of organized groups of people, we imagine a new work of dance theater which creates a visual language of highly ordered, inorganic shapes: lines, squares, triangles, and rectangles. It’s a celebration of form, of aesthetic, and of the power of togetherness.

At the same time, the piece is a visual exploration of the ways in which unremarkable individual behavior becomes remarkable when replicated at group scale. It’s a piece about the things we can only do together.

DESIGN

This aesthetic is reflected in all levels of the production. The costumes rely on solid colors and clean lines. The lighting and scenic design is inspired by artists such as Agnes Martin, Anne Truitt, Dan Flavin, and Sol LeWitt. The slides below show a few visual artists whose work we will look to for inspiration.

MUSIC

A new, pop-inspired minimalist score by Scott Ordway features a small, amplified vocal ensemble accompanied by keyboards and synthesizers. Capable of sparse, delicate gestures as well as warm, soaring waves of sound, this pairing represents a blend of the organic and the inorganic, the power of the collective, and the joy of pure sonority.

We envision a collaboration with The Crossing, Variant6, or one of several other Philadelphia-based vocal ensembles.

Rather than traditional acoustic instruments, we will accompany the vocal ensemble (who will sing using microphones) with a range of pop-influenced keyboards and synthesizers. These short samples show some of the sounds with which we will support and accompany the voices.

ABOUT THE COMPOSER

SCOTT ORDWAY (b. 1984, California) is an American composer and multimedia artist whose widely acclaimed music and mixed-media projects have been called “exquisite” (New York Times) and “arresting” (Gramophone), “hypnotic” (BBC) and “a marvel” (Philadelphia Inquirer). His works are presented on major concert stages around the world with recent and upcoming performances at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Wigmore Hall, Hong Kong City Hall Theater, Bing Concert Hall of Stanford University, and the Beijing Modern, Hong Kong Arts, Bang on a Can, and Aspen Music Festivals.

Drawing on his deep interest in literature, languages, and the humanities, Ordway’s remarkably diverse works often fuse his music with text (frequently his own), video, and photography to explore an eclectic array of contemporary themes including ecology, religion and philosophy, and the landscape and culture of the American West. In 2023, he presented his first solo photography exhibition at the Kunstverein Familie Montez in Frankfurt am Main with an upcoming solo show at Boston’s Laconia Gallery in 2025.

Recent projects include The End of Rain, a multimedia symphony for Roomful of Teeth and the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music; The Outer Edge of Youth, a choral opera for The Thirteen; The Clearing and the Forest, an evening-length theater of music for SOLI Chamber Ensemble; and Nineteen Movements for Unaccompanied Cello, a program-length collection of works for Grammy-winning Canadian cellist Arlen Hlusko.

Hailed as “an American response to Sibelius” by the Boston Globe, his music has been performed by the Hong Kong, Buffalo, and Colorado Springs Philharmonics; Tucson Symphony; vocal ensembles Roomful of Teeth, Lorelei, and The Thirteen; and Grammy-winning soloists including Sasha Cooke and Arlen Hlusko, among many others.

His work is supported by numerous awards, fellowships, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, NewMusicUSA, the American Composers Orchestra, Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, American Music Center, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, American Composers Forum, and American Opera Projects. A recipient of the Tuttle Creative Residency Award from Haverford College’s Hurford Center for the Arts and Humanities, he has also been invited for residencies at Copland House, Visby International Center for Composers (Sweden), Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts (WY), Willapa Bay AiR (WA), and Hambidge Center for Creative Arts & Sciences, where he was a Distinguished Fellow.

Scott is Associate Professor and Head of Music Composition at Rutgers University where he teaches courses on music, landscape, and interdisciplinary collaboration.