Mission and History
Active, intrepid and ever-evolving, UCLA Live is powered by the energy, attitude and imagination of today’s most extraordinary artists.
Perched on the Western edge of North America in Los Angeles, a city where an exciting new modernity is being forged, UCLA Live is one of the most unique and significant presenters and producers of performing arts in the country. At the vanguard of dance, music, spoken word, and experimental theater, the program is unrivaled in its breadth and uncommon mix of genres—presenting a kaleidoscope of more than 200 performances each year to more than 150,000 audience members. UCLA Live’s programs occur in a number of venues on UCLA’s campus and beyond, including the historic Royce Hall, renowned for its acoustic excellence and tremendous sightlines.
Like the city that feeds it, UCLA Live promotes an aesthetic of fusion and diversity—in which concert hall divas, world-class chamber orchestras and hip-hop dancers share the season—and sometimes the stage—with post-modern dancers, world music superstars, contemporary storytellers, and rock 'n' roll mavericks. The local and the global, the ancient and the modern form symbiotic relationships, in which the inner-city infuses Western European traditions with modern soul; and the spirit of the avant-garde radiates from dark stages to the serpentine freeways, suburban byways, and breezy waters of the Pacific.
An incubator of new ideas, UCLA Live is dedicated to radical, genre-bending collaborations and the development of new work. At the crux of this mission is the annual Artist in Residence initiative, featuring internationally-acclaimed artists whose works are characterized by an unrelenting curiosity and dazzling originality. Inaugurated in 2001 by pop music icon Elvis Costello, followed by the virtuosic Kronos Quartet in the 2002-03 season, and the wildly eclectic producer Hal Willner in 2003-04, this yearlong program deepens UCLA Live’s commitment to the creative process by nurturing the development of new works and collaborative endeavors.
A presenter of the same stature as Brooklyn Academy of Music and Lincoln Center, and the country’s largest and most outstanding university-based performing arts presenter, UCLA Live has commissioned major works by Laurie Anderson, Pina Bausch, Philip Glass, Bill T. Jones, Kronos Quartet, Miami City Ballet, and Robert Wilson, among many others.
