Helen Wicks Works | Alive & Well Productions - (SF International Arts Festival)

HELEN WICKS WORKS: Radio Vision is a solo by choreographer and performer Helen Wicks. The piece is an ode to the lineage of music composition teacher Nadia Boulanger and the origins of broadcast television 100 years ago. Radio Vision weaves together notes by the influential Boulanger and her students like Igor Stravinsky, the legendary composer Quincy Jones, Aaron Copland, Phillip Glass, and more.

Radio Vision uses circus-informed dance to synthesize Wicks’ 2018 conversation with Quincy Jones and her ongoing research on her great-grandfather, Joe Gershenson, who was Universal’s former Music Supervisor. Gershenson advocated for and hired Jones in his first Hollywood film score in 1964.

ALIVE & WELL PRODUCTIONS: Composed by Kian Ravaei and choreographed by Annie Kahane, The Four Seasons of Hamadan is a duet for live violinist and dancer that interweaves Persian and Jewish music and dance traditions to express intercultural harmony. Premiered in February, 2025 (Los Angeles), this project blends folkloric forms from the artists’ respective heritages and reimagines that material through a contemporary lens. 

The Four Seasons of Hamadan is performed by Yvette Holzwarth (violin) and Kate Myers (dancer), and was funded by a grant from The New Music USA.