Co-artistic directors Keith Kahn and Ali Zaidi formed London-based moti roti ("fat bread" in Hindi), a design-media-performance collective, in 1991 in an effort to move beyond the polarized East-West divide and to create work that addresses the complexities and contradictions of contemporary global culture. The Builders Association, formed in 1994 in New York City and led by director Marianne Weems, reanimates theater for a contemporary audience by using current tools to interpret old forms, exploring the interface between live performance and media.



Their collaboration resulted in Alladeen, a transglobal exploration of how cultures blur, steal from, and reconfigure one another's myths. With a script cowritten by transcultural travel writer Pico Iyer (The Global Soul) and novelist-journalist Martha Baer, Alladeen features a cast drawn from both companies. The artists are also creating parallel Web-based and music-video projects in an effort to reach audiences "where they live"--in clubs and public spaces, via television, and in heavily trafficked centers for fashion, media, and art. Inspired by early central Asian legends of Alladeen and his various incarnations around the world (for example, Aladdin in the West), Alladeen is a powerful model of cultural interaction, drawing on such influences as the ongoing exchange between Bollywood and Hollywood, the international technology trade, and the influx of Indian computer engineers in the United States. A combination of electronic music, cutting-edge video technology, architectural set design, and live performance, Alladeen resonates with the contemporary concerns of instant gratification, wish fulfillment, and rampant consumerism.



More on moti roti:
Set up in 1991 by Keith Khan and Ali Zaidi, moti roti is a London based, artist-led organization, celebrating diversity and pushing the boundaries of artistic and cultural discourse. The name moti roti, hindi/urdu words meaning "fat bread," is an ironic titling that has a resonance with those who recognize either the language or the food. Although the artists straddle three or more cultures (Trinidad, Pakistan, India), they are not interested in the polarized and mythical East/West divide, but more about making work which speaks to many different people about complexities and contradictions of the current times.

The company produces a range of innovative and inspiring yet accessible exhibitions, events, and experience-led installations, which is relevant both to specific communities and the wider public. moti roti combines visual seduction with a sensitivity to space and an eye for transformation. Its work has been seen in New and Old Walsall Museum and Art Gallery to the streets of Notting Hill, from the Dome to the Royal Albert Hall, from Brick Lane to Tate Modern in London.

More on The Builders Association:
The company's productions combine historic and new texts with performance, sound, video, and architectural sets to create a world onstage that reflects the contemporary culture surrounding us. Since 1994, with a growing circle of artists, The Builders Association has collaborated on seven large-scale theater projects, including Master Builder (1994), The White Album (1995), Imperial Motel (Faust) (1996), Jump Cut (Faust) (1997), Jet Lag (1998-1999), and Xtravaganza (2000.) The company has also created two installations. Most recently, it has toured to the Barbican Theater, London; Kaaitheater, Brussels; the Rotterdamse Schouwburg; Marstall Theater, Munich; Maison des Arts, Creteil/Paris; Sommerscene, Copenhagen; Trafo Theater, Budapest; The Kitchen, New York; The Guggenheim Museum, New York, and many other venues..



Related links:
http://www.motiroti.com/
http://www.thebuildersassociation.org/

In 1985, brothers Rodrigo and Paulo Pederneiras (choreographer and artistic director, respectively) shocked the Brazilian dance community with their ballet Prelûdios (Preludes), presenting a previously unseen combination of intense physicality and radical design. The rhythmic complexity of Afro-Brazilian dance, mixed with an intimate knowledge of ballet and modern dance vocabulary, marked a significant moment in the creative evolution of Grupo Corpo (formed 1975) and for contemporary Brazilian dance. Based in Belo Horizonte, capital city of Minas Gerais and well known as a leading cultural center, the nineteen-member company's repertoire has been noteworthy for its constant mutation and development. Their dedication to the importance of overall design--from costumes to lighting and sets--has resulted in a unique cohesion between dancers, choreography, and original Brazilian music, including works by Tom Zé, João Bosco, Zé Miguel Wisnik, and experimental music group Uakti. O Corpo startles with an all-red design aesthetic, minimalist movement vocabulary, and a hypnotically edgy new score by art-rock composer Arnaldo Antunes. Their continuous search for new approaches has served to make Grupo Corpo a workshop of enduring invention.



--Diana Kim

Before starting his solo career in 1990, Japanese choreographer Kim Itoh studied with world-renowned Butoh master Anzu Furukawa. In a few short years, he has become an acknowledged leader in the next generation of post-Butoh and postmodern dance in Japan, forming the nine-member company The Glorious Future in 1995. He is known for his manic, ghostly, and occasionally disturbing balance of ballet, post-Butoh aesthetics, and striking theatricality. Itoh combines a ferocious punk energy with the sparseness and grace of many traditional Japanese art forms. I Want to Hold You addresses the fragility of human relationships in modern times, focusing on gender relations in contemporary Japanese society. Real physical contact vividly describes these relationships; couples hug, men and women cling to one another even as they are abandoned by their partners, but all are treated with Itoh's sense of discipline, humor, and irony.



--Diana Kim

In 1995 postmodern American choreographer Ralph Lemon (b. 1952) dissolved his popular touring dance ensemble to redirect his energies toward an exploration of new forms of performance and presentation. Collaborating with artists from diverse fields, he has produced an impressive array of performances, films, exhibitions, publications, and workshops. After presenting and hosting residencies around the first two Geography components at the Walker Art Center, Lemon returns to begin work on the final stage of his large-scale trilogy. Unfolding over the course of nine years, this complex dance-theater universe explores global sociopolitical ideas and the search for personal and artistic identity within the broader world arena. Incorporating performance traditions from across the world, each episode of the trilogy is a multinational collaboration of dance, theater, visual arts, and music.



During his residency in 2002-2003, Lemon and his performer-collaborators from Africa, China, and the U.S. will further develop House, part three of The Geography Trilogy, a work that examines the complicated folk culture of the American South through Lemon's own African American family history, spanning the eras from segregation to integration.



The Walker commissioned House as a central component of its How Latitudes Become Forms performance activities. The finished work will premiere at the Walker in fall 2004.

Experimental choreographer Wen Hui and pioneer filmmaker Wu Wenguang formed Living Dance Studio in Beijing in 1994. They create multimedia works that document intimate acts of life in modern China, with a particular focus on the everyday activities of women: folding clothes, washing hair, making love, giving birth. Living Dance Studio is China's first independent contemporary dance-theater company, operating entirely outside of the country's state-sponsored arts and entertainment systems. Affiliated artists range from freelance performers to members of state-owned troupes who work with the company in order to pursue ideas in an environment that nurtures free expression and artistic experimentation. Against the recent backdrop of a greatly altered commercial and consumer culture, Report on Body explores the often contradictory roles of Chinese women operating in the shadows of a male-dominated society and how their relationship to their bodies in the new capitalist China continues to be challenged and changed.



Wen began studying traditional Chinese dance in 1974, eventually studying modern technique and choreography with the prestigious Beijing Dance Academy, the Limón Institute, and the Trisha Brown Dance Company. Wu's films include the highly influential Bumming in Beijing (1990) and Jiang Hu (1999), among others. Report on Body is scheduled to premiere in Beijing in winter 2002.



--Diana Kim

Evolution theorist Richard Dawkins characterizes the human capacity to absorb and transmit cultural information as "memes." Lia Rodrigues investigates this idea in her dance-theater work Such Stuff As We Are Made Of, which translates a physical/visual landscape that privileges the body as an evolutionary stepping stone. Based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Rodrigues began her training in classical ballet at the Escola de Bailado de São Paulo, cofounded Grupo Andança in 1977, and danced with Compagnie Maguy Marin in France before returning to Rio de Janeiro to form her ten-member company in 1990. Such Stuff As We Are Made Of bridges the explosive cultural eclecticism and irreverent political commitment of the Tropicalismo movement in Brazil of the 1960s and 1970s with the hard-edged realities of the twenty-first-century global community. Referencing the human catastrophes of Kosovo, Ethiopia, and the ghettos of her native Brazil, the work posits the naked body as a manifesto for the victims of human culture, with dance as her means of commentary.



--Diana Kim

Moreno Veloso is in the vanguard of the new generation of Brazilian singers and composers. While only 27, he has already accomplished many years of touring experience with the likes of Gilberto Gil and his father, the legendary samba poet and founding father of Tropicalismo, Caetano Veloso.



Like his father, Veloso's talent is multidimensional, leaving many people curious as to why it has taken him so long to release his first album. He's been a little preoccupied completing his doctorate in physics, a field in which he is also a rising star. Like other leaders of the new Brazilian sound, Bebel Gilberto and Vinicius Cantuaria, Veloso succeeds in taking the parts of Brazilian music that he knows and loves, and weaves those sounds with the noises of the new millennium--he brings a slight electronic edge to the samba, and a discreet phat beat to the bossa nova. In ironic contrast to the now outdated machine its title employs, Music Typewriter is a sophisticated work that heralds the arrival of the future generation of Brazilian music.



Moreno on the making of Music Typewriter:
"When I was invited by Carlos Barmak to reinagurate the small concert room at the Museum of Modern Art in Sao Paulo, I called two friends to organize the show. One of them was [Alexandre] Kassin, who would play the bass, and the other was Domenico [Lancelloti], who would play electronic percussion and paint the stage with soundscapes.



We were a trio. As repertoire I chose songs that represented my life--some songs of my own, some by my friends. We performed in a more coherent way than we could imagine and the result was simple and beautiful. Then came the idea of transforming that performance into a record. I decided that what we had already as content was enough, and along with Kassin I started organizing myself in order to work.



We rented a house in the woods, up in Petropolis. We took the equipment we had, and counted on the help of some friends. All of us worked hard in the brand new recording studio we had created.



The unique architecture of the house, with its walls made of stone and glass, its spooky rooms and mirrors, provided us with an environment as peculiar as the sounds we intended to record. We spent three months there during wintertime.



Once the initial recording step was finished, we came down from the mountains and compiled the songs at the studios of Chico Neves, Daniel Jobim, and Dado Villa-Lobos. After having spent nine months shaping the project we invited Andres Levin to help us to finish it. We flew to New York to meet him and we--Moreno + 2--along with his crew, finally finished the job.



All people that I involved in this record represent a web of friendship, a web that created the final sound of Music Typewriter.



Moreno
October 2000