Artist:
Pasupati: Balinese Performing Arts
PROGRAM
I Made Widana and Anna Reynolds will perform classical Balinese dance, traditional Balinese music, and offer a sample of Balinese wayang, puppetry. The program will open with Anna Reynolds performing Gabor, a popular welcome dance. She will also perform a second dance in the highly refined classical legong style. Widana will perform two classical masked (topeng) dances. In this tradition, a single dancer performs various stock characters in sequence, changing mask with each new character. Widana will present Topeng Keras, the bold and energetic prime minister, and Topeng Tua, the dance of the old man. The musical samples will feature live music performed on gamelan gender (a bronze metallophone instrument that is used to accompany the traditional shadow play), vocal music, and the traditional bamboo flute. The artists will offer a brief wayang kulit, or puppetry excert featuring the heroic characters and the clown-servant characters. The performers will offer background information about each piece that they perform.
PROGRAM DETAIL
OAHU:
Program 1: Balinese Music and Dance – a new and updated program featuring the performances of Made in full dance costume and Annie presenting the traditional Balinese ceremonial dress. The program features traditional Balinese instruments (xylophone-like percussion, drums, and bamboo flute)
Program 2: Music pProgram – featuring traditional Balinese music with new original works for Balinese instruments and violin, and violin duets. An eclectic offering of musical duets: Balinese music – traditional and new works by Made and a few violin duets from the Suzuki repertoire (Lantana and Annie in duo) – Made will also provide original accompaniment. The program offers new takes on the company’s repertoire and introduces new inspirations. If you have hosted Pasupati before, you will enjoy the similarities of the different traditions that teach music by rote, while also hearing music with a strong foundation in both Asian and Western traditions. Finally, you will explore a new collaboration based on those foundations.
OAHU and possible to travel to NEIGHBOR ISLANDS:
Program 3: Balinese Dance Program – featuring Made performing a series of Topeng (masked) dances. Annie will MC and offers a brief demo of female-style dance, just to show the contrast. Made in full dance costume, while Annie is in traditional Balinese ceremonial dress.
Program 4: Music Program – same as above, but featuring just various Balinese suling (bamboo flutes), various flutes, and violin solo/duo.
BIOGRAPHY
I Made Widana – BA in Balinese Traditional Music, Indonesian Arts Institute, Denpasar, Bali. Widana is a professional musician, dancer, and composer and is currently a lecturer in the Department of Theatre and Dance. When in Bali, he teaches traditional gamelan music in various villages and at a number of formal music and dance studios. As a founding member and musician in the Bali-based world-renowned performing arts ensemble, Çudamani, Widana has participated in tours to the US, Japan, and Europe. Widana has been in residence in Hawai‘i since 2009, since which time he has been actively teaching the UH Balinese Gamelan Ensemble. He has also carried out many community outreach programs in Hawai‘i under the auspices of the East-West Center Arts Program, the Mayor’s Office of Culture and the Arts, and the UH-Manoa Outreach Statewide Cultural Extension Program. Widana’s expertise in traditional Balinese music and dance is coupled with extensive experience in innovative and collaborative artistic works. Recent projects include original compositions for both Javanese and Balinese gamelan ensembles as part of a MOCA grant. Widana also recently wrote and performed original music for a unique puppet performance, entitled Journey to the East: Ruminations on a Sixteenth-Century Chronicle, by Hourglass Theatre that was premiered at Shangri La and toured to the East Coast.
Anna Reynolds – Pasupati Balinese Performing Arts; Lecturer, Dept. of Theatre and Dance; Asian Theatre PhD Candidate; MA Asian Studies, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa; BA Music Composition, San Francisco State University. Anna Reynolds, who has a background in Western music and is a violinist, first began performing Balinese gamelan in San Francisco in 2001. She studied traditional performing arts at the Indonesian Arts Institute in Denpasar, Bali in 2004–2005, and has since taken periodic trips to Bali to undertake intensive study of Balinese music and dance. While in Bali, her primary focus was studying gender wayang and the music of the traditional shadow theatre; she was an active musician performing accompaniment for various dalang (puppeteers), as part of many local ceremonial performances, and in new collaborative projects with Balinese artists. In 2009, Anna assisted in reestablishing the UH Balinese Gamelan Ensemble, and she is currently its Assistant Director. As an Asian Theatre PhD student with a focus on Balinese performing arts, Reynolds recently received the UHM 2013 College of Arts and Humanities Dissertation Research Award for her working dissertation, entitled “Shifting Practices: An exploration and examination of dramatic depiction and movement vocabulary in recent Balinese palegongan dances.” In 2013-14 she conducted dissertation research and fieldwork in Bali that included a practical component studying legong dances both from the traditional repertoire and new works in the form.
PERFORMANCE NEEDS
* Sound system – if necessary for a large space; Anna and Made can provide a small portable speaker for their audio recordings that accompany the dance repertoire – this is sufficient for a small performance space
* 1-2 standing microphones (wireless preferred)
* Performance space of 12 ft X 16 ft (if outdoors during the day, performance space must not be in direct sunlight
* 2 chairs
* A small table (to set mask and headdresses that are not being used)
* Dressing room/changing area
