Friday, April 29, 7:30pm ET
Saturday, April 30, 7:30pm ET
“At first glance, the one predictable thing about Du Yun is her unpredictability. Dig deeper … you can sense the conjoined strands of curiosity and compassion that run through everything she makes.” — The New Yorker
In continuing to shift and disrupt the operatic field, Du Yun has created two new staged versions of A Cockroach's Tarantella and Zolle with director Roscha A. Säidow and in collaboration with the International Contemporary Ensemble and Satomi Matsuzaki. The two works will be presented jointly at NYU's Skirball Center for the Performing Arts on April 29-30, 2022. This version of the evening-length diptych is a reworking by Du Yun and Roscha A. Säidow of the Lucerne Theater production (October 2021) specifically for the Skirball stage.
In Zolle, a staged performance, a dead woman wanders through the shadowy space on the border between memory and reality, tracing the lines of her identity through the land she once walked – an immigrant in death as in life. A Cockroach’s Tarantella explores the corporality, human desire, religion, and belonging as the essential quest and the existential dread that all sentient beings experience, cockroach or not. Scored for a chamber ensemble, voice, and spoken word, with Du Yun as the narrator and featuring Satomi Matsuzaki (Deerhoof), the two works together explore humankind’s ubiquitous fascination with movement and alienation, amidst the hope of belonging.
CREATIVE TEAM
Du Yun, composer, text, sound design, narrator/voice
Satomi Matsuzaki, voice/narrator
Roscha A. Säidow, Director, Costume Designer, Video
eddy kwon, Assistant Director
Kamna Gupta, conductor
Nicholas Houfek, light designer
Randi Rivera, Rehearsal Stage Manager
Žilvinas Jonušas, Props Master
Ross Karre, production coordinator and video projection technician
A Cockroach’s Tarantella (2010)
Du Yun, voice, sound design
Josh Modney, violin
Pauline Harris, violin
Hannah Levinson, viola
Mariel Roberts, cello
Kamna Gupta, conductor
Zolle (2005)
Du Yun, The Wander Woman Ghost (Narrator/Voice)*
Satomi Matsuzaki, The Same Wander Woman Ghost (Voice/Narrator)*
eddy kwon, The Land-Watcher
Ziad Nehme, The Land-Watcher (Recorded Tenor)
Alice Teyssier, flute
Ryan Muncy, saxophone
Nathan Davis, percussion
Josh Modney, violin
Hannah Levinson, viola
Mariel Roberts, cello
Kamna Gupta, conductor
*The Narrator and the Female Voice are of the same character
BIOS
Du Yun, born and raised in Shanghai, China and currently based in New York City, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, multi-instrumentalist, performance artist, activist, and curator for new music, who works at the intersection of orchestral, opera, chamber music, theatre, cabaret, musical theater, oral tradition, public performances, sound installation, electronics, visual arts, and noise. channelduyun.com
Satomi Matsuzaki joined the band Deerhoof as bassist and singer within a week of moving to the United States from Japan in May 1995, with no prior experience playing in a band, and went on tour as Deerhoof's singer only a week later. Deerhoof's style has been described as indie rock, noise pop, punk rock, and "experimental pop mired in a pure punk sense of adventure" (Portland Mercury). Deerhoof have taken leaps and bounds artistically and stylistically, experimenting with pop and punk in ways never imagined, ultimately proving that punk can fit into an artistic world. According to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, they made "some of the most difficult and unclassifiable noise of the mid-'90s before unexpectedly rising to international prominence as one of indie rock's most renowned and influential groups ... too 'pop' for 'noise,' and too 'noise' for 'pop.'" The band has been appreciated by and/or influential to other artists, notably David Bowie, Radiohead, Questlove, St. Vincent, Foo Fighters, Dirty Projectors, Tune-Yards, Stereolab, and Henry Rollins. Deerhoof has collaborated with many artists including Ensemble Dal Niente in premiering Marcos Balters’ seven-movement suite, meltDown Upshot (2016). Their songs are often covered by other artists (notably Phil Lesh, Los Campesinos!, Marco Benevento, David Bazan).
Roscha A. Säidow, born and raised in Berlin, is a multidisciplinary artist. After studying Theater Directing at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in Berlin and winning the Vontobel-Prize for her production Heroes (Palmetshofer) in 2011 in Hamburg, the artist has worked at State Theaters in Germany (e.g. Schauspiel Frankfurt, Theater Dortmund, Theater Mannheim, and Schauspiel Leipzig). With her profound specialization in modern puppet theatre and the interest in interdisciplinary approaches her projects are a kaleidoscope of forms. Säidow is founding member of the independent Puppet Theater Company Retrofuturisten, whose works were shown at national and international Festivals. Co-productions with the Goethe-Institute and foreign Artist Groups brought Säidow to Indonesia, Jordan and South-Africa.
While being a guest of the Playwrights Fellowship at Schauspiel Frankfurt from 2015 to 2016 her play “I would like to be as charming as Adriano Celentano” premiered. At the following Artist in Residence at the Magdeburg Puppet Theater from 2017 to 2019 Säidow researched about new forms in modern puppet theater. In 2019 the Opera “The True Story of King Kong” (composition: Jeffrey Ching, libretto: Roscha A. Säidow) was created as a Co-Production between the Magdeburg Puppet Theater and the Magdeburg Opera. Additional to her staging work Säidow writes and composes „Singspiele“, such as "M - A City hunts a murderer“ (premiered in 2016 and inspired by the cinematic masterpiece of Fritz Lang). This show was a guest at various national Theater Festivals and at the Berliner Ensemble. Besides theatre, Säidow works in the field of Sound Art and Video Production and is songwriter for different music projects. Roscha A. Säidow is a Guest Lecturer at the Academy of Dramatic Arts “Ernst Busch” in Berlin. https://www.roscha-saeidow.de/
CREDITS
A version of this production was originated and produced at the Lucerne Theatre.
The International Contemporary Ensemble’s performances and commissioning activities during the 2021-22 concert season are made possible by the generous support of our board of directors and many individuals as well as The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Aaron Copland Fund for Music Inc., MAP Fund, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts, Amphion Foundation, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, The Casement Fund, BMI Foundation, as well as public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the New York State Council for the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, the Illinois Arts Council Agency, and the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant (SVOG) from the U.S. Small Business Administration. The International Contemporary Ensemble was the Ensemble in Residence of the Nokia Bell Labs Experiments in Art and Technology from 2018 - 2021. Yamaha Artist Services New York is the exclusive piano provider for the International Contemporary Ensemble.