India Jazz Suites October 21, 2011

INDIA JAZZ SUITES
THE AWARD-WINNING INTERNATIONAL SENSATION

Kathak, India’s Classical Dance Tradition
Meets Tap Dance, the Uniquely American Art Form
Featuring
Pandit Chitresh Das, India’s Foremost Kathak Dance Master and Emmy Award Winner Jason Samuels Smith, One of the World’s Fastest Tap Dancers

Friday & Saturday, October 21/22, 2011 at 8:00 p.m.
Carpenter Performing Arts Center, Long Beach

(Los Angeles, CA) September 6, 2010 – Chitresh Das Dance Company’s Founder and Artistic Director, Chitresh Das, India’s foremost Kathak Dance Master and a National Heritage Fellow, teams up with one of the world’s fastest tap dancers, Emmy Award winner Jason Samuels Smith for India Jazz Suites, an explosive collaboration that crosses all boundaries of age, race and culture. Das and Smith use rhythm and improvisation, to create high entertainment blast of incredible speed and power, grace and beauty, epic storytelling and the pure joy of dance. The performance, presented by the Carpenter Performing Arts Center on Friday and Saturday, October 21 and 22 at 8:00 p.m., at the Martha B. Knoebel Dance Theater in Long Beach, launches India Jazz Suites’ seventh international tour across 11 cities in the United States and Canada.

Listed as the #1 dance performance of 2005 by the San Francisco Chronicle and was selected by the Boston Globe as the top 10 performance of 2010, India Jazz Suites has become an international sensation since it first premiered in San Francisco in 2005. The production is a collaboration for our modern times: instead of fusing the art forms of Kathak and Tap, each artist, as masters of their own forms, uses the common ground of footwork (at break-neck speeds or slowly with great finesse), rhythm, improvisation, and movement to explore and shed new light on the Kathak and Tap traditions and engage in dialogue.

Portions will highlight the unique approach that Kathak and Tap have to footwork and rhythm, to spoken word within the dance forms (the recitation of the ancient North Indian classical rhythmic language and the contemporary form of rap), as well as the distinct percussive traditions associated with both dance forms (on Tabla and Jazz drums). Das also performs his innovation Kathak Yoga, in which he simultaneously sings, plays Tabla and performs complex footwork at incredible speeds. India Jazz Suites features some of the world’s finest Indian classical and Jazz musicians: Debashish Sarkar (Vocals), Jayanta Banerjee (Sitar), Biplap Bhattacharya (Tabla), Theo Hill (Piano), Rashaan Carter (Bass), and Channing Cook Holmes (Drums).

The program opens with members of the critically-acclaimed Chitresh Das Dance Company – Rachna Nivas, Anjali Nath and Rina Mehta - performing Tarana, a piece that characterizes the pure dance energy of Kathak, Das’ dynamic choreography and CDDC members’ exceptional ability.

Pandit Chitresh Das, 66 years young and Jason Samuels Smith, 29 years old, got to know one another jamming backstage at the 2004 American Dance Festival. That experience created the inspiration for this collaboration. Das and Smith were both child prodigies who began dancing and performing at a young age. Both are open to exploration with other artists and forms and both believe passionately that the arts can bring communities together to create greater understanding and awareness. This ground-breaking multi-generational multi-ethnic collaboration has toured the country and India for over six years in a row and is currently the subject of a feature-length documentary, UPAJ, being produced for PBS. For more information about the documentary, visit http://upajmovie.com/.

The Chitresh Das Dance Company has been based in San Francisco and India for the past 30 years. In 2008, with support from the James Irvine Foundation, CDDC expanded its programming to the greater Los Angeles area. CDDC works in partnership with presenters and community organizations to bring world-class traditional, innovative and collaborative works featuring Kathak dance to local audiences. In addition, CDDC’s affialiate school, the Chhandam School of Kathak provides education to children, teens and adults in the community in Kathak dance. Currently, classes are offered in Los Angeles and Orange County.

Tickets for India Jazz Suites are $28; discounts for group sales. Tickets are available at www.carpenterarts.org or at the Arts Ticket Office at (562) 985-7000. The Martha B. Knoebel Dance Theater at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center is located at 6200 Atherton Street, Long Beach, CA 90815. Parking is available in lot 12 in front of the Carpenter Center. The Theater is located on Atherton Street between Bellflower Blvd. and Palo Verde Ave. Long Beach Transit: Los Angeles Metro Blue Line to 1st Street, transfer to bus line #173, exit in front of Center before Atherton/Studebaker stop. For more information on the Chitresh Das Dance Company and Kathak, please visit http://www.kathak.org.

Official Website: http://www.kathak.org