Inside/Out: Translucent Borders

Wednesday, June 27, 2018 at 6:15PM

Translucent Borders: Cross-cultural collaborations

Translucent Borders will host a three-day residency at Jacob’s Pillow, bringing together for the first time its global collaborators from Cuba, The Middle East, Ghana, Trinidad and Tobago, the United States, and Italy, with some artists making their U.S. debuts. The residency will culminate in the debut presentation of intercultural works-in-progress with more than twenty musicians and dancers as part of the Inside/Out Performance Series. Other activities will be open to the public. Jacob’s Pillow was selected as the site for this residency for both its retreat-like setting and its rich history as a force in the cultural exchange of dance.

Tuesday, June 26 at 5pm | Join us for a presentation in Blake’s Barn by the Translucent Borders team and hear about this work, soon to be shared with the public for the first time.

FREE                 FAMILY-FRIENDLY              OUTDOOR              INTER-CULTURAL

About Translucent Borders

How do music and dance defy borders? Translucent Borders is a three-year exploration of intercultural dialogue, practice and exchange led by New York University (NYU) Tisch Arts Professor, Dr. Andy Teirstein, which focuses on the role of dance and music at geographic, cultural, and economic borders. The project explores the ways in which dancers and musicians act as catalysts for creative engagement across disparate cultures. Translucent Borders began as a Working Group of The NYU Global Institute for Advanced Study in 2015 and has since facilitated global conversations between dance and music artists in Israel, Greece, Cuba, and Ghana through interviews, knowledge-sharing circles, master classes, directed improvisatory lab work, and collaborations.

Choreographers include Sulley Imoro (Ghana), Dege Feder (Israel), Sahar Damoni (Palestine), Donald Byrd (USA), Jim Martin (USA), Danys La Mora Perez (Cuba), and LaShaun Prescott (Trinidad and Tobago). These dance artists will be collaborating with composers Meirigah Abubakari (Ghana), Firas Zreik (Palestine), Amal Murkus (Palestine), Neta Weiner and Muhammad (Israel), Yair Dalal (Israel), Marco and Angela Ambrosini (Italy), Francisco Mora Catlett (Mexico), Andy Teirstein (USA), and Valerie Naranjo (USA).

This began in 2016 in the refugee camps on the island of Lesbos, and have continued in Ghanaian drum circles, in choreographic improvisations in Tel Aviv, in dance rehearsals in the Palestinian West Bank, with Bedouin musicians on the Israeli border with Egypt, and in Cuban Rumba sessions. In Translucent Borders site visits, they trusted in a set of keys that open locked gates, sometimes beginning with a violin, a drum, and a few dance steps. They have also brought a camera, creating a film record of interviews, jam sessions, and song and dance swaps.