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Fri. May 22 8pm, Sat. 23 2:00pm, Sun. 24 2:00pm
Gamelan Sekar Jaya (San Francisco & Bali)
SERASI: Three Evenings (and Thirty Years) of
Balinese Music and Dance
The Cowell Theatre, Fort Mason Center
$25 Reserved Seating, $20 in advance. Series Discounts Available.
Go Here for Information on discount tickets.
BOX-OFFICE: 800-838-3006
Presented by Gamelan Sekar Jaya and the Asian Art Museum.
Joined by Guest Artists-in-Residence, I Dewa Putu Berata (musician) and Emiko Saraswati Susilo (dancer) from Bali, Gamelan Sekar Jaya — acclaimed internationally for its innovative work with the music and dance of Bali — performs a dazzling array of pieces as it celebrates thirty years of artistic interchange with Bali. Spanning works both centuries old and newly created, GSJ will focus on themes that have helped define the fifty-member "Bay Area treasure" (Dancetera): balance, harmony, and collaboration across cultures.
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ARTIST INFORMATION
Gamelan Sekar Jaya
SERASI: Three Evenings (and Thirty Years) of Balinese Music and Dance
The sixty performers of GSJ will be joined by six renowned Indonesian artists, led by:
I Dewa Putu Berata, guest music director
Emiko Saraswati Susilo, guest dance director
Director: Wayne Vitale
The Bay Area ensemble Gamelan Sekar Jaya — acclaimed internationally for its innovative work with the music and dance of Bali — performs a dazzling array of pieces as it celebrates thirty years of artistic interchange with Bali in three concerts at the Cowell Theater. The series will feature six renowned Balinese guest artists. Spanning works both centuries old and newly created, GSJ will focus on themes that have helped define the fifty-member "Bay Area treasure" (Dancetera): balance, harmony, and collaboration across cultures.
The evening's highlight will be a world premiere of SERASI by master artists-in-residence I Dewa Putu Berata and Emiko Saraswati Susilo, directors of Bali's famed Çudamani ensemble. With support from the Zellerbach Family Foundation, Mr. Berata and Ms. Susilo have crafted a work that encompasses a wide range of Balinese styles and genres, from the stately movements of a temple dance to the fiery outbursts of kebyar, the revolutionary musical style born in the early twentieth century.
For SERASI ("Harmony), Gamelan Sekar Jaya will be joined by several other renowned Indonesian artists. The dance mastery of Nyoman Wenten and Nanik Wenten has been long recognized on US stages. They will lend their skills in pieces that evoke the vibrant atmosphere of a Balinese odalan, or temple festival. The concert will also feature I Made Moja, a dancer with a multidisciplinary background in painting and shadow theater. One of the special treats of the concert will be eight-year old Dewa Ayu Larassanti, who will perform a segment of Legong Kraton, the classical dance for young girls.
Musically, the concert will showcase the wide sonic and orchestral range that resounds from this tiny but culturally rich island. Gamelan Sekar Jaya's musicians will perform on four gamelan ensembles — percussion orchestras of bronze metalophones or bamboo marimbas, gongs, drums, and flutes. These are bronze gamelan gong kebyar, the four-tone ceremonial orchestra gamelan angklung; the rare ensemble of gigantic bamboo marimbas,
gamelan jegog, and the delicate gender wayang quartet.
Gamelan Sekar Jaya is an internationally acclaimed group of musicians and dancers that has made the performing arts of Bali its specialty. Founded in 1979, the group has presented more than four hundred concerts throughout California and on tours around the United States as well as to Canada, Mexico, and Indonesia. Its performances in Bali-in venues ranging from the Art Center in the capital city of Denpasar to remote village squares-have been greeted with wild enthusiasm by local audiences, artists and media. The group's success arises not only from its devotion to traditional repertoire but from its innovative work. Over the past twenty-eight years, it has sponsored the creation of more than eighty new works for gamelan and dance, created both by the Balinese artists who have joined the ensemble as guest directors and by U.S.-based artists. Gamelan Sekar Jaya's passion for innovation has found expression in unique collaborative projects, bringing the group together with dancers, theater artists, puppeteers, composers of new music for silent films, and symphony orchestras. These new pieces have won critical acclaim on both sides of the Pacific. The Boston Globe commented, "The success of this group has far exceeded its founders' wildest dreams as the ensemble has become an honored participant in the evolution of Bali's musical culture." During the group's fourth tour to Bali (July 2000), it was elected to receive the Dharma Kusuma-Bali's highest award for artistic achievement, never before given to a foreign group.
ARTIST BIO'S
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