Openings: Synchronicity at Bard SummerScape

Bard opened its seventh annual SummerScape Festival on Saturday, July 11, with a gala dinner in the Spiegeltent (left) and a performance of Lucinda Child's 1979 Dance, a landmark collaboration with composer Philip Glass and artist Sol LeWitt, who made the black-and-white movie that is projected onto a scrim so that live dancers and filmed dancers overlap. It's emblematic of the the works produced at the Frank Gehery-designed Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts whose mission is to "inspire risk-taking performances and provocative programs."  The same ethos applies to the summer-only Spiegeltent across the lawn, which hosts cabaret, dance parties and avant-garde performances now through August 20.

Bard College president Leon Botsein and Debra Pemstein, vice president for development and alumni/ae affairs; Diana Hirsch Friedman, class of '68, with artist Dean Vallas.

Grraphic designer Rafael Weil with Paul Rogers; Diana & Fabrice Lecomte.

Artist Ramon Lascano with Toni Sosnoff, co-chair of the gala and a member of the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts Advisory Board.

Gloria Fox and Monique Segarra, who teaches environmental policy at Bard; Thaddeus Strassberger, who is directing the 19th century French opera Les Huguenots at Bard Summerscape, with costume designer Mattie Ullrich.

Mark McDonald, the modern design expert who has a shop in Hudson, and Dwayne Resnick.

The writer Susan Orlean with her husband, John Gillespie Jr.; Spiegeltent maestro Nik Quaife with Maureen Missner of Paper Trail in Rhinebeck.

The Spiegeltent hosts performances, dance parties, and cabaret with drinks and dining through August 20.