NewsRelease

Internationalizing the Arts Festival Takes Asian View
 
 

Hideaki Hirai

GREENSBORO — Dance and music artists whose work has been shaped by Asian culture will inspire audiences at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro Feb. 22 and 25 during the university’s Internationalizing the Arts Festival.

The presentations of Japanese heritage will begin Feb. 22 with a free Butoh performance by Joan Laage and continue Feb. 25 when rising young conductor Hideaki Hirai leads the UNCG Orchestra in compositions penned by his ancestors.

The Internationalizing the Arts Festival focuses on a different region of the world each year.  The focus in 2001-2002 was Latin America, and the 2002-2003 focus is Japan.  The festival is coordinated by the Internationalizing the Arts Committee, which is made up of faculty members from the arts programs on campus with additional representatives from the University Concert and Lecture Series (UCLS), the Kohler Fund and the Weatherspoon Art Museum.  Its mission is to bring greater awareness of world art and culture to the UNCG campus through lectures, presentations, exhibitions, and performances.

Laage, a renowned educator, performer and student of Butoh, will be on the UNCG campus from Monday through Saturday, Feb. 17-22.  Throughout the week, she will teach classes for UNCG dance and theater students.  The visit will culminate in the free Butoh performance at 8 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 22, in the UNCG Dance Theater on Walker Avenue. Butoh is a modern form of Japanese dance theater. The name itself refers to the dance of an agricultural society: “Bu” means dance and “toh” means to stamp the ground.

Laage’s performance will comprise two works, White Sanctuary and Umi (Sea). White Sanctuary is a meditation on an Antarctic landscape merging, and endless space and time, performed among suspended sheets of clear and opaque plastic. The music commissioned for White Sanctuary was composed by Tucker Martine of Flora Avenue Studios in Seattle, WA, Laage's current city of residence. In the segment "Faith," Laage pays tribute to her teacher, Butoh master Kazuo Ohno, and acknowledges the insight experienced through witnessing great artists and their art. Other forms of White Sanctuary have previously been staged and performed in Seattle, London, Dallas, and at the University of Georgia.

Dwelling on imagery of the sea and surroundings, Umi (Sea) was inspired by the hours spent hiking and camping at Ozette on the northwest coast.  The sound score is the music of Seattle composer Jeff Greinke.

Laage received her Ph.D. in dance and related arts from Texas Woman's University in 1993.  She is an accomplished lecturer and presenter of Butoh and Japanese traditional theater and culture, performer of original work and repertory Butoh work, and an instructor of Tai Chi. Her work has been featured and presented in performance spaces, colleges, universities and festivals across the U.S. and abroad.

Hirai will lead the UNCG Orchestra in a diverse program that mixes the works of European masters and compositions by his Japanese ancestors. Representing western culture will be Brahms’ “Symphony No. 3” and Stravinsky’s dynamic “Firebird Suite.” Hirai will transport audiences to the other side of the globe when he conducts “Tosa Fudoki” by his father, Kozaburo Hirai, and  “A Rhapsody on Japanese Folk Tunes” by his grandfather, Takeichiro Hirai.

The youngest Hirai has a master’s degree from the Peabody Institute of the John Hopkins University and has studied conducting under renowned maestro Otakar Trhlik in the Czech Republic and Sir Colin Davis in London.

Born in Tokyo in 1970, Hirai found early musical success. He studied piano, violin and composition with his grandfather and cello with his father. At age seven, he made his first public presentation of his own works for children’s chorus and school plays. He won first prize in the 6th Hradec Kralove International Conducting Competition and most recently, was chosen among the “Stars of Tomorrow in Japan” to conduct the All-Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, whose members are selected from eight professional orchestras in Tokyo.

He has collaborated with the New Japan Philharmonic, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, Kyoto Symphony and the Japan Shinsei Symphony Orchestra, as well as with international orchestras in Poland, England, Germany and the Czech Republic. In addition, he is co-founder of the Czech Virtuosi, a 35-piece chamber orchestra. In February, his opera “Princess from the Moon” will have its world premiere at Tokyo’s Meguro Persimmon Hall.

“Hirai has done a substantial amount of conducting for someone so young and won some significant awards,” said Robert Gutter, conductor of the UNCG Orchestra. “By conducting his family’s works, he will also bring a personal touch of Japanese culture to the festival.”

The concert will begin at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 25 in Aycock Auditorium. Tickets are $8 adults, $5 students and seniors and $3 UNCG students. Call the University Box Office at (336) 334-4849, weekdays from noon to 5 p.m., for ticket information.

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