Rain Coloring Forest (2010)
A major collaborative work with Indonesian dancer/choreographer/artist Sardono W. Kusumo, artist and lighting designer Jennifer Tipton, composer David Rosenboom, and video/animation artist Maureen Selwood. Rosenboom created live electronic music for this work making extensive use of processed audio samples from the environment and people of Papua, Indonesia.
Photo: Scott Groller
Evocative movement and music emanate from a lush visual environment in this world premiere performance created during a REDCAT residency by legendary Indonesian visionary Sardono W. Kusumo and his dancers in collaboration with artist and lighting designer Jennifer Tipton, composer David Rosenboom, and video/animation artist Maureen Selwood. Widely revered for artistry transcending any traditional performance or visual discipline, Sardono recently created a vast collection of 30-foot tall scroll paintings inspired by the Tibetan "Tanka" form. The virtual forest of hanging paintings is now transformed by Tipton's mastery of light and shadow into a compelling and evolving visual environment for performance. Vivid movement and musical elements that feel both contemporary and ancient bring new dimensions to the rainforest imagery, evoking rituals of historic Indonesian tribes and deeply personal quests for peace and a sense of belonging in a time of visceral global change. Multi-dimensional projections, including abstracted imagery of dances new and old, are combined with a rich, live score of electronic sounds shaped by vocal gestures to expand on the universal themes introduced by Sardono, who says he dances "as a man who has lost or been uprooted from his own culture."
Rain Coloring Forest is made possible by the Contemporary Art Centers (CAC) network, administered by the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA), with major support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. CAC is comprised of leading art centers, and brings together performing arts curators to support collaboration and work across disciplines, and is an initiative of NEFA's National Dance Project.