UCLA assistant professor of dance and choreography, Cheng-Chieh
Yu, remembers one of her first encounters with rice as a child. Her
mother told her that if she did not finish each grain of rice in
her bowl, the wasted grains would come back as blemishes on her
future husband’s face.
This anecdote is one of many personal stories shared between the
11 international artists of The Art of Rice Traveling Theater, who
will be performing their original work at a soon-to-be-determined
location at UCLA on Oct. 3. Drawing inspiration from rice on a
personal level in terms of physical and spiritual nourishment, the
theater also tackles issues on a global scale, using rice as a
metaphor for social, political and economic themes.
The simplicity of rice, being the staple of any Asian diet,
makes it the perfect subject to unite artists from different
countries that consume it.
The troupe includes modern and postmodern dancers Yu along with
Roko Kawai; Ettumanoor Parameswaran Kannan of the South Indian
Kathakali dance theater discipline; Balinese music, dance and
shadow puppetry artists; a Japanese-American taiko drummer; a
Burmese drum-circle composer; Chinese opera performer; and a
theater artist from the Dominican Republic.
“Making live performance art is not the same as writing a
book, giving a lecture or making a film,” said Judy Mitoma,
program director of UCLA’s Center for Intercultural
Performance, via telephone from Hawaii, the tour’s first
stop. “The artists are in the physical presence of the public
and communicate directly to them as performers.”
The idea of a traveling theater project was inspired by the
Fowler Museum exhibit, “The Art of Rice: Spirit and
Sustenance in Asia,” opening in October. Mitoma wanted to
complement the exhibit with a live performance aspect.
Since the forging of the Center for Intercultural Performance in
1995, Mitoma has been successful in her efforts to expose UCLA
students to the Asian arts of taiko drumming, Balinese shadow
puppetry and Chinese opera through the Asian Pacific Performance
Exchange, a residency program for international artists and
writers. The Art of Rice Traveling Theater presents a perfect
opportunity to unite each of these disciplines onto the same stage,
culminating in a celebration of cross-cultural fusion.
Yu learned to stretch her familiar boundaries of modern,
postmodern, Chinese opera and Tai Chi martial arts choreography
when she signed up to work with South Indian Kathakali dancer
Kannan. The ancient dance form of Kathakali is typically performed
in an intimate space, where complex facial expressions and
hand-gesture language express the emotions behind the story.
Since Kannan and Yu’s methods of movement are inherently
different, a clash was inevitable. Yu admits there were compromises
to be made.
“It was difficult for me because Kannan normally works
with people who know his (choreographic) language, so he just
wanted to talk about it and do it,” Yu said. “For me,
from a modern/postmodern perspective, I need transition. I need to
build choreography from moment to moment. For Kannan, (dancing with
me) was really pushing his physicality, because he is not used to
moving through a big stage space.”
Yu also describes the piece as an abstract story about a snake
and a heron. “Kannan is the snake character, and I am
embodying my heron character,” Yu said. “You
don’t see a heron and snake, but you see the essence of the
animals.”
In the same way that the audience doesn’t see a literal
heron and snake, the entire piece has a non-linear connection to
rice. “It’s more about the nature around rice, and how
the environment relates to rice,” Yu said.
The program format as a whole is described as a
“collage” of different sections, paralleling with the
nature of the artists, who are also a “collage” of
performers. Each piece is connected to the spirit of rice while
drawing upon the artists’ personal stories and cultural
relationships with rice for the narrative.
Mitoma puts the grandeur of this collaboration into perspective.
“Usually in the West, you have one director, choreographer
and composer,” Mitoma said. “(Here) everyone is a
director, choreographer and composer. This project is an experiment
to develop equity amongst the participants.”
The performers hope that the audience will receive from the show
not only a chance to witness international choreography, but also a
worldly spiritual view.
“The language of Kathakali fills me with something,”
Kannan said. “Kathakali can take me to the world of peace. It
expands my ego from my body into a higher and larger self. It makes
you unselfish.”
Artists will hold workshops and master classes in world arts and
culture and ethnomusicology from Sept. 30 to Oct. 3.