Art from Asia...not Asian art

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Asia has always held an exotic allure for Westerners, intrigued with its cultural, spiritual and artistic traditions so foreign from their own.

But the inscrutable can be intimidating, the unfamiliar, inaccessible. So, in giving the 2015 Ringling International Arts Festival an Asian theme in order to coincide with the opening of its new Center for Asian Art next February, is the Ringling Museum taking a calculated risk that curiosity will win out over circumspection?

“People can be scared of Asia,” admits Stanford Makishi, formerly deputy director of the Asian Cultural Council, who assisted the Ringling’s director of performance, Dwight Currie, with the curation of the seventh annual festival. “They think there’s something so ‘other’ about it. Because there are very few platforms for the performing arts of Asia in the U.S., very little has made it into the American mainstream, so people are a little afraid of it. But it’s only because they don’t know what it is. So this is an opportunity, really.”

Phare: The Cambodian Circus will perform "Khmer Metal" at the 2015 Ringling International Arts Festival. (PHOTO BY PETER PHOENG)

Phare: The Cambodian Circus will perform "Khmer Metal" at the 2015 Ringling International Arts Festival. (PHOTO BY PETER PHOENG)

Makishi, who assisted with previous RIAF curations as executive director of the Baryshnikov Arts Center (which partnered with the Ringling on the festival until last year) and who is now vice president for programming at City Center New York, said there is nothing “jarringly foreign” about this year’s artists. While many found their inspiration in Asian art forms unfamiliar to most Westerners, their own work is treading in new territory. Currie, who says “RIAF has always been for the adventurous,” believes that, other than the geographical grouping, this year’s performances are no more – and possibly less – unconventional than the productions in RIAF's past.

“We all have notions of what anyone else’s culture is, and that was on our minds because that was NOT what we wanted to present,” Currie says. “We weren’t looking for the quintessential Asian art, or for people who could stand as representative of their culture or country. Yes, how they express themselves is informed by their heritage and background and training, but these artists are responding to their lives, times and places with creativity, just as the artists did last year and the year before that. It’s not Asian art; it’s art from Asia.”

As such, it is a diverse bill of fare. From the storytelling of Phare, a Cambodian circus that integrates dance, circus arts and music, to the lively music of the Orkes Sinten Remen, which transforms Indonesian folk music on traditional instruments into what can sometimes sound like American pop, the artists were selected, in part, because of their appeal and accessibility to Sarasota audiences.

“We didn’t want to bring anything that was particularly gritty or dealt with difficult subject matter because we didn’t want to challenge audiences to that degree,” says Makishi. “Bringing in something like that would be almost confrontational and that is not something we wanted to do. We wanted to pique people’s interest and make them curious about art making from that part of the world.”

Ronnarong Kampha / PHOTO BY WANG YUANQING

Ronnarong Kampha / PHOTO BY WANG YUANQING

Makishi, an Asian American born in Hawaii, says he underwent his own journey of discovering Asian performance art belatedly, only as his career as a professional ballet dancer was coming to a close. Like many American contemporary dance aficionados, he had been “interested primarily in what was coming from Europe.”

“I was just as close-minded as the next person,” he admits. “But eventually, more out of curiosity and artistic evolution than because of my roots, I began to see work from Asia and realized, ‘Oh look, it’s not that different.' I thought it would be so much from another sensibility that I wouldn’t get it. But I realized it is fascinating and beautiful and not so hard as I’d imagined.”

Two of the artists in this year’s festival are also Americans of mixed Asian heritage. Jen Shyu, a musician/singer/composer who will present “Solo Rites: Seven Breaths,” was born to a Taiwanese father and a mother from East Timor who moved to the U.S. as students. Tom Lee, whose “Shank’s Mare” integrates traditional Japanese puppetry with video and live music, grew up in Hawaii, the son of a Chinese-American father and a mother from upstate New York. For both, an exploration of their roots combined with their own cross-cultural backgrounds to feed their work, which is neither entirely historic nor without genealogy.

Jen Shyu. (COURTESY PHOTO)

Jen Shyu. (COURTESY PHOTO)

Shyu was not exposed to the musical traditions of her ancestry as a child. In fact, she was raised on a steady diet of Western classical music; her father used to make her mix tapes of Chopin’s complete etudes. It wasn’t until she was out of college and trying to discover her own artistic voice that she began to explore her background, traveling throughout Asia and experiencing many of its ancient music and dance rituals and ceremonies. That included performances in Java that lasted for up to 24 hours, with the audience coming and going throughout, eating, drinking, talking and even bringing pillows and blankets so they could fall asleep when they felt the need.

“There is no separation between ritual and performance, it’s all just being part of the community,” she says. “There are spiritual elements to a presentation, it’s not just about entertainment. It’s a totally different aesthetic and the standard of what is good, what you want from that particular tradition, is totally different. But that’s what makes our world so endlessly fascinating.”

Her own work incorporates some of these elements, but she also tries to ease the potential discomfort of non-Asian audiences by, for example, breaking the “fourth wall” to speak in English, or printing the lyrics to songs sung in foreign languages in English in the performance program. At one point in “Seven Breaths,” she teaches (in English) a number of Korean exclamations used to encourage the performer, as in the pansori (musical storytelling) tradition; at another, she goes into the audience with a stick of bamboo, inviting members to touch it to release their worries, much as a village channeler in Korea might do.

In her program notes, Shyu quotes Garin Nugroho, the director of “Seven Breaths,” as saying that the lines between tradition and modernity are so blurry, that it is best not to try to define ancient vs. modern, but rather to unite them. That, says Shyu, is her intention.

“What is beautiful is that everyone can learn about each other through my piece and that’s the whole point of doing what I do,” she says. “It’s the same intercultural experience we have every day in America and I think it’s important, because there’s still so much tension around that.”

Tom Lee pairs traditional Japanese puppetry with video and live music for his performance "Shank's Mare." (PHOTO BY AYUMI SAKAMOTO)

Tom Lee pairs traditional Japanese puppetry with video and live music for his performance "Shank's Mare." (PHOTO BY AYUMI SAKAMOTO)

Likewise, Lee’s work is a blend of his own background as an American puppeteer and his relationship over the past decade with Javanese master puppeteer Koryu Nishikawa V, an expert in the art of kuruma ningyo style or “cart puppetry,” where one puppeteer performs the job of three through use of a rolling cart. At the festival, Lee will present a portion of “Shank’s Mare,” a work in which each artist contributed a story about a character on a life’s journey; the two tales gradually intersect.

“Basically, the piece kind of mirrors this challenge for traditional artists, the fact that they’re living in the modern world and it’s very difficult these days to attract a contemporary artist to traditional work and to attract disciples to carry on the traditions,” says Lee. “Koryushan once said to me, ‘I’m in a certain sort of box I can’t step out of freely because of the history and tradition, but you have the freedom to take it and find new ways.' ”

Because puppets were involved, “pushing in a new direction on both sides” was easier, Lee says.

“The wonderful thing about puppets is that we relate to them as a mirror of our human emotions,” he says. “Whether they’re Japanese or American puppets, something clicks in our brains and we infer emotions upon them, much like kids playing with dolls. What I hope people will see is both the traditional puppetry forms by a master, but also puppets made here that use that style and design but are free from some of the cultural demands and forms.”

Knowing that the work would be seen by a global audience, Lee chose to use very little text and a mix of Western and Japanese music he believes will resonate with audiences from both traditions. And while the visual storytelling may be more ambiguous and open-ended than a straightforward Western narrative – “You get the gift and also the challenge of not having everything explained to you” – the story line mirrors his own cross-cultural experience of “feeling a part of two worlds.”

Tao Dance Theatre from China (COURTESY PHOTO)

Tao Dance Theatre from China (COURTESY PHOTO)

Alison Friedman, founder of the Beijing-based Ping Pong Productions, which is bringing Tao Dance Theatre to RIAF, believes the entire conversation about a dichotomy between East and West is "an outdated, 20th-century binary that we all need to get over," and one that can prevent a full experience and appreciation of unfamiliar work.

"The most difficult thing for Western audiences to embrace in Eastern performing arts is the concept in their own head that there's somehow a difference between East and West," Friedman says. "If they can get over their own internal block and go into any performance with an open mind -- even a performance by an artist from their own backyard -- they are more likely to have an engaging and moving experience."

 

2015 RINGLING INTERNATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL

Oct. 15-18 on the Ringling Museum campus. Performances by Phare (Cambodian circus); Tao Dance Theater (contemporary dance from China); Ronnarong Khampha (dancer/choreographer from Thailand); Peni Candra Rini (Indonesian composer/singer); Jen Shyu (American/Taiwanese musician and singer); Tom Lee (Korean puppetry); and Orkes Sinten Remen (contemporarized Indonesian folk music).

Tickets $35; opening night Oct. 15 (includes performance and reception) $125. Tickets and complete schedule at 360-7399 or ringling.org.

2015 RINGLING INTERNATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL

Oct. 15-18 on the Ringling Museum campus. Performances by Phare (Cambodian circus); Tao Dance Theater (contemporary dance from China); Ronnarong Khampha (dancer/choreographer from Thailand); Peni Candra Rini (Indonesian composer/singer); Jen Shyu (American/Taiwanese musician and singer); Tom Lee (Korean puppetry); and Orkes Sinten Remen (contemporarized Indonesian folk music).

Tickets $35; opening night Oct. 15 (includes performance and reception) $125. Tickets and complete schedule at 360-7399 or ringling.org.
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Carrie Seidman

Carrie Seidman has been a newspaper features writer, columnist and reviewer for 30 years...and a dancer for longer than that. She has a master's degree from Columbia University Journalism School and is a former competitive ballroom dancer. Contact her via email, or at (941) 361-4834. Make sure to "Like" Arts Sarasota on Facebook for news and reviews of the arts.
Last modified: October 9, 2015
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