Shifted Focus: Retrospective @ de Young January 23, 2009

SHIFTED FOCUS: Performance Night at the De Young

An evening of performances featuring PremaSoul, Ledoh and Iu-Hui Chua, Samantha Chanse, Lenora Lee, and Greg Watanabe and Todd Nakagawa of the 18 Mighty Mountain Warriors

Friday, January 23, 2009
6.00 - 8.30pm
de Young
Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, San Francisco
FREE performance
Gallery admission free to museum members; regular admission rates apply ($10 adults, $7 seniors, $6 youths (13-17) and college students with ID).

SCHEDULE:
6pm - PremaSoul
6:30pm - Ledoh and Iu-Hui Chua
7-7:30pm - break to see AAWAA artists at work and exhibitions on view
7:30 - Lenora Lee
7:45pm - Samantha Chanse
8:15 - Todd Nakagawa and Greg Watanabe of the 18MMW

This evening is part of Kearny Street Workshop's SHIFTED FOCUS: A 10th Anniversary APAture Retrospective Exhibition and Performance Series. The entire museum, including galleries, stays open until 8:45 p.m. The cafe and a no-host cocktail bar are open for dinner and drinks.
About the artists

The Emmy Award-winning 18 Mighty Mountain Warriors have been together since 1994 and in that time have created 12 all-new material feature shows, 3 original collaborations with Culture Clash, Campo Santo and Latina Theatre Lab, and performed in New York City, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Chicago, Houston, and Phoenix, among other cities. Inspired by groups such as Monty Python's Flying Circus, Culture Clash, SNL, and Kids in the Hall, their irreverent style of skit comedy ranges from slapstick to political and takes no prisoners. As artists and activists, the group seeks to explore and articulate images of Asian Pacific Islander Americans alternative to what has been perpetuated in the mainstream media. One of the groupÕs strategies is to push the envelope as comedic performers in both style and content, as well as to break down prevailing stereotypes and promote more positive images. Two members of the group, Todd Nakagawa and Greg Watanabe, will perform comedic skits. www.18mmw.com

Acclaimed dancer Lenora Lee directs, choreographs and produces her own works nationally and internationally. In recent years she has been developing a cycle of works based on the investigation of oneÕs ever changing perspective on the past and on memory. They cycle includes A Timeless Jump (2005) You Quietly. . .(2006), Gale Winds & Turiya (2007) and Exposed (2007). LenoraÕs unique movement language captures a speed and precision similar to that of martial arts and a detail in gesture and communication to the likeness of sign language, improvisation and jazz music. She has collaborated in multicultural and multidisciplinary performances with musician-composer, Francis Wong, Japanese dancer/taiko artist, Melody Takata, American Indian vocalist/bassist John Carlos Perea, Cuban and Brazilian percussionist, Jimmy Biala, cellist Loren Kiyoshi Dempster and flautist/taiko artist, Kaoru Watanabe. Lenora recently worked with Melody Takata and Genny Lim in TakataÕs Quest and Shimenawa, at Counterpulse.

PremaSoul is an eclectic musical ensemble that combines a sacred Indian and soulful American sound. Fusing Indian melodies and mantras with jazz, blues, and R & B, the music of PremaSoul echos tradition and resonates into the present. One member of the group, Robin Sukhadia, has been presented a number of times at APAture and is currently teaching a music workshop at KSW. Robin recently completed an MFA at the California Institute of the Arts and has been studying tabla under Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri at CalArts and the Ali Akbar College of Music in San Rafael, California for the past seven years. His special focus on the musical traditions and rhythms of south Asia informs his approach to musical arrangement and composition on a wide range of concert, film and album productions.

Samantha Chanse is a writer and performer, primarily of plays and standup comedy. A native of NYC who has been living in San Francisco since 2001, her work has been produced by the Asian American Theater Company and Bindlestiff Studio, and has been presented at Berkeley Repertory Theatre through the San Francisco PlayGround series, the Magic Theatre, American Globe Theatre, among others. She received an individual artist commission from the San Francisco Arts Commission to develop her first full-length solo play, LYDIA'S FUNERAL VIDEO, which premiered in February 2008 at the Dark Room in San Francisco under the direction of Wilma Bonet, and was produced again in NYC in August 2008 as part of the 2008 New York International Fringe Festival. As a standup comic, Sam plays a range of rooms, from dimly lit bars and cafes to venues including Herbst Theater, The Laugh Factory (NY and LA), and Punchline Comedy Club. www.samanthachanse.com.

Ledoh is an internationally-renowned multi-media performance artist who trained in Japan under Butoh Master Katsura Kan (member of the radical 70s collective BYAAKOSHA), and has since performed around the globe for over 15 years. Born into the Ka-Ren hilltribe, Ledoh came to America at age 11 to escape the oppression of his people by the brutal dictatorship holding power in Burma. As Artistic Director of SALT FARM, Ledoh choreographs with a raw movement vocabulary and directs the production of sets, video art, and musical scores to create a vital, visceral brand of live theater and site-specific installations that can soothe then shock within the span of a timeless moment. He will be joined by Iu-Hui Chua to perform a selection from their recent project, COLORMEAMERICA.

Official Website: http://kearnystreet.org