THE ASIA SOCIETY PRESENTS A NEW COMMISSIONED MULTIDISCIPLINARY WORK OF MUSIC AND POETRY

IN WHAT LANGUAGE? a song cycle of lives in transit

Four Performances - Opening Night, Thursday, May 8, 2003, 8 p.m.

Asia Society presents the premiere of In What Language? A Song Cycle of Lives in Transit, a poignant and moving work of music and poetry by composer Vijay Iyer and librettist Michael Ladd. This is the first creative collaboration between these two leading contemporary performing artists. In What Language? is conceived as an urban song cycle that explores expressions of cultural identity and persistent stereotypes in an age of expansive global diaspora through a series of interior monologues by fictional passengers in transit at an international airport. The airport, which is literally a point of entry and departure, acts as a setting as well as a metaphor for the larger social milieu of which it is an extension. The piece encapsulates in a microcosm the multi-layered dynamic of a community of diverse people and cultures, and concurrently portrays the complex, personal realm inhabited by each individual character. A distinctive feature of the work, which is scored for an ensemble of seven musicians and three speaking voices, is the continuous, organic dialogue between the sequence of music and text.

Four performances will be held at the Asia Society and Museum, 725 Park Avenue (at 70th Street) in New York City, at 8:00 p.m., from Thursday, May 8 through Sunday, May 11. Tickets are $20($16 for Asia Society members, students and seniors). Group discounts are available. Tickets can be purchased at the Asia Society Box Office or by calling (212) 517-2742.

In What Language? draws its title and inspiration from the recent experience of Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, who, upon arriving at JFK Airport for a film festival in the U.S., was barred entry into the country and unjustly detained by INS officials. Handcuffed and frustrated, Panahi desperately attempted to explain his plight: “‘I’m not a thief! I’m not a murderer! I’m not a drug dealer! I … I am just an Iranian, a filmmaker. But how could I tell this, in what language?’” His pleas were unsuccessful and he was ultimately deported. Ironically, this incident, which occurred prior to 9/11, has greater resonance in today’s socio-political environment, characterized by deep mistrust of ‘foreigners’ and ‘outsiders’ and strongly demarcated ethnic and cultural identities. The piece articulates this disturbing but stark reality through a collection of stories representing the experiences of individual characters connected to an airport.

According to Rachel Cooper, Director of Performing Arts and Cultural Programs at the Asia Society, “Michael Ladd and Vijay Iyer have devised a bold and original work that is a social commentary on the situation of immigrants and people of color in the United States today. This new commissioned piece reinforces the Asia Society’s role as a hothouse and forum for new ideas and forms of cultural expression – challenging expectations, defying stereotypes and pushing the boundaries of creativity.”

In Michael Ladd’s libretto, each character comes from a particular corner of the globe with very personal intentions, insights and experiences. Ladd and Iyer have devised the intimate ‘inner world’ of these characters on the basis of real-life experiences of individuals, original source materials – including relevant news articles and autobiographies – as well as official INS documents. In their words, “In What Language? is a realistic discourse on both the positive aspects of multiculturalism as well as the difficult negotiations people are having to contend with on a personal level due to the international crisis we are in.”

The piece opens with theme of migration – across continents and centuries, driven by history and circumstance – and then settles in the mega city of New York, a ‘magnet’ for multitudes of people who arrive at these shores in pursuit of their hopes and dreams. While people seemingly ‘disappear in airports’ and are swallowed up in the cycle of life, their aspirations live on and as the tale unfolds, we get a glimpse of the dreams and apprehensions of every migrant to a foreign land. And so we hear the stories: of the porn seller from Bangladesh who dreams of the ‘pious life’ he will enjoy with his family when he returns home; of the taxi driver from India who is suddenly aware that he no longer has a ‘cute accent’ but is seen as an ‘alien plotting to destroy their way of life’ – the same life that he too seeks; of the frustration of the security guard from Pakistan who is trapped in the daily routine of his job but longs for the ‘heavy odor of mango leaves and rubber far away’ in his homeland; of the unspeakable dread of the asylum seeker from Sierra Leone who knows that she has escaped terror but is now in a land where she is an outsider and so is ‘jailed within her skin’ forever. All of these disparate stories and experiences are bound together by the narrative – ‘The Color of our Circumference’– which repeatedly highlights the theme of racial and national differentiation and simultaneously invokes the consumer culture of the airport.

Using the song-cycle structure as a basic framework, the piece draws upon a broad range of musical influences: experimental jazz, hip-hop, African and South Asian rhythms. The work is scored for a 10-piece ensemble that includes piano, trumpet, alto and tenor saxophone, guitar, two acoustic basses, drums, and speaking voices. A highlight of the score is its capacity for improvisational performance. While some of the musical pieces are closely tied to the text in the delineation of a specific narrative arc, others are very open-ended in structure with a bare-bones framework, leaving a lot of space for the ensemble to elaborate and improvise – both in terms of polyrhythmic dialogues between individual instrumentalists as well as impromptu exchanges vis-a-vis the libretto. In the context of this work’s themes, the soloist’s own creative identity, instrumental expression and cultural background blend together to create a reinforcing musical metaphor.

The performance will be framed by a backdrop of images projected on screen that evoke the interior and exterior environment of the airport. Some of the visuals include X-ray images of luggage and pictures of travelers’ personal belongings, which simultaneously portray the mechanical and impersonal nature of the airport and also provide a fleeting, private glimpse of people and lives in transit.

In What Language? is part of the Asia Society’s Crossovers series which highlights important contributions by Asian and Asian American artists to contemporary music, dance and theater. The program was inaugurated in 1995, with a focus on music – specifically jazz – as an art form that transcends its ethnic origins and creates meaningful cultural experiences for people all over the world. Crossovers is an integral part of the Asia Society’s efforts to promote contemporary Asian American artistic expression and debunk the notion that ‘authentic’ Asian art is purely traditional and belongs entirely to an idealized past.

In What Language? is made possible with generous support from The Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust and is a sponsored project of Creative Capital Foundation. Additional support for the Asia Society’s cultural programs is provided by the Friends of Asian Arts, Wallace-Reader’s Digest Funds, The Starr Foundation, the Booth Ferris Foundation, the Hazen Polsky Foundation Inc. and the Harold J. and Ruth Newman Philanthropic Fund.

Interview with Vijay Iyer and Mike Ladd.

Interview with Ajay Naidu.

Performance Schedule

Thursday, May 8
Friday, May 9 Performance followed by a Q & A with the artists
Saturday, May 10 and
Sunday, May 11
At 8:00 p.m.
Asia Society and Museum, 725 Park Avenue, New York

Tickets are $20 ($16 for Asia Society members, students and seniors)
Group discounts are available.
Tickets can be purchased at the Asia Society Box Office or by calling (212) 517-2742.

Director and Artists’ Biographies

Vijay Iyer (composer)

Vijay Iyer is a pianist and composer based in New York City. The son of Indian immigrants, Iyer draws from African, Asian, and European musical lineages to create music beyond category. He has released several critically acclaimed compact discs as a leader: Memorophilia (Asian Improv), Architextures (Asian Improv/Red Giant), Panoptic Modes (Red Giant), and Your Life Flashes (as the collaborative trio Fieldwork, on Pi Recordings). Panoptic Modes received four-star ratings in the Los Angeles Times, Jazzman, and The All Music Guide, and was listed among the best jazz albums of 2001 in The New Yorker and The Village Voice. Iyer was recently awarded the 2003 CalArts Alpert Award for distinction in the field of music and honored at the first Annual New York Nightlife Awards. Iyer performs frequently in the New York area, and tours internationally with his various ensembles. As a sideman, he is currently a member of avant-garde pioneer Roscoe Mitchell's nine-piece Note Factory, legendary poet Amiri Baraka's Blue Ark, and Black Rock Coalition founder Greg Tate's Burnt Sugar. He has also collaborated extensively with the renowned saxophonist and composer Steve Coleman on numerous world tours and on four of Coleman's BMG recordings. Iyer also lectures and publishes on various topics, including improvisation, cognitive science, and jazz studies.

Michael Ladd (librettist)

Boston-born Michael C. Ladd is a poet and spoken word artist. He received his BA in Black expatriates in the Nineteenth century from Hampshire college and an MA in poetry from Boston University. He has published in several literary magazines including Long Shot Review and Bostonia. His work is also featured in the book Swing Low, Black Men Writing and the anthologies, Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and In Defense of Mumia. Ladd is the writer and producer of the pioneering albums Easy Listening For Armageddon (Scratchie/Mercury), Live From Paris (Home Style Cooking), Welcome to the Afterfuture (LikeMadd/Ozone), The Infesticons: Gun Hill Road (Big Da Da), and Majesticons: Beauty Party (Big Da Da). He has also participated in numerous poetry slams. As a Fellow at the Institute for Arts and Civic Dialogue at Harvard University, he produced and directed Blood Black and Blue, an audio documentary/performance about Black police officers in the United States. Ladd currently lives in the Bronx and teaches English at Long Island University.

Rachel Dickstein (director)

Rachel Dickstein is a director, choreographer, teacher and the Artistic Director of Ripe Time, an experimental theatre ensemble dedicated to exploring the meeting ground between dance and theatre, between word and image. She recently devised, choreographed, and directed Ripe Time’s The Secret Of Steep Ravines at Performance Space 122 and directed Ellen McLaughlin’s version of The Trojan Women at Fordham University. Rachel has also created and directed other new works for New York Theatre Workshop, New Georges, TheatreWorks/USA, The Ohio Theatre, SUNY-Purchase, NYSF/ Joe’s Pub, Lincoln Center Theatre Director’s Lab, Drama League Director’s Project, Adirondack Theatre Festival and Seattle’s Annex Theatre. She has served as a resident director at New Dramatists and has worked locally and internationally as an Assistant Director to Martha Clarke on both opera and dance-theatre projects. She has received grants, fellowships and residencies from the Jerome Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts/ Theatre Communications Group, the Drama League, the Ko Festival of Performance, and Yale University. Rachel is a teaching artist for Lincoln Center Institute, a Usual Suspect at NYTW, and a graduate of Yale College.

Latasha N. Nevada Diggs (speaking voice)

Latasha N. Nevada Diggs is a writer, visual artist, vocalist and recent New York University graduate. Her poetry, music critiques and essays have been published in several magazines and journals including The Source, Ego Trip, Urb, Long Shot, Drum Voices Review, Bum Rush the Page, and Everything But the Burden. She has performed and collaborated with Vernon Reid, DJ Logic, Lawrence “Butch” Morris, DJ Little Louie Vega and others. She has been featured on recordings by Ryuichi Sakamoto, Towa Tei, Billy Bass, Domenico Ferrari, Mike Ladd, Guillermo E. Brown, and on the compilation Eargasms. She is the author of two chapbooks, Ichi-Ban: from the files of negrita muneca morena linda and Ni-Ban: Villa Miseria. She is a member of the Cave Canem Workshop/Retreat for African American Poets as well as a 2002 Artist in Residence at Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center. Latasha performs regularly as an electronic vocalist in Greg Tate’s Burnt Sugar Ensemble and the Zappa-esque project, The Yohimbe Brothers.

Allison Easter (speaking voice)

Allison Easter (actress, singer, dancer) was the first American woman to appear Off-Broadway in the percussion sensation Stomp. She has worked with Meredith Monk for many years, touring the US, Europe and Asia, and receiving a Bessie Award for her work in The Politics of Quiet. She played Vengeance in Will Pomerantz's A Tale of Two Cities, Jerri Lewis in Tony Zertuche's Anchors, Ms Porgy in the upcoming feature film Vacuums, and Anita Chambers on Law & Order. She was featured in the Village Voice article Breathtaking Performances for her dancing with Susan Marshall and Company. Regionally, she has appeared at the Alley Theater (Houston), Actor's Theater of Louisville, and at the Denver Center.

Ajay Naidu (speaking voice)

Ajay Naidu (actor) has appeared in various roles in film, theater and television. His film credits include Office Space, K-Pax, Pi, Requiem for a Dream and Suburbia – for which he was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. He has starred in theater productions at The Goodman, Steppenwolf, A.R.T. and most recently in “The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui” directed by Simon McBurney, opposite Al Pacino. He is also a regular on television in the series Lateline with Al Franken, The West Wing and Sopranos, among others. As a dancer and lyricist Ajay has been working on a variety of projects in the U.S., Britain and India for the past eight years. His solo piece Darwaza ran at the Labryinth Theatre last summer to wide acclaim. Ajay is a graduate of the American Repertory Theatre's Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University.

Asia Society

Asia Society is America’s leading institution dedicated to fostering understanding of Asia and communication between Americans and people Asia and the Pacific. A nonprofit, nonpartisan educational institution, the Asia Society presents a wide range of programs including major art exhibitions, media programs, international conferences and lectures, and initiatives to improve elementary and secondary education about Asia. Since 1960, Asia Society’s Cultural Programs division has been one of the country’s leading centers devoted to the visual and performing arts of Asia. As a part of the Society’s mandate to serve as a bridge between the peoples of America and Asia, one of the goals of the Cultural Programs division is to present contemporary work from Asia and highlight work by emerging Asia American artists.

Recent projects of the performing arts programs include commissioning and producing Forgiveness by Chen Shi Zheng, Akira Matsui and Eve Belgarian; Empty Tradition/City of Peonies by choreographer Yin Mei and composer Tony Prabowo; presentations by renowned Iranian singers Sharam Nazeri and Parisa; music from Afghanistan by Ustad Mahwash and Quraishi; the Mongolian musical ensemble Altai Hungai; the national tour of Ratan Thiyam’s Chorus Repertory Theater of Manipur; Cloudgate Dance Theater of Taiwan and most recently the chamber operas The Floating Box: A Story in Chinatown by Jason Kao Hwang and Catherine Filloux and Wenji: Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute by Bun-Ching Lam and Xu Ying.

Agm 02/24/03

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