This Wednesday, November 16, the University Musical Society is bringing ukulele player Jake Shimabukuro to the University of Michigan! The concert will take place in Hill Auditorium at 7:30pm.
Photo taken from http://www.jakeshimabukuro.com/home/photos/
Shimabukuro started playing ukulele at the age of four, and now he is doing concerts around the world! With a four-stringed instrument, he is able to play anything from classical music to popular songs such as Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”. More information on Jake Shimabukuro can be found at his website: http://www.jakeshimabukuro.com/home/
Photo taken from http://www.jakeshimabukuro.com/home/photos/
Tickets are on sale for $16.00-$60.00 (depending on the location of the seats) at http://ums.org/performance/jake-shimabukuro/.
When? Saturday, Nov 12 at 8:00 pm and Sunday, Nov 13 at 4:00 pm
Where? Hill Auditorium
How Much? Students: $20, General Admission: $50 – $185
Why? It has been 7 years since the Berlin Philharmonic last came to Ann Arbor, and it is the final US tour of the orchestra with their director Simon Rattle. They are performing some of the most spectacular pieces ever composed, including Mahler’s 7th Symphony and Brahms’ 2nd Symphony. It will be a couple days you do not want to miss.
The Mark Morris Dance Group performance was certainly a new experience for me. I have never been to such a mixed arts event in the past. Walking in, before the first people came on stage, before even the lights began to dim, you are immediately aware of the art of the performance because of the backdrop of the stage. There is this brilliant painting that sets the background for the entire performance, consisting of what appears to be large brush strokes sweeping across the canvas. The entire painting consists of only 3 colors, but as the lighting changes on stage, the painting changes colors as well. This sets the mood for the performance, as the rest of the dancers come out dressed in similarly bright colors.
At the beginning of the performance, a group of 4 musicians come on stage and perform a short piece that also begins immersing the audience into the world of Layla and Majnun. The music is accompanied by English captions above the stage, translating the story being told by the two singers in the group. Immediately, from the key of the music and the poetic quotations being presented in the captions, the audience gets a feeling for the tragic nature of this story.
Then, the entire music ensemble walks on stage. As the musicians begin playing, the dancers start to walk out two at a time. All of the female dancers are dressed in these brilliant pink flowing dresses, and the men are dressed in bright blue. This choice of colors perfectly contrasted the men from the women, as well as made the aesthetic of the stage come together beautifully with the painting in the backdrop. This can be seen in the image below, taken by Susana Miller.
Photo by Susana Miller
Throughout the performance, one is entranced by the beautiful singing of Alim Qasimov and Fargana Qasimova, seated directly in the middle of the stage and surrounded by the music ensemble. They demonstrated an incredible control over their vocal range and ability to express such deep emotion in their voices. I do have to say I was biased towards focusing on the musicians more than the dancers, since my training is in music, not dance. This also meant I was new to the style of dance the Mark Morris group utilized. It was predominantly lyrical, trying to showcase the tragedy of this love story through the movements of the body. However, this also meant there was not a focus on showcasing skill, so the performance was much more centered on telling the story of Layla and Majnun rather than exhibiting the dancers.In this way, the choreography often included simple physical movements that demonstrated love and loss, repeated by each male/female pair in the dance group.
Overall, I fell in love with the beautiful colors of the stage and the voices of the singers and the talents of the musicians, but I found myself unable to stay focused on the dancers. My eyes kept drifting back to watch Alim and Fargana perform extraordinary cadenzas effortlessly. I would love to see the Mark Morris Dance Group perform in a more dance-central piece, but I was not able to experience the character and skill of the group in this performance.
October has been a very exciting month for orchestra lovers; from the New York Philharmonic’s residency in Ann Arbor earlier this month to this performance by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, we have not been disappointed.
A bit of bragging moment: earlier that day, I had an opportunity to play for Dwight Parry, an oboist from Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra who has been touring with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as the principal oboe. He was very inspirational — with much focus on technique as well as musicality, I learned a lot from him. Here’s a proof:
Oboist Dwight Parry (right) instructing me at the master class.
As a orchestral musician, Mr. Parry has a lot of experience in auditioning and judging auditions. Many of us classical musicians stress over the whole audition process all the time. Winning a position in an orchestra through auditions is extremely difficult — with hundreds of well-qualified applicants fighting over one seat, which is typically to be filled for decades once someone wins the spot. He mentioned that, when he is judging auditions, he is looking for a “colleague” — someone that can play in tune and in tempo, and that is overall pleasant to work with. These words stuck out to me as a lesson.
After that interaction with Mr. Parry, seeing him among many other superb musicians of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra made me feel much closer to the orchestra. And I thought a lot about colleagues in an ensemble. What does it mean to play with the same people on your left and on your right for many, many years? Ideally, these players would develop the chemistry among them that make the “group” sound instead of “individual” sounds. However, this is not always the case, as conflicts and drama do happen. How do you act professional and deliver high-quality music to the audience with your colleagues?
To me, CSO seemed to do this very well. From the first “overture” — “The Victors” — to the last movement of Mahler’s First Symphony, the chemistry was there. (Has “The Victors” become a new tradition for all orchestras visiting Ann Arbor to play?) Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony (with the iconic “duh-duh-duh-dummmmm” in the first movement) and Mahler’s First Symphony (with full of contrasts and shining moments for all instruments) are both classic favorites, and CSO gave no less than spectacular.
UMS has two more (international!) orchestras coming this season: Royal Philharmonic Orchestra from London in January, and Montreal Symphony Orchestra from Quebec in March. I am very much looking forward to exploring more orchestral artistry in the upcoming months.
From the very first moment to the last, the Butoh dance company Sankai Juku captivated all audiences with their movements. All eight company members exerted utter control over their bodies, in the artistic sense that we do not see in the Western dance forms.
Founded by Ushio Amagatsu in 1975, Sankai Juku is one of the leading Butoh dance company from Japan. Butoh is an indescribable and difficult-to-define genre with playful and grotesque imagery, taboo topics, and extreme or absurd environments. As with many other Butoh dancers, performers of Sankai Juku paint their bodies white, shave their heads, and wear simple costumes — either all-white or white with one additional color. As a result, they look much like classical marble statues dancing on stage. In fact, the idea of using cloth-wrapping as their costume was inspired by ancient Greeks and Romans, when these clothes were considered gender-neutral and generic. (It was nice to be able to read this article in Japanese to find this out.)
Ushio Amagatsu in his solo act of “UMUSUNA”. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Although the marble statues may be a Western/European idea, Sankai Juku diverges from the Western aesthetics in dance in many ways. The biggest one is the ideas surrounding “tension” — Amagatsu describes Butoh as “a conversation with gravity”, in which the dancers seek to achieve “relaxation” by going along with gravity in their movements as much as possible. In ballet, dancers intentionally add tension by dancing en pointe and lifting up their bodies; in Butoh, they intentionally bring down their center of gravity. As such, each movement is very slow and steady — in the opening 20-feet-walk that could take 3 seconds in our daily life, Amagatsu takes 3 minutes. Choreography incorporates lying down, crawling, bending, gasping for air, and many other movements that are vital in our life — “UMUSUNA” is the concept of entering into a world, on a blank slate.
UMUSUNA is a very old word originating from ancient Japan that has the same root as ubusuna (one’s place of birth). Ubusu means birth, the beginning of life, or entering the world. The word umusu also embodies the concepts of everything and hothing, existence and nothingness. Na evokes the land, the ground/sosil. and one’s native place. (Taken from program notes)
In the simplistic stage setup for “UMUSUNA,” sand constantly falling from the ceiling reminds us of time that flows very slowly and steadily. One scene flows to the next seamlessly. To me, the most incredible scene change was the one from “III. Memories from water” and “IV. In winds blown to the far distance.” After four dancers spent the entire act crawling, sliding, and lying down on the sand-covered platform, the lighting changes to cast shadow on the traces that these dancers have made. Then, the dancers gradually switch out — and the new dancers stare at the traces made by their predecessors — as if they are looking back to their infancy and childhood, their “birthplace (ubusuna)”.
Watching Sankai Juku’s performance challenged me to think about contemporary dance from different perspectives. It makes me feel very happy that these people have come from Japan to perform — the same ubusuna as me. Thanks (again) UMS and Pomegranate Arts for bringing this wonderful performance to Ann Arbor!
On Friday, October 25, Ann Arbor welcomes back Sankai Juku with their performance of “UMUSUNA: Memories Before History”. Sankai Juku is a dance group from Japan who specializes in the dance form of Butoh, an indescribable and difficult-to-define genre with playful and grotesque imagery, taboo topics, and extreme or absurd environments. As with many butoh dance groups, Sankai Juku performs in all-white makeups and minimal costumes, on a simply decorated set. The focus is on the dancers’ movements — they are not necessarily “beautiful” or soothing, but they convey strong messages on philosophical matters and evoke strong emotions.
Intern from UMS, Rachel Stopchinski writes in her UMS Lobby post:
Butoh performance, like Sankai Juku’s UMUSUNA: Memories Before History, which plays at the Power Center this October, often aren’t narrative. The symbolism of their intense movement vocabulary is left for the audience to decipher. I expect this performance will call to my mind my experiences both in the forests of Mt. Fuji and elsewhere, experiences that attempted to illuminate the complex relationship between Japanese culture and the environment. We interacted, even climbed inside, the earth. We wondered what it would have been like before human interaction—a history we can only imagine.
Over the past summer, I had the privilege to work with Pomegranate Arts, a small independent arts management company in New York that manages many artists including Sankai Juku in North America. As an intern, I helped out with some parts of filling out the visa application for everyone in the group, and I had to compile a packet of reviews from around the world about Sankai Juku. One of the interview pieces I’ve come across was of Ushio Amagatsu, the choreographer for “UMUSUNA” and the founder/director of Sankai Juku, who mentioned the importance of birthplace in this piece:
Firstly, the word umusuna in the title – a similar word would be ubusuna – is an old word meaning “the place you were born.” The word primarily refers to a small area, but if you take a broader, universal, planet-wide perspective, I think it’s possible to imagine lots of places where humans were born on Earth. So, I created this piece to express the places where humans have a connection with nature, comprised of the elements of earth, water, fire, and air, and to also bring time into the mix.
Sankai Juku’s dance performance is nothing like you’ve seen in the past. (Unless you’ve seen them at their earlier UMS appearance, of course!) It is not meant to meet the beauty standards of ballet or American contemporary dance, and challenges your view on how dance can look like. The troop’s unique aesthetic and artistry is definitely something to check out.
When: October 23 and 24 at 8pm
Where: Power Center
Tickets: $12/20 for students. Available for purchase at the Michigan League Ticket Office, or ums.org/tickets.
