APPEX 2004 Fellows

 

Abhijit Banerjee, Calcutta, India
Abhijit Banerjee is recognized as one of the most important Indian percussionists of his generation and has performed in concert at prestigious venues worldwide. A virtuoso tabla player, his musical concepts and interactions with various innovative music compositions have given him a remarkable position in the arena of world music. Banerjee has trained under the legendary Sri Tushar Kanti Bose and Pandit Manik Pal. He was also accepted as one of the main disciples of the illustrious Guru Pandit Gyan Prakash Ghosh. Besides tabla, Banerjee is an accomplished vocalist and violinist having trained in these two forms intensively for a number of years. Banerjee has had an extensive career as a musician and his high profile collaborations include work with artists such as Ry Cooder, Larry Corryell, Trilok Gurtu, and Jay Hoggard. He has also composed and recorded sound tracks for major network television series in India and is recipient of the National Award for his music direction of the documentary film "The TRAIL". In Calcutta, Banerjee runs the Dhwani Academy of Percussion Music, which draws students from all over the world. He had the honor of representing India in the Granada Festival of Music held in Spain in 1997.

 

Sathya Burchman, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Sathya Burchman is a creative and gifted composer and musician. Raised in a family of artists, he is classically trained on the double bass and has performed with big bands, jazz ensembles, and orchestras in California, Connecticut, and Italy. Burchman has spent the past thirteen years studying performance traditions of Ghana, Java, Bali, and Cuba. He has given special attention to Ashanti and Ewe (Ghanaian) drum traditions, Javanese and Balinese genders (bronze xylophone), the Javanese kendhang (drum), and to various Cuban percussion instruments. Burchman has performed with several Javanese gamelan ensembles, a Balinese gender wayang quartet, Ghanaian drumming ensembles, a Mandé (West African) guitar quartet, a Jewish klezmer band, and in a Cuban son conjunto and batá chorus. His compositions draw inspiration from the structural and instrumental elements of these various traditions as well as from experimental electronics, popular music, and jazz. He has collaborated with renowned and diverse artists such as Nyoman Cerita, Sri Susilawati, Sumarsam, and I.M. Harjito and his compositions have premiered in Yogyakarta, Santa Cruz, Middletown, and Los Angeles. Burchman is currently completing course work for the Ph.D. in ethnomusicology at UCLA and holds an MA in World Music from Wesleyan University. His interest in uniting creative and intellectual spheres is to stimulate awareness and compassion, to elicit cross-cultural understanding and respect by exploring our interconnectedness, and to provoke action with this understanding.

 

Charlie Campagna, Los Angeles, CA, USA
 Charlie Campagna has been music director of Los Angeles based TRIP Dance Theatre since 1998 and a composer and musician in Los Angeles since 1989. The Los Angeles Times has praised Campagna for his "transfixing" and "crackling guitar work", and called collaborations with TRIP "a mind-blowing journey into the aural and physical". Campagna 's compositions and live playing merge his interests in guitar, cello, percussion, and textural sound collage. Lauded as a superb instrumentalist and musician he has composed and directed music for TRIP Dance Theatre performances: Praying for Daybreak, Inanna, Light, May Mother Sea, Feast, Wanderlust, Exquisite Corpse, Soulstasis and Wild Garden as well as for such choreographers as Nina Kaufman, Erica Rebollar, Linda Gold, and Koala Yip. In 1999 Campagna co-founded the community-based improvisational dance workshop Sacred Spaces. Working in many areas of music, with a full production studio, Charlie has contributed his music to many different projects such as the films "Don't Say A Word," and the 2002 releases "High Crimes," "There's Something About Mary" and "Phoenix" and has collaborated with composers such as Paul Hasslinger (Tangerine Dream) and Graham Revel (Chinese Music Box). Campagna was a founding member of the band "Quarks", for which he composed and played guitar from 1991-1997..

 

Monica Favand, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Monica Favand is regarded as a strikingly original and visually provocative contemporary modern dancer and choreographer. She is also an educator, costume designer and Founder and Executive/Artistic Director of TRIP Dance Theatre in Los Angeles. Her choreography has been performed by the Pennsylvania Ballet, Group Motion Company of Philadelphia and TRIP Dance Theatre, filmed by PBS, broadcast nationally on public television and performed in theatres in the United States, Europe and South America. Favand creates journeys through mixed media landscapes of original/live music, contemporary dance, video/slide imagery, text and innovative costume/set design. In 1996, she created a collaborative company where artists would be able to share their unique talents and visions by forming TRIP Dance Theatre with Music Director Charlie Campagna. Her over 40 works have been performed at venues such as the Ford Ampitheatre, UCLA Armand Hammer Museum, Skirball Cultural Center, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and Martha Knoebel Theatre. Her recent choreography has focused on human yearning for connection to the primal self, the earth and community. Favand graduated in 1988 from the Baltimore School for the Arts. In 1992 she received her B.F.A. in Dance, graduating Summa cum Laude from Philadelphia’s Temple University, where she studied with Mary Wigman’s disciple Hellmut Gottschild, among others. Favand is the recipient of a 1994 Pennsylvania Council for the Arts Fellowship and a 1997 Horton Award for costume design.

 

Vivian Fung, New York City, NY, USA
Vivian Fung is described by the New York Times as "prodigiously gifted... a composer to watch". A faculty member of The Juilliard School in New York City, from which she graduated in 2002, Fung has had an impressive string of commissions and performances by such performers and ensembles as Gerard Schwarz, the Seattle Symphony, New York Chamber Symphony, San José Chamber Orchestra, and Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble. Her music has been heard in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Most recently, her first String Quartet was premiered by the Avalon String Quartet at the Chamber Music Columbus concert series in Ohio. Her Kecak! for a cappella mixed choir will be premiered by the Pacific Mozart Ensemble in San Francisco this spring. Fung has received awards from BMI, ASCAP, the American Music Center, Canada Council, Alberta Heritage Fund, and The Juilliard School. She has completed artist residencies at The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Banff, and Atlantic Center for the Arts. Fung’s upcoming projects include a work for gamelan and electronics to be premiered as part of Juilliard’s 2005-06 centennial season; and a new work for traditional Chinese instruments for Music From China, a New York-based ensemble. She will assume the position of composer-in-residence for the San José Chamber Orchestra during spring 2005, with funding from the Meet the Composer Music Alive! program. In that position, she will write a new work for orchestra as well as participate in outreach and development activities. She will also be the composer-in-residence for Music in the Loft, a chamber music series in Chicago, during the 2005-06 season.

 

Slamet Gundono, Surakarta, Java, Indonesia
Slamet Gundono is one of the finest and most innovative puppeteers of his generation. On the forefront of Java’s dynamic performance scene, Gundono’s work is some of the most meaningful, provocative, original theatre today. He was born in Tegal, Central Java, to a family of dhalang artists (puppet shadow masters). Both, his father, Ki Suwati and his brother, Ki Gunawan Suwati are classical dhalangs. Gundono trained in theatre at the Jakarta Institute of Arts and is completing his formal education in Pedalangan (art of puppet shadow) at the Indonesia College of Arts, (STSI) Surakarta. Gundono has been strongly influenced by the wayang style of the late of Ki Narto Sabdo, who had a deeply spiritual approach to wayang kulit. Gundono’s focus is on contemporary and experimental forms of wayang and he is developing new approaches of wayang such as wayang layar panjang (long screen shadow-puppet show), Wayang Gremeng (acapella in wayang), Wayang multi-media, Wayang Suket, Wayang Nglindur, Wayang Kandha, Wayang Air (water-wayang). He also works as a theatre and dance performer. He has taken part in several productions such as Opera Diponegoro, a dance-theatre choreographed by Sardono W. Kusumo performed in Jakarta in 1995 and in Solo and Semarang in 2001, and Passage Through The Gong by Sardono, performed in Surakarta and Japan. He has collaborated with Mugiyono (choreographer) and Dedek Wahyudi (composer) for the Chan Mu International Festival 1995 in Seoul and the Indonesia Dance Festival 1996 in Jakarta, and with the South Bank Gamelan, London, England. Other works include performing wayang at the WOMAD festival in Reading and at the Royal Festival Hall, London in 1997 during the CIPA (Contemporary Indonesian Performing Arts) tour of England.

 

A. Aris A. Kadir, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
A. Aris A. Kadir is one of the most influential and inventive artists to emerge from Malaysia. Classically trained in traditional Malay dance, he is also a contemporary dancer, teacher and choreographer. Bridging the gap between traditional and contemporary aesthetics, Kadir’s work incorporates the creative expanse of Malay theatre, Ballet, Silat, Tai Chi and Jazz. A graduate of the Akademi Seni Kebangsaan (ASK), he has performed in numerous local and international festivals.

 

 

Mario Leofer M. Lim, Davao, Philippines
Mario Leofer M. Lim is a gifted actor, musician, craftsman, educator and costume designer from Davao, Mindanao, Philippines. A member of the Kaliwat Theater Collective Inc. since 1993, he has been developing community-based grassroots theatre workshop programs. Through the tremendous emotional power, depth, and expressiveness of his works, he strives to convey and embody the needs of his community. Lately, he has been developing programs for children: victims of war, street children, and children affected by child labor. Lim believes that as a trainer and facilitator, he is able to help these children gain self-esteem and empowerment, whilst teaching them about the richness of their culture. Lim has also collaborated in research work to help indigenous communities claim back their ancestral domains. Working with indigenous materials and found objects, Lim designs props, and makes beads, handcrafts and musical instruments. He also facilitates productions, workshops and performances in different communities in Mindanao.

 

Paul Livingstone, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Paul Livingstone from Los Angeles is one of the most exciting and universally appealing musicians to take the world stage. He is a performing artist of world strings with a focus on sitar and a unique 9 string fretless guitar of his own design on which he plays Indian ragas, jazz, and creative new music blending ideas from diverse world traditions. He has been rigorously trained in North Indian classical music under Amiya Dasgupta, Dr. Rajeev Taranath and living legend Pt. Ravi Shankar. Livingstone has performed around the US, Mexico and Spain, and played and recorded with artists like Swapan Chaudhuri, Geetha Bennett, John Bergamo, Prince Diabate, Hossien Alizadeh, Ali Jihad Racy, Miroslav Tadic, the Liän Ensemble, Cypress Hill, Alanis Morissette & Rufus Wainright. He composes creative world music for film and for his group the Arohi Ensemble. Livingstone’s debut cd Arohi was hailed by Ravi Shankar as a "very effective and impressive approach". Livingstone s most recent recording project is a multilingual unity suite, Salaam, recorded in collaboration with members of Los Angeles popular/world groups Ozomatli, Quetzal & Kan Zaman Ensemble. As founder & Artistic Director of the Sangeet School of World Music in north East Los Angeles, Livingstone is committed to making diverse forms of music available to people of all backgrounds in Los Angeles. He teaches classes in Indian and world music at the Sangeet School and is also on the faculty of the California institute for Arts.

 

Alden Lugnasin, Manila, Philippines
Alden Lugnasin from Manila, Philippines is a highly respected young ballet dancer and choreographer. He started his dance training at the age of 18 with the Leyte State College Dance Repertoire under the Artistic Direction of Jess de Paz. In 1990, he was awarded a scholarship grant for summer with Ballet Philippines and was offered company membership soon after. As a performer he has gained widespread acclaim for infusing classical dance with new found vitality as Elias in Moriones by Agnes Locsin, in Ang Sultan by Gener Caringal, Redha’s Les Petits Mots d’ Amour, and La Revolucion Filipina which was toured extensively in the US and Canada. He was an Assistant to the Artistic Director for Realizing Rama, an ASEAN flagship project in 2001-2002 for its European and ASEAN tour. His choreographic works include Impasse (1993), Swimming the Ilog Pasig (1997), Swans… Fluttering Disturbances (1998), Insomnis (1999), Tuol Sleng- S-21 Prison (2001), Jewelmer’s Pearl of the Orient Show in Hong Kong (2002), and Buhay (2002), which had its world premiere at ASEAN’S Culture week in Cambodia. His award winning piece Aku won the silver medal-solo category at the "Concours International de Danse de France" in December 2000. His Swimming the llog Pasig was hailed by the Seattle Times as "an oddly original gem…" and as "a well applauded striking riveting modern dance based on the indigenous folk dances of the Philippines" by the Philippine Daily Inquirer Sunday Magazine. Currently, he is the Associate Artistic Director of Ballet Philippines. He is also the Vice-Chairman of the Banigan Kawayan Festival in his hometown province of Basey, Western Samar.

 

Yin Mei, New York City, NY, USA
Yin Mei from New York, was born in China and started her professional career in traditional Chinese dance during the Cultural Revolution. Before moving to the United States to study modern dance on a grant from the Asian Cultural Council, she was a member of a leading Chinese dance company, and later a principal dancer with the Hong Kong Dance Company, where she danced numerous leading roles in the traditional Chinese dance repertoire. Internationally recognized, Mei now choreographs and performs her contemporary work worldwide through her company, Yin Mei Dance, having forged a dance style employing Chinese energy direction and spatial principles as a means of creating dance within the rubric of avant-garde dance theater. Mei's most recent major work, /Asunder, a multi-media, cross-cultural dance theater work created in collaboration with installation artist Cai Guo-Ziang and composer Robert Een, premiered at Danspace Project in New York in May 2001 and toured eleven U.S. cities in 2002 - starting at the Jacobs Pillow Dance Festival. Mei's next major work, Nomad: The River, will premiere at Dance Theater Workshop in early 2005 and tour thereafter. For this work, which explores the theme of spiritual seeking, Mei will collaborate with computer animation artist Tennessee Rice Dixon. Mei joined the faculty of Queens College (CUNY) in 1992, where she teaches dance based on principles developed from her training in Tai Chi and Asian performance. She received her B.A. from New York University and her M.F.A. from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.

 

Anurupa Roy, New Delhi, India
Anurupa Roy from New Delhi, India, is recognized as a major creative force in Indian Puppet Theatre. Roy received professional training in the art of puppetry from Dramatiska Institute at the University of Stockholm under Professor Michael Meschke and also holds a diploma in the Guaratelle, tradition of glove puppetry, from the Scoula Della Guaratelle in Naples, Italy, where she studied under Bruno Leone. In 1998 she established her troupe, "Kat Katha", and has worked with many mediums of expression including dance and music. Gaining national acclaim and attracting new audiences to Puppetry, her work has focuses on issues of social concern with an emphasis on children and women. Roy has conducted workshops in villages in Haryana with women and adolescent girls where she uses puppetry as a medium to address taboo subjects ranging from female sexuality and contraception to the questioning of many existing norms. Her latest productions include Durga, the story of a poor Brahmin family in a village in Bengal, based on Bibhuti Bhushan Bannerji`s famous 19th Century Bengali novel PatherPanchali, and Almost Twelfth Night, Shakespeare’s immortal comedy told with small rod (bunraku style) puppets and puppeteers as storytellers and actors. Roy also participated in In Conversation directed by Dadi Pudumj, which toured internationally in fall 2002. Her troupe, "Kat Katha", is currently developing a children's theatre at the India Habitat Center with and in intent to make Puppet Theatre more visible and accessible in the capital.

 

Rini Endah Sulistyowati, Solo, Java, Indonesia
Rini Endah Sulistyowati is a classically trained traditional Javanese dancer and one of few women choreographers in Indonesia. A graduate of STSI Surakarta (Indonesia College of Arts, Dept of Dance), she is an educator and has collaborated with several dancers and musicians to create works that offer a challenging, original, and provocative perspective on women and violence. She is founder of NN dance studio, where she actively engages in creative work concerning gender, culture, and development of children. Her interest in working with children has allowed her opportunity to perform at the POTRET with artists from Korea, Indonesia, and the U.S Women Choreographer Meeting II. In 2000, she developed choreography for 1200 children of the World Children Choir. The minimal existence of women choreographers in Java has challenged her to go beyond her expectations. She has found ways to take traditional Javanese forms and combine them with expressive body gestures to create innovative pieces that embody what she calls her "dance spirit." Sulistyowati has also collaborated with artists who practice different art forms, such as Suprapto Suryodarmo, Eko Supriyanto, WS Rendra, Slamet Gunduno, Sardono W. Kusumo, Erin Schon, and Carol McDowel. Working with diverse artists has helped her expand her understanding and ideas underlying her creative process.

 

Gretchen Van Lente, Brooklyn, NY, USA
Gretchen Van Lente is the Artistic Director of Drama of Works in Brooklyn, New York, and has been performing, building and directing in the field of puppetry for over the past six years. She has worked with artists like Travis Preston, Peter Schumann, Great Small Works, Janie Geiser, Rudi Stern and Ralph Lee, as well as other directors and choreographers. She has adapted and directed works ranging from guerilla Shakespeare to political puppet satire. She worked on staff at the Henson International Puppet Festival in New York, both in 1998 and 2000. Van Lente is also a dedicated educator and has taught many children’s workshops. She most recently taught "Modern Puppetry," including object theatre exercises, to professional puppeteers at the "Barents Region International Puppet Theatre Festival" in Oulu, Finland, where the company recently performed four shows. Van Lente is also an actor, freelance prop and set designer, and theatre consultant. She is an award-winning illustrator, an experienced swing dancer, an animal activist (currently fundraising for Tanjung Puting National Park orangutan reserve in Borneo, as well as volunteering locally at the Prospect Park Wildlife Center in Brooklyn), and plays second violin in the New York Symphonic Arts Ensemble. Van Lente received her BFA in Illustration from Parsons School of Design and a BA in Theatre from Eugene Lang College (both part of New School University).

 

Leese Walker, New York City, NY, USA
Leese Walker is the Artistic/Producing Director of the Strike Anywhere Performance Ensemble in New York City. She founded the theatre in 1997 to promote empathy, freethinking and greater social awareness through provocative theatre and educational outreach. Strike Anywhere addresses important socio-political issues, creating original performance pieces through improvisation. The company is celebrating its 5th season as artists-in-residence at the Theatre at St. Clements and is currently touring 10 Brecht Poems and SPIN. Walker is a Dartmouth graduate who began her professional career as a member of the Irondale Ensemble, NYC. While with Irondale, she played Antigone in Antigone, Didi in Waiting For Godot, and St. Juste in Danton’s Death. Leese has performed extensively with the Judith Shakespeare Company including roles as Richard II, Cressida, Dromio of Ephesus in Comedy of Errors and Helena in All’s Well That Ends Well. She has danced, acted and played Lakota flute with the Wendy Osserman Dance Company (Dance Theater Workshop, UBU Rep, Union Square Park), and has been improvising as an actor with the Walter Thompson Orchestra since 1997 (Lincoln Center, NYC Jazz Vision Festival, HERE, Bard College, Knitting Factory). In addition to all of her performance work, Walker freelances as a teaching-artist with over half a dozen theatre companies including the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Theater Development Fund, Roundabout Theatre Company, and Manhattan Class Company.

 

Shamsul Bin Zin, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Shamsul Bin Zin is considered one of the most exciting musicians in Malaysia today. He acquired his early education in the field of music from his father and went on to study at the Akademi Seni Kebangsaan (National Arts Academy) in Kuala Lumpur. He is a virtuoso of traditional instruments such as the Malay Gamelan, Tabla, Accordian and Harmonium as well as several modern instruments: Latin Percussion, Marimba, Vibraphone, Timpani and Keyboard. Zin is a composer and arranger for the National Theatre Festival and the musical director of the Bangsawan Alang Buana orchestra in Kuala Lumpur. He also arranges music for dance and Wayang Kulit (shadow puppetry). He has taken part in international music festivals in Australia, Brunei, Germany, Indonesia, New Zealand, Singapore, Turkey and Vietnam. Zin participated in the Hyogo Asia Pacific Performing Arts Workshop in Kobe, Japan and is currently doing collaborative work with the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra.

 

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