J2RC Dances presents “Rigor & Risk”, a winter afternoon salon experience featuring music, literature, art, and dance, in the style of French salons from the 17th and 18th centuries, often held in the reception rooms of large houses. Audience members would enjoy arts presentations, share ideas, and engage in discussion with artists. Honoring this tradition, our salon explores two challenging parallel aspects of the creative process. Discipline and labor (rigor), essential to creating meaningful art, necessarily intersect with the vulnerability (risk) implicit in performing and presenting this work to an audience. In the spirit of the intimate and informal salon setting, generous arts patrons will host the gathering in their private venues.

National Book Award winner Julia Glass will read from a novel in progress and share passages from other works. Pianist Eleanor Ruggiero Gilbert will play Bela Bartok’s demanding “Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm” while visual artist Rhonda Miller paints live. All these art forms will occur in concert with the choreography of artistic director Jennifer Uhl as danced by Ameia Mikula-Noble. Hopefully the juxtaposition of these diverse creative expressions will stimulate questions from audience members in conversations with the artists themselves, held at intervals between the prelude, interlude, and postlude sections of the presentation.

Saturday, February 7 & Sunday, February 8 at 3pm

Walter Jacob Architects

89 Front Street # 208

Marblehead (Limited street parking available)

Sunday, March 8 at 3pm

The Gertler Clark Foundation

15 Westcliff Road

Weston (Please park on Westcliff Road)