“A famous Balinese dancer once said that a great artist is a farmer. This is more than just a metaphor, for farmers and artists have much in common indeed. For farmers, the fields are their source of life; for artists creating and performing keep them alive.” Emiko Susilo, Artist, Indonesia.
Like a long-awaited harvest, the Art of Rice Traveling Theater represented seven years of careful, dedicated cultivation. The seed of the Art of Rice was rooted in the Center's Asia Pacific Performance Exchange fellowship program (APPEX). Eleven extraordinary artists were selected from APPEX program 1996-2000 to participate in this project. They musicians, actors, and dancers from China, the Dominican Republic, India, Bali, Japan, Myanmar, and the United States who collaborated to combine traditional and contemporary movement, music and theatre. The result was a dramatic journey reflecting different lives, memories and legends that explored the global importance of rice as a source of food, enterprise and cultural sustenance.
The Art of Rice was created during two workshops (spring 2002 & summer 2003), amidst the rice fields of Pengosekan, a region nestled in one of the world’s greatest rice cultures-Bali, Indonesia. The production was presented in Indonesia before embarking on its first U.S. tour (Sept-Oct 2003). It was inspired by the 2004 exhibition “The Art of Rice: Spirit and Sustenance in Asia,” at the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History.
Introduction
Why Rice?>
Concert: Aratani/Japan America Theater
Grains of Conflict - LA Times, Sept 2003
Photos