BARD IN CHINA TO HOST A PANEL ON RESEARCH ON ARTS IN ASIA ON MONDAY, APRIL 11

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.—On Monday, April 11, Bard in China will gather a panel of artists, teachers, and students to discuss research on arts in Asia. The panel, “Seeing Traditional Asian Arts through Contemporary Eyes,” will include presentations on contemporary interpretations of Noh, Kabuki, and Bunraku theater; the evolution of the People’s Square, the cultural center of Shanghai; openness and freedom in Tang Dynasty dress; and an exploration of Balinese dance and music. The discussion takes place at 7:30 p.m. in room 115 of the Olin Language Center. The talk is presented by Bard in China with support from the Freeman Undergraduate Asian Studies Initiative. Panelists include: Chiori Miyagawa Title: “The Oldest Living Theater of the World: Noh, Kabuki, and Bunraku” Miyagawa is a playwright and an associate professor of theater at Bard College. Her plays have been produced off-Broadway and in alternative theaters in New York City—most recently, Red Again, which premiered off-Broadway at The Women’s Project this past fall, as part of the Antigone Project. Her work has been supported by numerous grants and fellowships, including the New York Council for the Arts Playwriting Fellowship, the Van Lier Playwriting Fellowship, The McKnight Fellowship, the Rockefeller Muti-Arts “Living Theater of Japanese Traditions” Production Fund (twice), and the Freeman Foundation. Her plays have been published in six different anthologies. Talk description: Professor Miyagawa will discuss three forms of theater, and the contemporary artists who practice them and keep the forms alive. Last spring, she brought some of these artists and scholars to Bard for a lecture series on traditional Japanese theater. Jiahua Erica Yao Title: “The People’s Square in Shanghai” Originally from China, Yao is an art history major at Bard who has a strong interest in architecture. After she spent a semester in Florence, Italy, studying architectural theories and design, she went to Shanghai in June 2004 and did research on the People’s Square, which is the political and cultural center of the city. She is interested in pursuing a master degree in architecture after Bard. Talk description: This research looks at the dynamic evolutions of the People’s Square and tries to understand the political and economic forces that have driven the transformations of this public space at the center of Shanghai. Winnie Yingxian Liu Title: “The Art of Tang Dynasty Dress” Liu was born in Guangzhou, China, in 1982 and moved to New York with her family in 1997. Having attended Brooklyn International High School, she is now majoring in studio art at Bard College. While soft sculpture is her primary concentration, she also enjoys painting. She spent a semester in Italy a year ago, learning and exploring the arts of Europe. She expects to graduate with a B.A degree in May. Talk description: The Tang was an unprecedented period in Chinese history during which women wore see-through silk and exposed their flesh. Even today, most parts of China still consider the exposure of woman’s flesh as immoral. Due to the openness to the West and the international communities and trades in Xi’an (Chang’an, capital of Tang Dynasty) in the Tang, its fashion adopted many minorities and western styles. The court dress of the Tang has a much more artistic value than any other periods because of its liberal styles, materials, and colors. For her Senior Project, Liu is using transparent chiffon (a western material very much like transparent silk, but much cheaper) as a symbol for seeking openness and freedom and incorporation with western material. The unique shape of the Tang robe dominates most of Liu’s artworks. The crossing of materials, cultures, and identities is the essence of her project. Lela Chapman Title: “Structure and Characterization in Balinese Music” Chapman is currently assistant director of Gamelan Dharmaswara, the Balinese orchestra at the Consulate of Indonesia in New York City. She has performed at New York University, LaMama Theater, Winter Garden at the World Financial Center, Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Hall, Yale University, Wesleyan University, and others. She is also an assistant instructor of the Bard College student gamelan. She currently works as a freelance writer and lives in Germantown, New York. She graduated from Bard with a B.A. in music in 2004. Talk description: The basic aim of Chapman’s research was to unlock meaning in Balinese performance (dance and music), to go beyond the foreigner’s aesthetic appreciation of a nice performance and understand and engage the language of the performers—the characters represented by the dancers, the cues spoken by the drum and deciphered by the musicians, and the kind of music that supports a certain character or mood. For more information about the lecture, please call 845-758-7388 or e-mail [email protected]. # # # (4.01.05)

This event was last updated on 04-12-2005

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