Jazz, Brits but no pacemakers, please

Manfred Eicher, the founder of the ECM record label, will be artist in residence in 2004-05 at UCLA Live, curating a monthlong March festival, “Elective Affinities,” featuring performances by the label’s jazz artists.

The UCLA Live season also will feature the West Coast debuts of the groundbreaking British theater companies Cheek by Jowl and the Royal Court, and Matthew Bourne’s “Nutcracker!” in the longest run ever of a single production at Royce Hall, which will be feted with a 75th birthday celebration.

The season will include a new family series and a total of 138 performances of 66 events -- down slightly from 145 performances of 74 events in the 2003-04 season, although the budget is expected to remain about the same, at about $6 million to $7 million.

UCLA Live Director David Sefton said the British company Cheek by Jowl, which will bring a modern-dress “Othello” to UCLA’s Freud Playhouse, presents contemporary Shakespeare that’s comparable in quality to the “Twelfth Night” that the Globe Theatre brought to UCLA last year.

The Royal Court, for decades a leading center of new British drama, will present the West Coast premiere of “4:48 Psychosis,” by the late Sarah Kane. Also in the theater lineup are Nicaragua’s El Teatro Justo Rufino Garay, New York-based hip-hopper Will Power, and Mikhail Baryshnikov in Georgian director Rezo Gabriadze’s “Forbidden Christmas or the Doctor and the Patient,” which Sefton said is “loosely about Hollywood.”

A local dance company, osseus labyrint, will present what Sefton called its first theatrical production, “Modern Prometheus, LLC,” in collaboration with electromechanical installation artist Barry Schwartz (aka Dr. Pank) at an off-campus sound stage in either Marina del Rey or Hollywood. Because of “electromagnetic elements” in the production, people with pacemakers are advised to stay away -- the first time that Sefton has ever had to issue such an advisory, he said.

The dance series will include Belgian choreographer Wim Vandekeybus and his company Ultima Vez, Ballet Preljocaj, the U.S. premiere of “Nemesis” by the British Random Dance Company, Ballet Flamenco Sara Baras and a project by Italian choreographer Emio Greco and Dutch theater director Pieter C. Scholten.

In the classical music series, Bang on a Can All-Stars will explore the Philip Glass oeuvre. Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax will join forces for an all-Beethoven program. The China Philharmonic will make its U.S. debut, with pianist Lang Lang. Kent Nagano will direct the American Youth Symphony in “Manzanar: An American Story,” with Philip Kan Gotanda’s text narrated by George Takei.

Sefton’s mix-and-match style is evident in a world music concert by British pop singer Jane Birkin and the Algerian folk Group Djam Fam, paying tribute to the songs of Birkin’s late former husband Serge Gainsbourg. But much of the world music category is Latino, with such names as Caetano Veloso, Lila Downs, Eva Ayllon and Los Lobos. The same series also includes two movement-oriented productions: the U.S. premiere of “Gods, Goddesses and Ancestors” by Masked Rituals of Kerala, India, and a program devoted to “Sufi Liturgy of the Great Umayyad Mosque.”

“A John Waters Christmas” is on the list of spoken word events, as are David Mamet, Danny Hoch and Nikki Giovanni.

Among the events in the eclectic AWOL (Artists Without Limits) series are a new work from Laurie Anderson and a screening of the 1927 classic film “Sunrise” with a score performed by the band Lambchop.

The new Design for Sharing family series includes performances by Diavolo Dance Theater, former Del Fuegos leader Dan Zanes, organist Christoph Bull accompanying Buster Keaton’s “The General” and the Bay Area’s Tin Hat Trio accompanying vintage work by Russian animator Ladislaw Starewicz.