BY NICOLE CAVAZOS and CYNTHIA LEE
UCLA Today

David Sefton, director of UCLA Performing Arts, received confirmation several months ago that he was on the right track during a train trip through Europe.

While on a cultural tour with other presenters of performing arts from the United States, Sefton was proofreading what represented the culmination of many months of hard work: a thick UCLA Live brochure outlining the upcoming 2002-03 season, the first assembled entirely by him since his arrival to campus from London in winter, 2000.

Somewhere between Krakow and Warsaw, a fellow presenter asked to see the brochure. He thumbed through the 76 pages detailing 86 different events, the largest lineup of cultural events ever presented by UCLA Performing Arts. Looking over this profusion of local and global, ancient and new art forms of stunning breadth and depth from around the world, he told Sefton without equivocation: “This is the best season in the United States.”

In sharing this anecdote at a press conference, Sefton added with a smile: “I’m very uncomfortable blowing my own trumpet, but I’m very happy if somebody else does it for me.”

Judging from the enthusiastic advance buzz in the entertainment press about the new season, Sefton has plenty to boast about. In his search to bring to L.A. audiences important cultural pieces that were embraced by audiences in Europe and the East Coast but for some reason weren’t migrating to the West Coast, he said, “We stepped outside the box ... and created a season that’s completely different.”

The UCLA Live guide lists an eclectic array of world-class artists, a mix of living legends, provocateurs, traditional favorites, groundbreaking artists and daring world premieres: Yo-Yo Ma in the “Silk Road Project.” The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson. The 50th anniversary celebration of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. The Dave Holland Big Band. The Bach Collegium Japan. The Kronos Quartet, this year’s Artist in Residence, opening the season Sept. 13. And the return of “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” billed as L.A.’s most revolutionary music festival and curated this year by Matt Groening, creator of “The Simpsons.”

Sefton’s jewel-in-the-crown is the International Theatre Festival, a first for UCLA — and for the nation.

“This is the first new major theater festival in this country in this century,” Sefton said.

Audiences will see the only U.S. performance outside of New York of “Woyzeck,” Georg Buchner’s nightmarish fable-turned-musical by visionary theater director Robert Wilson, American rock poet Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan. It will be one of eight productions to be presented by seven companies.

Another festival production, the “Junebug Symphony,” will feature acrobats, contortionists, roller-skating violinists, jugglers and fantastical beasts, all set to operatic jazz. This three-ring concoction is being brought to UCLA by James Thierree, grandson of Charlie Chaplin and great-grandson of Eugene O’Neill.

In modern dance, Sefton has expanded this season’s roster with a new addition, the Freud Dance Series, featuring a strong lineup that includes the East/West fusion of Yin Mei Dance performing “/Asunder,” Obie Award-winning Big Dance Theater in “Shunkin” and the pioneers of hip-hop dance, Rennie Harris Puremovement in “Facing Mekka.”

“I’m incredibly excited about the coming season,” said Sefton. “I believe we’ve come up with a year that encompasses the strongest work of quality in the classical and traditional fields with a genuinely groundbreaking series of new dance and theater. UCLA has every reason to celebrate its involvement with a truly great season.”

For the latest information, go to www.uclalive.com. To order tickets and receive a UCLA Live season brochure, call the UCLA Central Ticket Office at (310) 825-2101.