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Brainstorm! Produce it Yourself: Touring from NYFA on Vimeo. Produce it Yourself: Tours
Part of the Brainstorm! series of lively discussions on the artist as producer
Produced by the Asian American Arts Alliance in collaboration with the New York Foundation for the Arts.
Hosted at Cobi’s Place, 158 W 48th Street
December 9, 2010
A lively discussion about a music and dance tour in the US and abroad, based on the case study of Gamelan Dharma Swara, represented by Andy McGraw (GDS Executive Director) and Vivian Fung (GDS musician and composer). Hear feedback and advice from discussants including Robert Browning, Executive and Artistic Director, World Music Institute;Tze Chun, Artistic Director, Tze Chun Dance Company; and Martin Vejarano, Artistic Director, La Cumbiamba eNeYé. Moderated by Rachel Cooper, Director of Cultural Programs and Performing Arts, Asia Society.
Bios:
Robert Browning, Executive and Artistic Director, World Music Institute
Born in Singapore, Robert Browning received his formal education in England where he majored both in engineering and the visual arts. For over six years, he lectured in Art Colleges and exhibited as a painter, sculptor and kinetic artist throughout the United Kingdom and Europe. He came to New York in 1974 where he co-founded the Alternative Center for International Arts, a non-profit exhibition center and performance space which later became known as the Alternative Museum. In 1985, Browning founded the World Music Institute, an organization dedicated to presenting the finest in traditional and contemporary music and dance from around the world. As executive and artistic director, he has presented and/or produced more than 1,300 concerts and festivals over the past nineteen years. With the help of a dedicated staff of nine he has built the World Music Institute into a flourishing organization with an annual budget of more than $2,700,000. In addition to presenting concerts, he has organized U.S. tours by both local and international ensembles and co-produced audio recordings and radio series of world music.
Rachel Cooper, Director of Cultural Programs and Performing Arts, Asia Society
Rachel Cooper has been at the Asia Society since 1993 and is the Director of Cultural Programs and Performing Arts. She has extensive experience in the presentation of traditional and contemporary Asian and Asian-American performing arts and the development of interdisciplinary programs. Ms. Cooper did her undergraduate and graduate work at UCLA in Ethnic Arts and Dance Ethnology. She lived in Indonesia for six years from 1983-89. She was awarded the 2006 Dawson Award for sustained achievement in performing arts programmatic excellence from the Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP), an 'Izzy' (Isadora Duncan) award for the Festival of Indonesia, a Rockefeller grant for choreography, and the Clifton F. Webb award for film. Ms. Cooper is an advisor for the National Dance Project and was the co-chair of the Arts Presenters annual conference in 2005 and 2006. She is the co-founder, former director, current board president of the San Francisco-based Balinese music and dance company, Gamelan Sekar Jaya, which has been presenting the arts of Bali in the United States since 1979.
Gamelan Dharma Swara, represented by Andy McGraw (GDS Executive Director) and Vivian Fung (GDS musician and composer)
An ensemble under the aegis of the 501(c)3 nonprofit organization Arts Indonesia, Gamelan Dharma Swara (GDS) is dedicated to the study, performance and creation of traditional and new works for Balinese gamelan. The ensemble is a coalition of master Balinese artists and leading American composers, musicians and dancers. In residence at the Indonesian Consulate in New York, Dharma Swara regularly performs for a wide and multicultural audience in the greater New York City area. GDS has collaborated with some of Indonesia’s leading artists and has played in the area’s top venues including: Lincoln Center, Asia Society, Japan Society, New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, Symphony Space, La MaMa, NYU, Columbia, Princeton, and Yale Universities. In 2010 the ensemble was invited to perform as the first non-Balinese group in the annual gong kebyar competitions at the Bali Arts Festival. Gamelan Dharma Swara has been featured in the Bali Post, the New York Times and NPR’s Weekend Edition.
Tze Chun, Artistic Director, Tze Chun Dance Company
New York choreographer Tze Chun creates and presents contemporary dance works that explore relevant themes such as identity, memory formation and the immigrant experience. She founded Tze Chun Dance Company (TCDC) in 2006. Chun is the recipient of a Brooklyn Arts Council Regrant, Puffin Foundation Artist Grant, NYFA BUILD Stability Grant, and a Field FAR Space Grant. Her work has been supported by the American Music Center (AMC) Live Music for Dance Grant as well as a JP Morgan Chase SOAR Grant of the Asian American Arts Alliance. It has been performed at Dance New Amsterdam, Dance Theater Workshop, The Flea Theater, The Tank Theater, The Brooklyn Lyceum, University Settlement, Merce Cunningham Studios, CSV Center, the 92nd Street Y and other venues across the city. In summer 2010, her company toured Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong, performing and holding master classes including workshops at the Guangdong Modern Dance Festival.
Martin Vejarano, Artistic Director, La Cumbiamba eNeYé
Martin Vejarano is a percussionist, arranger, and composer who founded the band La Cumbiamba eNeYé in 2000. Based in New York City, the band consists of a group of Colombian musicians and other musicians of diverse backgrounds who develop its sounds and influences from Colombia’s indigenous and mestiza cultures as well as African and European diasporas. The band explores Colombian musical styles of both Atlantic and Pacific coasts such as cumbia, puya, mapalé, and currulao. The band has performed and taught master classes on Colombian music in venues and festivals such as Summer Stage at Central Park, Lincoln Center Outdoors, and Princeton University. Martin also works as an instructor of Colombian music for the Center for Traditional Music and Dance and as a teaching artist for Learning through an Expanded Arts Program (LEAP), Society of the Educational Arts (SEA), and at New York City public schools.
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