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In Performance: A House in Bali at BAM (NYC)

A House in Bali

A new Opera Composed by Evan Ziporyn
With the Bang on a Can All-Stars & Gamelan Salukat
after the novel by Colin McPhee
Directed by Jay Scheib

Next Wave Festival, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM),
Thursday, Oct. 14; Friday, Oct. 15; & Saturday, Oct. 16 at 7:30pm

The sounds of a 16-member Balinese gamelan intertwine with western opera and Balinese singers, traditional dance, live video feeds, and the pulsating post-minimalism of the Bang on a Can All-Stars in A House in Bali, an new opera by Evan Ziporyn, directed by Jay Scheib.

Based on the memoirs of trailblazing composer Colin McPhee, the work re-imagines first contact between cultures in 1930s Bali through the prism of the cross-cultural present. This live-cinema performance follows the course of McPhee’s sojourn to Bali, his encounters with anthropologist Margaret Mead and painter Walter Spies, and their ultimately tragic relationship with dancer I Sampih, a Balinese youth whom McPhee mentors after the boy saves his life. Images from 1930s photographs – many by Mead herself – and music of the period – from Bali and from McPhee’s own hand – merge with live re-creations and (dis)simulations in this bold study of artifice, connection, and alienation, set at the crossroads of the cultural and the personal.

Featuring Bang on a Can All-Stars, Gamelan Salukat with Dewa Ketut Alit, Peter Tantsits, Kadek Dewi Aryani, Desak Madé Suarti Laksmi, I Nyoman Catra, Timur Bekbosunov, Anne Harley, Nyoman Triyana Usadhi; Choreography by Kadek Dewi Aryani and I Nyoman Catra; Set design by Sara Brown; Costume design by Oana Botez-Ban; Lighting design by Peter Ksander; Sound design by Andrew Cotton; Video design by Jay Scheib and AKA

Produced by Kenny Savelson, Executive Director, Bang on a Can

RSVP to the even here

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Caden Manson is a director, media artist, and teacher. He is co-founder of the media ensemble bigartgroup.com and network, blog, and publisher, contemporaryperformance.com. He has co-created, directed, video- and set designed 18 Big Art Group productions. Manson has shown video installations in Austria, Germany, NYC, and Portland; performed PAIN KILLER in Berlin, Singapore and Vietnam; Taught in Berlin, Rome, Paris, Montreal, NYC, and Bern; the ensemble has been co-produced by the Vienna Festival, Festival d’Automne a Paris, Hebbel Am Ufer, Rome’s La Vie de Festival, PS122, and Wexner Center for The Arts. Caden is a 2001 Foundation For Contemporary Art Fellow, is a 2002 Pew Fellow and a 2011 MacDowell Fellow. Writing has been published in PAJ, Theater Magazine, and Theater der Zeit. Caden is currently an associate professor and graduate directing option coordinator of The John Wells Directing Program at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Drama.

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