The Road to Bali   

Over the last four decades Bay Area artists and artist ensembles such as Gamelan Sekar Jaya, Larry Reed, Richard Marriott and Keith Terry have developed strong ties to artistic peers and their respective communities on the island of Bali. What is the importance of Balinese culture and thought that underpins and supports these creative meetings of minds and cultures? What impacts do these relationships have on both American and Balinese societies? And, why is the future of this practice important for the practitioners and collaborators, their immediate communities and the broader societies in which they exist?

ARTIST BIOS

Emiko Susilo is a choreographer, dancer, and vocalist known for her dynamic and soulful performance and for choreography that delves into questions of the contemporary world through work that is at once innovative and yet deeply rooted in tradition. Active in Balinese and Javanese performance for well over three decades, she began playing gamelan as a child and studied Balinese and Javanese dance under Ni Made Wiratini and the late master KRT Sasmintadipura. She has taught Balinese dance since 1992 and is the Associate Director of Çudamani in Bali and the Director of Gamelan Sekar Jaya in the Bay Area.

I Made Subandi is a renowned Balinese dalang, composer, and a virtuoso performer on the gender, kendang, and suling. He began his musical studies with his father, the famed drummer and gender wayang player I Made Dig. He continued his education at Sekolah Menengah Karawitan Indonesia and STSI (Music Conservatory). During his 1998-99 residency with Gamelan Sekar Jaya, he collaborated with Richard Marriott on a score for Legong: Dance of the Virgins, which has been repeatedly performed and is available on Milestone Video. Other residencies with Sekar Jaya have occurred in 2000-01 and 2012-13. He has also collaborated with Dutch trio Boi Akih, Australian composer Paul Grabowski, and American director Larry Reed. He is well known for his use of experimentation. Musicologist and composer Michael Tenzer describes Subandi as one of a few composers who "have achieved a self-conscious and fundamental break with the tabuh kreasi form of the recent past." 

Richard Marriott is the founder and artistic director of the Club Foot Orchestra, an ensemble best known for live music performance with silent films, with a repertoire of 14 scores. His other composition credits include the feature film Rising Sun, the television series The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat, the Academy Award nominee Silver Into Gold, scores for choreographers Sara Shelton Mann, Della Davidson, Yin Mei, and Yoshiko Chuma, operas including Divide Light (with visual artist Lesley Dill), Passion of Leyla (with librettist Ruth Margraff), and the experimental God Machine. He was also a staff composer for Atari Games. His Metropolis Violin Concerto premiered in 2015 and he is currently composing a Ghost Ship Concerto for Cello and Orchestra for the Oakland Symphony. Voyage is his second collaboration with Made Subandi, the first being a live soundtrack for Legong: Dance of the Virgins, scored for Balinese Gamelan, String Quartet, Clarinet, and Trumpet.

I Dewa Berata is a musician, composer, dancer, and visual artist from Pengosekan, Bali, Indonesia known for his vibrant leadership both onstage and off, and his ability to seamlessly bring together music, dance and visual design. He is the Founding Director of Çudamani, one of Bali’s most vibrant performing ensembles. He has led numerous international tours, including appearances at The Cultural Olypiade (Greece), The Tong Tong Festival (Holland), EXPO (Japan), Gedung Kesenian (Jakarta), Lincoln Center (New York), the World Festival of Sacred Music (Los Angeles), and The Juilliard School.  

Larry Reed is an internationally recognized theatre director and is one of the few American shadow masters of traditional Balinese Wayang Kulit. The Founder/Artistic Director of ShadowLight Productions, Reed has pioneered contemporary shadow theater by integrating traditional shadow theatre techniques with film, modern theatre and dance styles. Truly a multidisciplinary artist, Reed has also written, directed and produced films in the US and Mexico. Shadow Master (1979) has been shown on the PBS and Discovery Channels. Reed has garnered numerous awards and honors, and was named one of Top 50 Artists in the SF Bay Area by Metropolitan Magazine in 1995 and 1996.