Rhythmic Circus

Chautauqua Institution is proud to announce the program lineup for Week Five of its 2017 season. The week, which begins today and concludes July 29, features presentations by renowned guests such as journalist Linda Greenhouse, law professor Jeffrey Rosen, the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson, former solicitor general Theodore B. Olson, author Paul Beatty and singer Rhiannon Giddens.

Chautauqua Institution’s nine-week summer season features morning and afternoon lectures focusing on weekly cultural themes. The morning lecture series will take place at 10:45 a.m. Monday through Friday in the Amphitheater. Titled “The Supreme Court: At a Tipping Point?” the Week Five theme explores the future of the Supreme Court following the appointment recently of one new justice and several more transitions expected in the coming years.

The Interfaith Lecture Series, at 2 p.m. weekdays in the Hall of Philosophy, also revolves around the theme of the U.S. Supreme Court. Titled “The Supreme Court and Religious Communities: Holding America Accountable?” this week’s Interfaith Lecture Theme explores the way in which these religious and civil institutions inform the nation’s moral compass and how the country’s social conscience is fairing.

The Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli will serve as the ecumenical guest chaplain for the week. In 2014, Rev. Gaines-Cirelli became the first woman to serve as senior pastor of the historic Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, D.C. For more than 20 years as a pastor-theologian, her ministry has encouraged spiritual growth and engaged discipleship — emphasizing radical hospitality, shared ministry, spiritual practices and solidarity with the poor and oppressed.

Monday

Morning: Linda Greenhouse is the Knight Distinguished Journalist in Residence and Joseph Goldstein Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School, and the former Supreme Court reporter for The New York Times, a beat she held from 1978 to 2008. During her 40-year career at the Times, she received several major journalism awards, including the Pulitzer Prize in 1998 and the Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism from Harvard University’s Kennedy School in 2004. Greenhouse is the author of “Becoming Justice Blackmun: Harry Blackmun’s Supreme Court Journey” and “The U.S. Supreme Court: A Very Short Introduction.”

Afternoon: The Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush is the senior vice president and editor of Voices at Auburn Seminary. From 2009 to 2015, he was the executive editor of global spirituality and religion for The Huffington Post’s Religion section, and formerly served as editor for the website Beliefnet. From 2003 to 2011, Raushenbush served as associate dean of Religious Life and the Chapel at Princeton University, and as President of the Association of College and University Religious Affairs (ACURA) from 2009-2011. He is co-founder with Wolfgang F. Danspeckgruber of PORDIR, the Program of Religion, Diplomacy, and International Relations at the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination at Princeton University.

Tuesday

Morning: Annette Gordon-Reed is the Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History at Harvard Law School and the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute. A renowned law professor and scholar of American history, Gordon-Reed has taught at the New York Law School and at Rutgers. She has published six books, among them “The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family,” which won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize in history and the National Book Award for nonfiction. “The Hemingses of Monticello” was honored as a Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle selection in 2009. Her most recent book is “The Most Blessed of Patriarchs: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of Imagination,” co-written with Peter S. Onuf.

Afternoon: Melissa Rogers is a nonresident senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution. She recently served as special assistant to the president and executive director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships during the Obama administration. She previously served as chair of the inaugural Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Rogers’ area of expertise includes the First Amendment’s religion clauses, religion in American public life and the interplay of religion, policy and politics. She co-authored a casebook on religion and law for Baylor University Press, “Religious Freedom and the Supreme Court.”

Wednesday

Morning: Jeffrey Rosen is the president and chief executive officer of the National Constitution Center, the only institution in the United States chartered by Congress “to disseminate information about the United States Constitution on a non-partisan basis.” He is also a professor at the George Washington University Law School, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributing editor for The Atlantic. Rosen is the author of “Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet” and “The Most Democratic Branch: How the Courts Serve America.”

Afternoon: The Rev. Gene Robinson was elected episcopal bishop of New Hampshire in 2003, becoming the first openly gay and partnered priest to be elected bishop in historic Christendom. Since his retirement in early 2013, Robinson has been serving as a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank in Washington, D.C., speaking and writing on national and international LGBT issues, race, poverty and immigration reform. He has been a vocal advocate for the transgender community, and in 2016 published “Transgender Welcome: A Bishop Makes the Case for Affirmation,” using scripture and theology to argue for the full inclusion of transgender people in the life of the church/synagogue and in American society. He is the incoming vice president and senior pastor of Chautauqua Institution.

Thursday

Morning: Akhil Reed Amar is the Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, where he teaches constitutional law in both Yale College and Yale Law School.

He joined the Yale faculty in 1985 at the age of 26. Before that, Amar clerked for then-Judge (now Justice) Stephen Breyer. In various comprehensive surveys of judicial citations and/or scholarly citations, he invariably ranks among America’s five most-cited legal scholars under the age of 60. Amar is the author of dozens of law-review articles and several books, including “The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction” which won the Yale University Press Governors’ Award) and “America’s Constitution; A Biography,” which won the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award.

Afternoon: The Rev. Jacqui Lewis is senior minister at Middle Collegiate Church in New York City, where she leads its 1,000-member congregation. She is the first woman and the first African-American to be called a senior minister in the historic Collegiate Churches of New York, founded in 1628. Rev. Lewis has taught countless congregations throughout the United States and in South Africa how to build multiracial and multicultural congregations. Believing faith communities can lead the way to racial reconciliation, she co-founded a national conference, “Revolutionary Love,” to teach activists and faith leaders how to advocate for racial justice in their communities and build multicultural constituencies. Lewis has hosted “Just Faith,” an on-demand television program on MSNBC’s website.

Friday

Morning: Theodore B. Olson was solicitor general of the United States from 2001 to 2004; from 1981 to 1984, he was assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice. Selected by Time magazine in 2010 as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, Olson has argued 62 cases in the Supreme Court, including the two Bush v. Gore cases arising out of the 2000 presidential election, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and Hollingsworth v. Perry, the case upholding the overturning of California’s Proposition 8, banning same-sex marriages.

Afternoon: Alan Mittleman holds the Aaron Rabinowitz and Simon H. Rifkind Chair in Jewish Philosophy at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City. From 2000 to 2004, he served as director of a major research project initiated by the Pew Charitable Trusts, “Jews and the American Public Square.” As an active participant in interfaith dialogue, Mittleman was part of leadership delegations that met with Pope John Paul II and with Pope Benedict XVI. During the bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution, he spoke on the meaning of religious liberty for American Jews in the chambers of the U.S. Senate. Mittleman is the author of six books, most recently “Human Nature and Jewish Thought: Judaism’s Case for Why Persons Matter.”

Additional Lectures

3:30 p.m., Thursday, Hall of Philosophy: Winner of the 2016 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, novelist and poet Paul Beatty is among the funniest and most fearless writers in contemporary fiction. In a voice both acerbic and expansive, he creates unforgettable characters and haunting settings that strike at the very heart of race, pop culture and language in America. Beatty visits Chautauqua this week to discuss his book “The Sellout,” the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle selection of the week. For his CLSC presentation, Beatty will be interviewed by Ron Charles, editor of The Washington Post’s “Book World.”

Amphitheater Entertainment

Aside from the daily lectures, Week Five features a variety of evening entertainment programs at the Amphitheater.

The Chautauqua Festival Dancers perform with the Music School Festival Orchestra at 8:15 p.m. Monday. Music Director Timothy Muffitt serves as the conductor. As part of a series of Community Appreciation Nights, tickets are $20.

The Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra’s “Cuban Night” takes place Tuesday at 8:15 p.m. Daiana GarcÌa serves as the conductor and Aldo Lopez-Gavilan as the solo pianist. The evening’s program features Lopez-Gavilan’s “Variaciones con Tema,” “Luciernagas,” “Viernes de Ciudad” and “Pan con Timba.” Tickets are $43.

With a trunk full of tap shoes, funky costumes and a big brass band, Rhythmic Circus will hit the road and perform at Chautauqua at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday. Bring the whole family to join this joyous parade of genre-hopping music and hard-hitting percussive dance. Tickets are $20.

The Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra’s performance “Romanticism to Tchaikovsky’s ‘Pathetique'” takes place Thursday at 8:15 p.m. Marcelo Lehninger serves as the conductor and Nikita Mndoyants as the solo pianist. The evening’s program features Gioachino Rossini’s Overture from L’Italiana in Algeri, Franz Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 in B minor, op. 74, “Pathetique.” Tickets are $43. A pre-performance lecture will take place at 6:45 p.m. in Hurlbut Sanctuary.

Rhiannon Giddens, co-founder of the Grammy Award-winning string band Carolina Chocolate drops, will perform at 8:15 p.m., Friday. Now a solo artist, Giddens began gaining recognition when she stole the show at the T Bone Burnett-produced “Another Day, Another Time” concert at New York City’s Town Hall in 2013. The elegant bearing, prodigious voice and fierce spirit that brought the audience to its feet that night is evident in Giddens’ album Tomorrow Is My Turn, which masterfully blends American musical genres like gospel, jazz, blues and country, and her other works. Tickets are $20.

Alternative Entertainment Options

Chautauqua Theater Company stages productions of “Detroit ’67” at 2:15 p.m. today in Bratton Theater. Additional productions will be held at various times throughout the week. Written by Dominique Morisseau, a 2016 Obie Award Winner and the 2014 recipient of the Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History, this moving, sharp-eyed drama filled with the iconic music of the time, explores the resilience of one family’s — and one American city’s — survival. Tickets are $35.

The Pablo Ziegler JazzTango Trio performs at 4 p.m. Monday in Elizabeth S. Lenna Hall. Tango maestro Pablo Ziegler — the Buenos Aires-born, Grammy Award-winning pianist and composer who helped shape the modern tango — delivers intimate arrangements of his essential repertoire, offering this raw, elemental concert program. As one the most important living interpreters of new tango, a concert by Pablo Ziegler offers a chance to witness a living history of this vital musical tradition. Zeigler performs with Hector Del Curto on bandoneon and Claudio Ragazzi on guitar.

The Chautauqua Opera Company stages Composer Philip Glass and Poet Alan Ginsberg’s “Hydrogen Jukebox” on Thursday and Tuesday, Aug. 1, at 4 p.m. in Norton Hall. Experience the collaboration of two of America’s most revolutionary artists in this truly unique chamber opera. Hydrogen Jukebox paints a portrait of America approaching the end of the millennium, touching on political and social issues that are more timely than ever. Tickets are $17.

The Chautauqua Opera Company also begins its production of “Don Pasquale” this week, staging the opera on Friday and Monday, July 31, at 7:30 p.m. in Norton Hall. A comic opera, the work stars aging bachelor Don Pasquale as he pursues the young, spirited Norina. Don’t miss Gaetano Donizetti and Giovanni Ruffini’s hilarious work of love and deception. Tickets are $15-52. Youth tickets are available for $10 each. An operalogue featuring General and Artistic Director Steven Osgood will take place at 5 p.m.

Gate Pass Information

Day tickets are available for purchase at the Main Gate Welcome Center Ticket Office on the day of your visit. Morning tickets grant visitors access to the grounds from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. for $24. Afternoon tickets grant access from noon-8 p.m. for $17. Combined morning/afternoon passes allow access from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. and cost $41. Evening passes grant access from 4 p.m. to midnight with the cost varying based on the evening entertainment. For tickets and information, visit chqtickets.com or call 716-357-6250.