dance_peter

PETER CHIN

Tribal Crackling Wind’s raison d’être is to create events that employ music, theatre, film, video, dance and design to create contemporary rituals and ceremonies where the performers and creators are directly involved in the meaning of the work, aspiring to the proverbial merging of art and life.

The company’s artistic director Peter Chin is trained and experienced in a multiplicity of disciplines. As designer, writer, choreographer, composer, director and performer of dance and music, he creates works that fearlessly engage potentially all of these disciplines, inspired by the Asian paradigm of “Total Theatre”, and guided only by what is needed for the fullest realization of the work at hand.

Born in Jamaica of mixed Chinese, black and Irish ancestry, Peter Chin is a true multicultural soul and his rich heritage has been played out over the span of his artistic career. Profoundly inspired by approximately seven years of living, creating and researching in South East Asia, his movement style and dance-theatre sensibility is truly a startling hybrid of west, east and south. The movement invention is endlessly rich, indebted to Asian martial arts, Javanese and Balinese dance, and Jamaican social dances, but filtered through Chin’s experience in contemporary western explorations of the open possibilities of the body in time and space.

This unique background has given the work of Peter Chin a genuine international and global character, leading to demands for his work in Canada and abroad. He has received numerous awards including four Dora Dance-Theatre awards and a Gemini, and is highly sought in Toronto as a choreographer and composer. His dance commissions include among others creations for Canada Dance Festival, Toronto Dance Theatre, Dancemakers and National Ballet of Canada’s Chan Hon Goh. His own work has been showcased across Canada, and in Japan, India, Indonesia, Singapour, Malaysia, Jamaica and Holland.

Peter Chin is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist born in Kingston Jamaica and based in Toronto. He is active as a musician/composer, dancer/choreographer, performance artist, designer and director.

Peter was Now Magazine Best of Toronto dancer / choreographer / designer in 2008. He won the 2006 Murriel Sherrin Award for International Achievement in Dance at the Toronto Mayor’s Arts Award and is a co-winner of the 2005 inaugural Interdisciplinary KM Hunter Award. He is also a Chalmers Fellowship recipient and his work has been awarded a prestigious Gemini Award for “Best Performance in a performing arts program” in Nick de Pencier’s film Streetcar, for which he choreographed, performed and composed the music. Peter received four Dora Mavor Moore Awards: “Outstanding New Choreography” for Stupa in 2005, “Outstanding New Choreography” for Northeastsouthwest in 1997, “Outstanding New Choreography” and “Outstanding Performance” for Bite in 2000. He has also been nominated three times: for Language in 1998, Ghost Train in 2001 and Transmission of the Invisible in 2008.

REPERTOIRE

STUPA

A stupa is a Buddhist monument in the form of a dome or bell-shaped building. The piece, inspired in part by Buddhist temple architecture and South East Asian theatre, conjures a world populated by wrathful demons and benign deities. Integrating dramatic full-body dance movement and precise facial choreography with vocalization techniques from many eastern cultures, STUPA explores the notion of sacred space in both the physical and metaphysical realms as well as the sanctity of the human body and spirit.

Inspired by Chin’s years of work and research in Asia, STUPA is evocative of Asian dramas where performers are equally skilled in voice and movement; but will have a decidedly contemporary flair as seven outstanding dance artists perform this riveting work.

“There is no doubt that peter chin is a brilliant man” Globe and Mail

“the extreme animation of the dancers’ faces suggests masks of ferocity and heightened awareness, icons of demons and deities ...the dancing sometimes has a floating, suspended quality, a trance-like timelessness”

Carol Anderson

BERDANDAN

BERDANDAN (Indonesian word meaning grooming, personal embellishment, dress up, get dressed, decorated, made elaborate) is a live theatrical event co-choreographed by Peter Chin and celebrated Indonesian artist Didik Nini Thowok. A classical dancer/choreographer, expert in styles from West Java, Central Java and Bali, Didik is one of few dancers who continue the long Asian tradition of cross-gender dance roles.

The piece features dramaturgy by Guillaume Bernardi, a live on-stage video installation by visual artist Cylla von Tiedemann and is accompanied by Gamelan Toronto, a full central Javanese court gamelan involving 20 musicians, with musical direction by master Javanese court musician Setya Sutrisno Hartana.

BERDANDAN explores the moments of transformation, as Didik becomes the female performer of the famous Golek Lambang Sari dance. It is from the classical Javanese repertoire and portrays a young girl putting on make-up, dressing, and adopting the poses of an adult woman. An old Javanese song depicts a transgender tradition in the courts: a prince was invited to perform in the Mangkunegaran palace of Surakarta and danced Golek Lambangsari. The song describes the beauty of his dance movement and his face, such that the men in the audience did not recognize that he was a man, and in a state of enchantment followed him to the dressing room, only then discovering that he was a man.

“Chin’s piece presents the audience with circles within circles of meaning” Globe and Mail

“Peter Chin’s splendid new berdandan – a ravishing spectacle” Dance International

BRIDGE

BRIDGE is a multi-disciplinary, full-length work by three-time Dora Award winner Peter Chin. It brings together a remarkable company of twenty-five artists who bridge the worlds of east and south, ancient and contemporary, dark and droll, human and non-human. Dancers, live musicians, spoken word and projected video come together in this exploration of ritual; nature and the creative process.

The impressive cast features six dancers, and live music composed by Peter Chin, integrating Gamelan Toronto, a full Javanese court gamelan and choir, with West African percussion by the Hands On drum ensemble. Projected video created in collaboration with filmmaker Nick DePencier mixes with shocking and seductive performances by the dancers as they bridge the extremes of animal ferocity and human frailty. The flow of dance, music, video and commentary moves from the straightforward to the surreal; from seductive stillness to wildly kinetic dance; from the mystical to the irreverent.

“Profoundly moving” The Toronto Star

“Bridge builds to an all-consuming crescendo, in which the dancers’ raised, clasped hands tremble, vibrating as if they had merged in perfect harmony.” The Toronto Star

“Bridge is vintage chin. images from bridge are still fresh in my mind. that’s always a good sign. who knows what subconscious resonance they may have ?” National Post

BITE

BITE features six dancers and a Korean percussion ensemble, tuba, violin and singers.

Mystical and sensual, rich and enigmatic, BITE is a journey toward transformation. The work unfolds as a succession of solo dances. Links among the elements of imagery, movement, music and costume give Bite a mysterious wholeness.

Bite reflects the diverse sources which inform Peter Chin's creative life. Movement is inspired by Indonesian ritual dance and other forms of Asian dance. The music for Bite, with its bass rumblings and unearthly throat-singing sounds, draws on Tibetan sources, while the rhythms of the percussion instruments are drawn from Korean ritual.

Bite is both a work of theatre and a ritual of transformation. The work speaks of Peter Chin's fluid vision, eloquently revealing the inner landscapes of the performers.

www.tribalcracklingwind.ca