Conference Agenda
The Online Program of events for the 2026 AMS Annual Meeting appears below. This program is subject to change. The final program will be published in early November.
Use the "Filter by Track or Type of Session" or "Filter by Session Topic" dropdown to limit results by type. Some of the sessions are also color-coded: purple indicates performances, grey indicates paper forums, and orange indicates sessions which have been organized by one of the regional associations of IMS (ARLAC or IMSEA). (Sessions which are both IMS sessions and performances are only colored orange.)
Use the search bar to search by name or title of paper/session. Note that this search bar does not search by keyword.
Click on the session name for a detailed view (with participant names and abstracts).
Please note that all times are shown in the time zone of the conference. The current conference time is: 1st Sept 2026, 02:59:01am EDT
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Daily Overview |
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Immersive Arts: Adapting Works for Dance Session Chair: Wayne Heisler, The College of New Jersey | |
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Johann Sebastian Bach’s Saint John Passion as Opera: Sasha Waltz’s Contemporary Gesamtkunstwerk University of Massachusetts Amherst Sasha Waltz’s version of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Saint John Passion, BWV 245, which premiered on March 22, 2024, in Salzburg, melded props, costumes, visual art, electronic music interpolations, chorus, singers, dancers, and musicians to present her conception of the oratorio as an operatic Gesamtkunstwerk. Beginning with nude dancers at sewing machines making white gowns and ending with the dancers and choral singers in white gowns hugging on a bare stage, the clothes assume symbolic meaning throughout the piece. Singers, choral members, and instrumentalists join in gesturing, singing, or musicking on and off stage. Relying on themes drawn from the passion, such as violence, oppression, truth, unity, and hope, Waltz added her own abstract subtext with relevance for contemporary audiences. Even so, the musical interpretation, directed by Leonardo García-Alarcón, is historically informed. This article offers the first detailed analysis of Waltz’s choreography of Bach’s Saint John Passion. It shows that Waltz joined other artists in the twenty-first century in re-envisioning the Gesamtkunstwerk. Yet while many Postmodern Gesamtkunstwerks juxtapose a multiplicity of art forms, Waltz’s piece also contains an artistic synthesis among the music, dance, and poetry. In addition, Waltz introduces explicit references to visual arts, such as when choreography becomes sculptural or architectural. Waltz thus reconceives of the twenty-first century Gesamtkunstwerk as both multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary. Her approach offers a unique solution to performing Bach that not only considers authorial intent with respect to interpreting the music, but also antihistoricist means of presenting diverse disciplines as one unified body. In the process of comparing this setting to other Saint John Passion stagings and positioning it within a twenty-first century revival of the concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, the article adds to recent scholarship about staged versions of Bach’s passions and to a broader range of scholarship about the recent reception of Bach’s music, choreomusicology, and the Gesamtkunstwerk concept in the twenty-first century. | |