Gamelan Sekar Jaya

World premiere of Bayangan Jiwa at Cowell Theater, SF
Performances at 4pm and 8pm
Tickets: available soon. Online Box Office

A new work for dance, shadow, and gamelan semarandana created by I Dewa Putu Berata and Emiko Saraswati Susilo, performed by 35 GSJ musicians & dancers. The performance will be shared with Sundanese gamelan ensemble Pusaka Sunda, led by Pak Burhan Sukarma and Rae Ann Stahl. Part of Fort Mason Center Presents which is supported by San Francisco Grants for the Arts.

Bayangan Jiwa will draw upon the rich melodic possibilities of the Semarandana instruments, an ensemble composed of metallaphones, gongs, and flutes with seven pitches instead of the more common four or five-toned ensembles ubiquitous in Bali. New choreography by Emiko Saraswati Susilo will feature innovative movement specifically created to explore dance via shadow-lighting technology. Bayangan Jiwa, meaning both “the spirit’s image” and “the imagination of the spirit,” investigates how the human spirit navigates the space between darkness and light, movement and stillness, and sound and silence. The visual components of Bayangan Jiwa, developed in tandem with the choreography, will highlight the interplay between the ethereal body (represented in shadow movement) and the atmosphere in which it draws it’s growth, imagination, and state of being.
(Photo: Fletcher Oakes 2011)