(photo: Cedar-Bough Saeji)
Performances
Anatta
Choreographed and directed by Waewdao Sirisook and Michael Sakamoto
Music and sound by Bob Bellerue and Amy Knoles
Performed at:
Chiang Mai University Art Center, Chiang Mai, Thailand
Highways Performance Space, Santa Monica, CA
Conduit Dance, Inc., Portland, OR
Available for touring. Contact Michael Sakamoto at 310-562-7947 or msakamoto (at) michaelsakamoto.com.
Anatta is a program of new collaborative works by acclaimed new music and sound art composers Amy Knoles and Bob Bellerue and dancer/performers Michael Sakamoto and Waewdao Sirisook. Combining electronic mixology, lo-tech invention, Butoh, contemporary performance, and traditional Thai dance, these artists delve into contemplative physical practices and imagery based in Buddhist concepts such as impermanence/permanence, joy/suffering, and form/emptiness to express a benevolent core of human experience and mind/body/spirit integration.
BIOS:
Michael Sakamoto creates interdisciplinary performances in butoh-based dance theater and contemporary theater as well as photography, installation, and media art. Drawing on influences as diverse as the dark, visceral physicality of butoh, the weighted presence and minimalism of Zen, and pop culture from around the globe, his works express a subversive yet benevolent multiculturalism caught within an absurdist east/west dialectic. He has received numerous awards and grants, including from the Asian Cultural Council, DanceUSA, Meet the Composer, Japan Foundation, and James Irvine Foundation. Since 1998, Michael has performed and exhibited his works in Europe, Mexico, and throughout the USA. From 1994-2000, he was also a featured soloist in the Rachel Rosenthal Company.
Bob Bellerue is a composer and noise artist based in New York City. Over the last 20 years, he has been involved in a wide range of live creative weirdness - homemade percussion ensembles, Balinese gamelan, dance, performance art, sound scores, and installation art. For the last eight years, he’s been primarily focused on live experimental electronic noise art and has toured extensively in the Western United States as well as Europe and Indonesia. Bob was formerly based in Los Angeles, where he ran the sub-garde, experimental music/performance space, the Il Corral, and curated the Beyond Music series and festival. He is active in various ensembles (including KILT, Feed the Dragon, Purple Pansy and LAMFs) and is engaged in long-term performance projects with choreographer Wanda Z. Gala. He currently runs the Anarchymoon Recordings record label. Website at halfnormal.com.
Amy Knoles (Composer, Musician, Multimedia Artist) is one of the leading international new music artists out of Southern California in the last two decades. She tours globally as a soloist performing computer assisted live electronic music with electronic percussion controllers and linear/interactive video. Amy is the Executive Director of the California E.A.R. Unit and also works with Kronos Quartet, the Paul Dresher Ensemble, Collage Dance Theater, the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group, Ensemble Modern of Frankfurt, The Bang On A Can All Stars, and Basso Bongo. Amy has worked with John Cage, Elliott Carter, Morton Feldman, Louis Andriessen, Don Preston, Frank Zappa, Morton Subotnick, Steve Reich, Tod Machover, Flea, Quincy Jones, Milton Babbitt, Charles Wournien, M. Kagel, John Luther Adams, John Adams, and many others.
Recent commissions include: a sound environment for the J. Paul Getty Museum; a performance score for “Sleeping With The Ambassador,” Collage Dance Theater; BELGO, a piece commissioned by Vicki Ray for solo pianist and electronics; and Rachel Rosenthal's final solo work, “Ur-Boor.” Amy has recorded nearly 30 CD's of new music and is proud to announce the release of her solo recordings "Men in the Cities" and "2 x 10 x 10 x 10 + 1", on the Echograph Label. Ms. Knoles has recorded for Sony Classics, Echograph, Cold Blue, Barking Pumpkin, CRI, Voyager CD-ROM, New Albion, Nonesuch, New World, O.O. Discs, C.B.S., R.C.A., Relativity, and Crystal Records. Amy is a recipient of the “UNESCO International Prize for the Performing Arts-2000,” the 2001 Lester Horton Award for “Outstanding Achievement in Original Music for Dance,” 1999-2000 "Individual Artist Fellowship" Award from C.O.L.A. to create an hour long multi-media work "2 x 10 x 10 x 10 + 1" and she was the 1996 ASCAP Foundation " Composer-in-Residence at the Music Center of Los Angeles."
Amy has headlined on the "Sacred Rhythm Festival" in Bali and Kyoto, the Audio Art Festival, Crakow, Video Topiques, Les Musees des Strasbourg, Ojai Festival, the "Totally Huge New Music Festival," Australia, "Sunshine on Noir," Denmark, the Utah Festival and performed on the Helsinki Festival, the Spoleto Festival, Sommer Theater Festival-Hamburg, The Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, The Cyber Arts Festival, The Eesti Festival, The Aspen Dance Festival, at Het Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Yale University, the Julliard Conservatory of Music, and others. Amy received her MFA from California Institute for the Arts.
Photo: Cedar-Bough Saeji