WINTER: The Library of Maps with Moira Roth
January 27 -– March 6, 2010

Reception Jan. 27, 5-7pm

Library of Maps: A collaborative project by Moira Roth, Sobodan Dan Paich and Dennis Letbetter

Public Reception: Wednesday, January 27, 5:00-7:00pm followed by a talk/performance by Moira Roth and Slobodan Dan Paich at 7:00 pm at UCSC Media Theater as part of the Visiting Artists Lecture Series. Organized by Sesnon Gallery director Shelby Graham and History of Art and Visual Culture faculty Boreth Ly, and sponsored by the Porter College Distinguished Artist & Lecturer Fund. Moira Roth began the Library of Maps as an ongoing series in 2001, which has grown to 41 texts about an imaginary library, its contents, inhabitants and history. The exhibition consists of broadsheets, drawings by Slobodan Dan Paich, photographs by Dennis Letbetter, and collection of stones and text by Moira Roth. Roth taught at the University of California (Irvine: 1970-1972, Santa Cruz: 1973-1974, and UC San Diego: 1974–1985), and currently holds an endowed chair at Mills College.
This event is made possible in part by gifts to the Arts Division at UCSC. Give to the Arts at http://arts.ucsc.edu/giving.
Location:
Porter Faculty Gallery UCSC
When:
Wed, 01/27/2010 – 5:00pm – 9:00pm

Please click here for the PDF. *Note: (86.29 mb – heavy file – will take time to load on slower connections)

Gakugeki Festival, August 6, 2004

Kyoto Concert Hall, Kyoto, Japan

Co-Directors and Producers: Moira Roth and Mary Sano

Assistant Director: Rebecca Jennison

English Text by Moira Roth (Japanese translation by Naoko Matsushiro)

Performers:

The Dancer/Blind Woman/Amaterasu: Mary Sano
The Blind Koto Player: Shoko Hikage
The Noh Actor/Monk/ Semimaru: Tadaki Hashimoto
Offstage Voice of Sakagami: Koji Hashimoto
Mirror Holder #1: Keita Yoshida
Mirror Holder #2: Izawa Haruhi

Kuroko: Akahoshi Masanori

Special Guests: Mari Uehara (biwa) and Tetsuhiko Fukuhara (flute)
Parts:
#1. Of Legends
#2. Amaterasu
#3. The Rehearsal

#4. Hiroshima, August 6, 1945

#5. Itsukushima Shrine, The Island of Miyajima
(The Dance of the Four Senses & The Dream of Amaterasu)
#6. The Actor-Monk’s Story

#7. Time Past and Present

#8. August 6, 2004

Video Segments:

Mary Sano on Stinson Beach, California

August 6, 1945, Hiroshima

Night Shrine, Itsukushima Shrine, The Island of Miyajima

Day Shrine, Itsukushima Shrine, The Island of Miyajima

Amaterasu with Letter, Itsukushima Shrine, and Shrine’s Noh Theater, The Island of Miyajima

Credits:
Dance Choreography: Mary Sano
Lighting Design and Director: Masaaki Aikawa
Video Editor: Claudia Leger

Video Footage: Moira Roth and Mary Sano

Stage Director: Hideo Sekino

Stage Manager, Kyoto Concert Hall: Hiroshi Hatano

Kyoto Concert Hall Technicians

Music: Original Compositions:
Shoko Hikage (koto)
Mari Uehara (biwa)
Tony Chapman (piano music and text)

Thanks to the Hiroshima newspaper Chugoku Shinbun, and to Umbo and Yaeko Yamashita for costume assistance

Amaterasu, the Blind Woman and Hiroshima is divided into eight parts, and tells the story of the Dancer (Mary Sano) and the Noh Actor (Tadaki Hashimoto), a brother and sister involved in pre-war Noh theater, who have lost touch with one another after the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 (later they reenact their experiences of that day). The performance contains two sections relating directly to the bombing: in Part 4 the Koto Player performs a discordant dirge-like piece, and in Part 7, the Dancer and Noh Actor enact the emotions and events of that day, accompanied by biwa and flute music. Woven into the narrative is a pre-war rehearsal of a famous “trio” (the Dancer, Noh Actor and Koto Player) of the 15^th century Noh play, Semimaru, which is a tale of a blind biwa player, exiled from the imperial court to Mt. Osaka, and his meeting there with Sakagami, his demented dancer-sister. After the bombing of Hiroshima, accompanied by the Koto Player (her childhood friend), the Dancer–who was blinded during the bombing–goes to the Island of Miyajima. Now known as the Blind Woman, she learns to dance again through experimenting with her four remaining senses (touch, taste, smell and sound) and, in a dream, encounters Amaterasu, the sun goddess, at the Itsukushima Shrine. The Noh Actor, now mute, goes to live in Kyoto, and becomes a restless monk. There–while playing the biwa, writing poetry and reciting, “like a mantra,” a text by Dogen, the 13^th century Zen monk-poet–he experiences “slippages of time,” sometimes believing he is back either in pre-war Japan, or his childhood, and at other times believing that he is Semimaru, the 15^th century blind biwa player.

The performance ends with Part 8 in the present with readings from the Hiroshima newspaper (Chugoku Shinbun) of that day, and references to events in Iraq, etc. by the Kuroko and the Mirror Holders. On the two balconies, the Koto Player (now dressed in regular clothing) and Amaterasu (now without a mask) address one another briefly.
After this, they and the three other actors move through the audience, improvising with half-sentences about “. . . present . . . mirrors . . .mind’s eye.” Finally, they stand on the stage in front of the video screen which reads “August 6, 2004.”

This experimental dance-drama draws upon many diverse sources, influences and media, e.g. Japanese mythology, religion, poetry and history, traditional and experimental dance and theater traditions, and video footage shot in California and Japan (in which Sano appears in her Amaterasu kimono and mask). Costume plays a major role in Amaterasu, the Blind Woman and Hiroshima, witness the several changes in the appearance of the Dancer/Blind Woman/Amaterasu, and of the Noh Actor-Monk to indicate their character/role shifts. The Kuroko (Akahoshi Masanori), a silent black-clothed presence, appears occasionally during the performance —this figure is a reference to both Noh and Kabuki stage traditions. In their search for solace and peace and for one another, the brother and sister are accompanied by three musicians—the Koto Player (Shoko Hikage), the Biwa Player (Mari Uehara), and the Flute Player (Tetsuhiko Fukuhara). There is also a recurring musical piano motif (on a CD), “Of Legends,” by Tony Chapman. Two further characters, who appear on the side balconies, holding large silver-painted fans, are the Mirror Holders #1 and #2 (Keita Yoshida and Izawa Haruhi). They periodically speak as they explain to one another and to the audience the actions of the other performers.

Text and Production: Dinh Q. Lê and Moira Roth

The Artist: Dinh Q. Lê

Kieu: Thuy Tran

Narrator: Ellen Sebastian Chang

Technical Production: Julia Page and Corinne Sklar

Documentation: Claudia Leger (video) and Dianne Jones (digital photography)

The play, which uses still photo and film projections, is an exchange between three characters. It has only been produced once so far, at the SF Camerawork gallery, November 4, 2003. There is an edited 15-minute video of this production by Claudia Leger.

In the front of the audience, sitting and standing as they talk to one another in English and Vietnamese, are the Artist (played by Dinh Q. Lê) and ) and Kieu (Thuy Tran).

Kieu—based on the heroine of the famous early 19th century Vietnamese poetic novel, Nguyen Du’s The Tale of Kiêu—is a figure often viewed by Vietnamese as standing for their country and its history.

Toward the beginning of the play, the Artist and Kieu read short selections from this text (Kieu reads in English and the Artist in Vietnamese). In the audience sits the Narrator (Ellen Sebastian Chang), who explains periodically to the audience about Vietnamese history and the Kieu novel.

During much of the play, the two figures are engulfed in large projections of Lê’s 2002-2003 photo-weavings and the raw Photo Shop images from which these were made— plus his 2000 huge installation of photos and texts, Mot Coi Di Vi [“spending one’s life trying to find one’s way home”]. A recording of the popular Vietnamese song, “Mot Coi Di Vi,” is a recurring motif. At one point, a clip from Coppola’s Apocalypse Now is played in which three female performers (including Playboy Bunny) arrive on a helicopter to perform before the troops.

The play draws on the fact that Lê has begun to focus increasingly on how to represent the Vietnamese voice in the “tug of war” for the memory of the Vietnam War, how to represent the Vietnamese people having, so to speak, the last word.

Hence in Shootout ( a subsection of the “From Vietnam to Hollywood” photo-weavings series, which Lê exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 2003), he consciously began to work with six “characters”:

1-2. Two Vietnamese: Hao, a friend of Lê’s and “Kieu,” represented by a 1960’s studio photo of a woman Lê had found in a Saigon secondhand store

3-4. Two figures from the famous 1968 Eddie Adams photograph of the Saigon execution of a Viet Cong suspect by the Saigon head of police

5-6. Two figures, Willard and Playboy Bunny, from the movie, Apocalypse Now

At the end of the performance, the Artist and Kieu take masses of silk ribbons (which Lê had brought back from Vietnam for this purpose) and weave them together. They then exit with Thuy Tran (Kieu) singing the song, “Mot Coi Di Vi.”

He often did this–
sauntered through the labyrinth
until,
almost idly,
he found the exit.

It never worried him
Being lost
For a while.
He liked the solitude
Of the labyrinth.
He liked hearing
Only his own footsteps.

She came along this path everyday,
Passing the old oak tree,
And heading toward her house
And its garden of pomegranates.
A humdrum daily walk.
It was only today,
Pausing to sing,
That she began to wonder
What lay below the path.

She began to imagine
A wheel below,
On which an uneasy structure swayed
And,
As she imagined this,
She heard beneath the ground a humming sound
Of the creaking wheel,
It was shortly after this
That she ate
The first of the three pomegranate seeds.

She stood

At the window

Listening to the shepherd’s call

As the sun burst forth.

It was absolutely silent
In the Cave of the Seven Sleepers

Except for the sound of
The bats outside

Flying across the night sky.

July 21, 2009

drawing by Slobodan Dan Paich and text by Moira Roth

When he first saw it
He could not,
Literally
Believe his eyes.

It was only
When he passed under the arch
And felt the stone walls
On either side
That he believed
It was not a mirage.
Yet when he glanced back
It had disappeared.

Delicately
She touched
The vessel

Thinking of its history

Wondering who had made it
And what messages it contained.