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Go directly to: Bay Area Teenagers Study Chinese Opera Through ACTA’s Apprenticeship Program Sharing a Rare Repertoire: An Apprenticeship in Son Abajeño Dance An Apprenticeship in Persian Classical Music Arson Fire Leaves Karuk Sacred Ceremonial In Memoriam: Hamza El Din, 1929-2006 Proceeds from the license plate sales will benefit the California Arts Council (CAC) To subscribe to the weekly CAC update, please visit their website.
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WHAT'S NEWSubscribe to The New Moon, ACTA's Monthly E-Newsletter. See the latest edition of The New Moon. ACTA Announces California Cultureplace: Connecting with Traditional ArtistsThis month ACTA adds a new feature to its website entitled California Cultureplace: Connecting with Traditional Artists. California Cultureplace serves as a web-based gateway to help connect some of the state’s exemplary traditional artists with the general public, to build awareness for their artistry, skills, and traditions, and to help artists find meaningful work and opportunities to advance themselves. In the initial phase of this project, the artists chosen for California Cultureplace will come from the pool of artists who have been selected as master artists in ACTA’s Apprenticeship Program. In this program, expert reviewers evaluate applicants according to criteria including artistic quality and traditionality. In the future, ACTA staff will expand beyond this program in their curation of this site. If you are a current or past master artist in ACTA’s Apprenticeship Program and are interested in participating in California Cultureplace, please contact Mari Pongkhamsing at (415) 561-7894 or misaacs@actaonline.org. The California Cultureplace is supported with grants from the James Irvine Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Bay Area Teenagers Study Chinese Opera Through ACTA’s Apprenticeship Program
"Dang Ma" performance at the Academy of Chinese
Photo: Sophia Hsueh Mari Pongkhamsing, Special Projects Coordinator, ACTA Last month Gladys Ka Wai Liu and Zenon Anderson, two bay area teenagers, performed a fifteen minute Kunqu dance piece called “Dang Ma” at the Academy of Chinese Performing Arts’ annual recital. Participants in ACTA’s Apprenticeship Program, they worked intensively with master artist David Chen for seven months to learn this traditional Kun Opera piece. Kunqu dance comes from the Kun Opera, which originated in the Kunshan region of Jiangsu Province more than five hundred years ago. Liu and Anderson, who are gifted dancers, had to master complicated footwork and acrobatic movements as well as the dramatic recitation of operatic verses in Mandarin, a language that neither spoke fluently. Even learning to wear the costumes was a challenge. Liu had to learn to dance in platform shoes and a heavy headdress wrapped so tightly it makes many novice dancers feel ill. Their teacher, David Chen began studying dance with a Russian ballet teacher when he was only five years old. By the age of eight he had left his family to join a dance troupe. He studied Kunqu opera with nine different teachers both from the North and South of China, learning both Beijing and Sichuan opera styles. At the age of eighteen he enrolled as a student with the Shanghai Opera and Dance Theater and danced with them professionally as a principal dancer. When he injured his knee and couldn’t dance anymore, he became a teacher. When Chen moved to the United States in the late 1980s he worked whatever jobs he could find to save money to start his own dance studio. Now he has over 700 students at his two schools in Fremont and Cupertino and he returns to China regularly to teach professional students there. One of Chen’s main goals is to teach American-born Chinese students to love Chinese culture. This has certainly worked with his two apprentices, Gladys Liu and Zenon Anderson. Liu explained, “Chinese dance is my one connection to my culture.” She looks forward to coming to Chen’s studio every week because “it’s like a sanctuary” where she gets to practice something she loves and meet with friends who share her interests. Anderson first met Chen when he was a little boy watching through a window as some teenagers practiced martial arts. Chen came outside and sat Anderson on his knee, asking, “Do you want to learn Kung Fu? I will teach you.” The two have been working together ever since. Now Anderson looks forward to coming to Chen’s studio because it helps him relieve stress from the pressures of high school. Working with Chen has also helped him to learn more about his Chinese heritage. Anderson noted, “Without this I probably wouldn’t know anything about the Chinese side of my family.”
"Dang Ma" performance at the Academy of Chinese
Photo: Sophia Hsueh Chen explained that he chose Liu and Anderson to be his apprentices because they were his most experienced and hard working students. Now that they have completed their apprenticeship with Chen, both Liu and Anderson will continue to dance. They will perform “Dang Ma” again this summer at a competition in China. Next fall Liu will be attending UCLA and she plans to study dance in the World Arts and Cultures Program. “I can’t not dance” she explained, “I can’t really imagine myself not doing it.” Anderson will continue to study with Chen during his two remaining years of high school. Showing his devotion to his teacher Anderson concluded, “I will do anything he asks me to do.” Sharing a Rare Repertoire: An Apprenticeship in Son Abajeño Dance
Julian Gonzalez talks about life in rural Jalisco, Mexico.
Photo: Mari Pongkhamsing Mari Pongkhamsing, Special Projects Coordinator, ACTA Julian Gonzalez has been sharing the rural mariachi music and dance he remembers from his youth with members of Los Cenzontles Mexican Arts Center for over five years, but during the past six months he has been working intensively with Lucina Rodriguez through ACTA’s Apprenticeship Program. During this rigorous period of study Rodriguez has concentrated on four son abajeño dance pieces. Son abajeño is a pre-commercial mariachi music and dance style from rural Jalisco, Mexico. Julian Gonzalez grew up in a ranching community in rural Jalisco, Mexico. He learned to dance by watching his parents, uncles, and grandparents. As a child he would accompany his father to parties and sit by his side while he performed. Gonzales still remembers watching the older folks compete, both in dancing and in reciting verse. Gonzalez explained that he never had formal instruction; his teachers were “his mind and his feet.” When he was a young boy his school teachers started to take him to different towns to compete in dance and singing at nearby schools because they recognized his talent. As an adult Gonzalez became a vaquero, or cowboy, and played music professionally on the weekends. He fondly remembers dancing all night long and teaching his favorite horse to dance. He formed a group to play the old style of mariachi that he learned as a child. The mariachi ensembles would play in the plazas on Sunday nights and people would hire them to serenade their girlfriends. They also often performed outside at parties on the ranches, and Gonzalez had the opportunity to travel all over Mexico, performing with his band. His group, Mariachi Los Centenarios, competed in the 5th Encuentro Mundial de Mariachi in Guadalajara and won second place in the traditional mariachi category in 1997. In the 1950s he came to the United States through the Bracero Program, the binational temporary contract labor program initiated in 1942 by an agreement between the United States and Mexico, and traveled back and forth between California and Mexico. In 2000, he started working with Los Cenzontles Mexican Arts Center in San Pablo, teaching a new generation this old style of music and dance which few of his contemporaries now remember. That year ACTA supported the group’s first intensive apprenticeship between Don Julian and Los Cenzontles ensemble in rural mariachi music.
Lucina Rodriguez demonstrated Son Abajeño Dance
Photo: Mari Pongkhamsing Lucina Rodriguez explains that the dances she has been studying during the apprenticeship are very physically demanding. Like a tap dancer, the son abajeño dancer uses her feet to create a rhythmic sound that matches the music. Rodriguez described the challenge of executing the strenuous footwork without appearing out of breath. She also described the difficulty she sometimes faces translating Gonzalez’s instructions into movement. She explains, “I can’t give it as much energy as he can even though he’s older. He tells me to have joy and enthusiasm and I try, but there’s a spark that he has that I don’t have. He has a lot more experience. Maybe when I’m older I’ll be able to do it the same way.” Rodriguez also grew up in Jalisco, Mexico, and her family taught her to dance. As a child she danced to pop music, banda (Mexican band music), and cumbias (popular dance music that originated in Colombia) at parties and with her family at home. She never wanted to learn choreographed dance, like ballet folklorico, because it wasn’t interesting to her. She didn’t start to learn traditional mariachi and music and dance until she moved to the United States, but it appealed to her because it was a social art form that involved a lot of improvisation, like the dance styles she had grown up with. She explained, “I try to teach my students how to feel the music and improvise… that’s the lovely thing about this kind of music is that you have to dance what you feel and it’s not all about the show.” As their intensive apprenticeship comes to a close, Rodriguez describes how it can be both challenging and rewarding to work with a master artist. One has to have discipline, creativity, and patience to filter and translate everything they have to teach. She also has a very important role as an intermediary between the older and younger generations. She concludes, “He’s putting his trust in me so that I can translate and pass on that information to the next generation. It’s a big responsibility that I have.” An Apprenticeship in Persian Classical Music
Mohammad Nejad and Shahrzad Moghadam
Photo: Mari Pongkhamsing Mari Pongkhamsing, Special Projects Coordinator, ACTA Though she is only thirteen years old, Shahrzad Moghadam has already been studying Persian classical music with master artist Mohammad Nejad for four years. As a participant in ACTA’s Apprenticeship Program she is now in the middle of an intense nine-month period of study with her teacher to learn to play the santour (hammered dulcimer) and zarb (goblet drum) at an advanced level. She has already had the opportunity to perform a solo piece on the santour at the Youth World Music Festival in April, and is now preparing for another performance with the Festival in October. Inspired by his father and his older brother, Mohammad Nejad started learning to play music when he was five years old. His father played the ney, or Persian bamboo flute, and his brother played the zarb. Nejad learned to play the zarb and then added the ney and other Persian instruments as he got older. He went to a high school for musicians and went on to study Persian classical music at Tehran University. After graduating with his bachelor’s degree, he traveled to Turkey, India, and the United Arab Emirates to study with master musicians and learn new musical styles. When Nejad moved to the United States about thirteen years ago, he started teaching right away. There is a large Persian community in San Jose that appreciates and supports the arts and he saw that the youth needed a place to study Persian music. He started the Nejad World Music Center in San Jose which now serves over sixty students. Nejad believes his biggest accomplishment as a musician was organizing a Persian children’s orchestra in the Bay Area for the first time. He believes that the Persian community has felt great pride as they watch the children perform and improve. The orchestra includes between ten to twenty children who range in age from ten to seventeen.
Mohammad Nejad instructs Shahrzad Moghadam on the santour.
Photo: Mari Pongkhamsing Moghadam was first exposed to Persian music as a young child when she accompanied her mother to music lessons. She enjoyed playing with the instruments so much that her mother decided to enroll her in her lessons of her own. She began to learn the zarb and later added the santour. She is now playing advanced level music and Nejad has been focusing his instruction on advanced techniques of using the mezrab, or mallets used to play the santour, and advanced fingering and snapping techniques for the zarb. Nejad is also teaching Moghadam to tune the 72-stringed santour by ear. Once she has mastered a song, Moghadam loves to perform it and she especially enjoys practicing with her friends in the youth orchestra. Nejad and Moghadam will continue to work closely together even after the apprenticeship is finished because he is soon going to become her stepfather. He hopes that Moghadam will be able to help him teach in a few years. Moghadam hopes to become a master musician in addition to pursuing a career as a lawyer. Arson Fire Leaves Karuk Sacred Ceremonial
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