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Invitation
Betrothed
Cast
Press Release
Photos
Reviews |
| Ripe Time Production's "Betrothed" - May 15, 2007 |
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ABOUT THE PRODUCTION :
BETROTHED is a dance-infused, visually rich adaptation of three stories
exploring the dreams, expectations and losses surrounding women's
relationship to marriage and independence. BETROTHED dramatizes a women's
search for identity through Eastern and Western ritual.
Using short fiction from Western, South Asian and South East Asian cultures
(by Jhumpa Lahiri, nton Chekhov and one other) this new work explores how
women from different backgrounds and eras forge their own coming of age by
reinventing the rites of passage their communities embrace. Using the
choreography and theatricality of wedding ceremonies, BETROTHED examines how
ritual and human desire intersect, overlap and, at times, contradict one
another. The stories selected track how women's dreams of success are both
empowered and challenged by cultural practices and ccepted norms. Each of
the uniquely drawn heroines from these stories forges her own path in
relation to cultural traditions, offering contemporary audiences a complex
prism through which to examine our own culture's treatment of women and the
roles they serve in society and ceremony. BETROTHED juxtaposes and blends
Asian and Western theatrical forms, offering our audience complex stories
told in uniquely expanded theatrical languages.
For BETROTHED, targeted audiences include South Asian communities, readers
of Lahiri and Chekhov, anthropologists, sociologists, feminists and female
political leaders.
Ripe Time's Artistic Director, Rachel Dickstein, will adapt, direct and
choreograph the production. Other collaborators involved include Vijay Iyer
(composer, pianist), who has composed original music for the production.
Lahiri and Iyer, each in their own media, have found unique ways of bridging
South Asian culture with American culture - Lahiri through the
contemporariness of her incisive story-telling, Iyer through his complex
amalgamation of American jazz and African forms with South Asian
polyrhythms. In tandem with Rachel's investigations into the range of
culturally based movement vocabularies, this collaboration of artists is
rich with potential for experimentation with hybrid heatrical forms.
They are from the workhop production of BETROTHED that took place this
August ('06). |
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