“Deadly She-Wolf Assassin at Armageddon!"
** Music & Concept by Fred Ho, Written by Ho & Ruth Margraff **
Friday & Saturday, April 29 & 30 at 8:00 pm, Japan Society
“[Fred Ho] achieves his cross-cultural goals with skill, grace and humor … [his] East-West fusion has an audacious integrity." -- Jon Pareles, The New York Times
“[Ruth Margraff] is a warrior writer riding the vanguard of New Wave opera" -- Cyndi Williams, The Austin Chronicle
New York, NY - In the ongoing, season-wide theme of Cool Japan: Otaku Strikes!, Japan Society offers a unique work-in-progress presentation of Deadly She-Wolf Assassin at Armageddon!--a multidisciplinary homage to Japanese action manga (comic books). Composer-creator Fred Ho joins forces with playwright Ruth Margraff to create a theatrical blend of original music, multi-martial arts choreography, sword fights and state-of-the-art visual design. Featuring fully staged and realized excerpts, live music and an in-depth discussion with the artists moderated by Baraka Sele (curator/producer of New Jersey Performing Arts Center World Festival), performances run Fri. & Sat., April 29-30 at 8:00pm. Tickets are $25 / $20 for Japan Society members. Call 212-752-3015 or visit www.japansociety.org to purchase tickets or for more information. Japan Society is located at 333 East 47th St. (accessible by the 4/5/6 at 42nd St. or E & V at 53rd St.-Lexington).
With a score fusing traditional Japanese music and soul-jazz, Deadly She-Wolf Assassin at Armageddon! pays homage to the 1970s Japanese manga series Lone Wolf and Cub (Kosure Okami)--a raging cult hit that has inspired many works and adaptations across genres over the past few decades, including the Hollywood blockbuster Road to Perdition. In this stage version by Ho and Margraff, director Sonoko Kawahara and marital arts choreographer Tsuyoshi Kaseda collaborate to tell the tale of a violent and beautiful assassin whose journey traverses a terrain of deception, revenge, double crossing and death. Bringing to life the musical score, Fred Ho conducts a 5-member ensemble featuring bass, percussion, keyboard, alto sax, fue & shakuhachi, and 20 string koto.
Chinese-American baritone saxophonist, composer, writer, producer, and political activist, Fred Ho is one of today's leading Asian American artistic talents. He heads the Afro Asian Music Ensemble and the Monkey Orchestra and has written over a half-dozen operas, music-theater epics, cutting-edge multi-media works and oratorios. He wrote the first contemporary Chinese American opera, A Chinaman's Chance, which was staged at BAM in the late 80s. His prodigious body of work has been presented in prestigious venues all over the world. He has received commissions and grants from The Rockefeller Foundation, World Music Institute, NYSCA, Meet the Composer, NEA, Brooklyn Arts and Culture Association, New York Theater Workshop, HERE Arts Center and Aaron Davis Hall. With numerous books to his name, he was lead editor for the anthology Legacy to Liberation: Politics and Culture of Revolutionary Asian Pacific America (AK Press) and edits the popular and best-selling annual Sheroes/Womyn Warriors calendar. Fred Ho resides in Brooklyn, New York.
Playwright Ruth Margraff is artist-in-residence with HARP/HERE and Big Red Media. Her works have been developed and produced in New York City by BAM, The Public Theater, Lincoln Center, The Kitchen, Guggenheim Museum, New York Theatre Workshop, DTW, and P.S. 122 as well as across the country. She has also worked extensively at international venues including theaters in Serbia, Turkey, Russia, and Greece, and in 2003, she traveled to the National Noh Theater in Tokyo, Japan to study Noh, the structure of which has greatly informed her recent writing. Margraff has been the recipient of three Rockefeller commissions, a Jerome fellowship, McKnight advancement grant, Bellagio residency (Italy), NYSCA individual artist grant, NEA/TCG playwriting residency with HERE Arts, and an ITI/TCG travel grant (to Bosnia, Greece, and Turkey). She has taught at UT/Austin, Brown, and the Yale School of Drama. The Moscow Times has called her work “audaciously original" and LA Weekly noted “the sheer beauty of Margraff’s free-wheeling adaptation creates a hypnotic montage of words and literary images".
About Cool Japan: Otaku Strikes! In 2005, all Japan Society culture and arts spring season programming delves into the Japanese subculture known as otaku. This term now creeping into Western vocabulary was coined in the late 1980s to describe people whose obsessions with something—usually video games, anime or internet chat rooms—have led them to peculiar lifestyles or worldviews.
About Japan Society’s Performing Arts Program Since the inception of the Performing Arts Program in 1953, the Society has introduced more than 500 of Japan’s finest performing arts to an extensive American audience. Programs range from the traditional arts of noh, kyogen, bunraku and kabuki to cutting-edge theater, dance and music. The Program also commissions new works; produces national tours; organizes residency programs for American and Japanese artists; and develops and distributes educational programs. “At once diverse and daring, the program stands toe to toe with some of the most comprehensive cultural exchange endeavors today" (Back Stage).
About Japan Society Japan Society, America’s leading resource on Japan, is a private, nonprofit institution founded in New York in 1907. The Society promotes understanding and cooperation between the U.S. and Japan through a full range of programs in Global Affairs, Arts & Culture and Education. Society programming creates rich encounters and exchanges that increasingly reflect the broader Asian and global context of the U.S.-Japan relationship.
VISITOR INFORMATION: Location: 333 East 47th Street, between First & Second Avenues
Trains: 4/5/6 at 42nd St.; E & V at 53rd St.-Lexington Ave.)
Box Office: (212) 752-3015, Monday – Friday from 10 AM – 4:45 PM
Information: (212) 832 -1155; www.japansociety.org
** Music & Concept by Fred Ho, Written by Ho & Ruth Margraff **
Friday & Saturday, April 29 & 30 at 8:00 pm, Japan Society
“[Fred Ho] achieves his cross-cultural goals with skill, grace and humor … [his] East-West fusion has an audacious integrity." -- Jon Pareles, The New York Times
“[Ruth Margraff] is a warrior writer riding the vanguard of New Wave opera" -- Cyndi Williams, The Austin Chronicle
New York, NY - In the ongoing, season-wide theme of Cool Japan: Otaku Strikes!, Japan Society offers a unique work-in-progress presentation of Deadly She-Wolf Assassin at Armageddon!--a multidisciplinary homage to Japanese action manga (comic books). Composer-creator Fred Ho joins forces with playwright Ruth Margraff to create a theatrical blend of original music, multi-martial arts choreography, sword fights and state-of-the-art visual design. Featuring fully staged and realized excerpts, live music and an in-depth discussion with the artists moderated by Baraka Sele (curator/producer of New Jersey Performing Arts Center World Festival), performances run Fri. & Sat., April 29-30 at 8:00pm. Tickets are $25 / $20 for Japan Society members. Call 212-752-3015 or visit www.japansociety.org to purchase tickets or for more information. Japan Society is located at 333 East 47th St. (accessible by the 4/5/6 at 42nd St. or E & V at 53rd St.-Lexington).
With a score fusing traditional Japanese music and soul-jazz, Deadly She-Wolf Assassin at Armageddon! pays homage to the 1970s Japanese manga series Lone Wolf and Cub (Kosure Okami)--a raging cult hit that has inspired many works and adaptations across genres over the past few decades, including the Hollywood blockbuster Road to Perdition. In this stage version by Ho and Margraff, director Sonoko Kawahara and marital arts choreographer Tsuyoshi Kaseda collaborate to tell the tale of a violent and beautiful assassin whose journey traverses a terrain of deception, revenge, double crossing and death. Bringing to life the musical score, Fred Ho conducts a 5-member ensemble featuring bass, percussion, keyboard, alto sax, fue & shakuhachi, and 20 string koto.
Chinese-American baritone saxophonist, composer, writer, producer, and political activist, Fred Ho is one of today's leading Asian American artistic talents. He heads the Afro Asian Music Ensemble and the Monkey Orchestra and has written over a half-dozen operas, music-theater epics, cutting-edge multi-media works and oratorios. He wrote the first contemporary Chinese American opera, A Chinaman's Chance, which was staged at BAM in the late 80s. His prodigious body of work has been presented in prestigious venues all over the world. He has received commissions and grants from The Rockefeller Foundation, World Music Institute, NYSCA, Meet the Composer, NEA, Brooklyn Arts and Culture Association, New York Theater Workshop, HERE Arts Center and Aaron Davis Hall. With numerous books to his name, he was lead editor for the anthology Legacy to Liberation: Politics and Culture of Revolutionary Asian Pacific America (AK Press) and edits the popular and best-selling annual Sheroes/Womyn Warriors calendar. Fred Ho resides in Brooklyn, New York.
Playwright Ruth Margraff is artist-in-residence with HARP/HERE and Big Red Media. Her works have been developed and produced in New York City by BAM, The Public Theater, Lincoln Center, The Kitchen, Guggenheim Museum, New York Theatre Workshop, DTW, and P.S. 122 as well as across the country. She has also worked extensively at international venues including theaters in Serbia, Turkey, Russia, and Greece, and in 2003, she traveled to the National Noh Theater in Tokyo, Japan to study Noh, the structure of which has greatly informed her recent writing. Margraff has been the recipient of three Rockefeller commissions, a Jerome fellowship, McKnight advancement grant, Bellagio residency (Italy), NYSCA individual artist grant, NEA/TCG playwriting residency with HERE Arts, and an ITI/TCG travel grant (to Bosnia, Greece, and Turkey). She has taught at UT/Austin, Brown, and the Yale School of Drama. The Moscow Times has called her work “audaciously original" and LA Weekly noted “the sheer beauty of Margraff’s free-wheeling adaptation creates a hypnotic montage of words and literary images".
About Cool Japan: Otaku Strikes! In 2005, all Japan Society culture and arts spring season programming delves into the Japanese subculture known as otaku. This term now creeping into Western vocabulary was coined in the late 1980s to describe people whose obsessions with something—usually video games, anime or internet chat rooms—have led them to peculiar lifestyles or worldviews.
About Japan Society’s Performing Arts Program Since the inception of the Performing Arts Program in 1953, the Society has introduced more than 500 of Japan’s finest performing arts to an extensive American audience. Programs range from the traditional arts of noh, kyogen, bunraku and kabuki to cutting-edge theater, dance and music. The Program also commissions new works; produces national tours; organizes residency programs for American and Japanese artists; and develops and distributes educational programs. “At once diverse and daring, the program stands toe to toe with some of the most comprehensive cultural exchange endeavors today" (Back Stage).
About Japan Society Japan Society, America’s leading resource on Japan, is a private, nonprofit institution founded in New York in 1907. The Society promotes understanding and cooperation between the U.S. and Japan through a full range of programs in Global Affairs, Arts & Culture and Education. Society programming creates rich encounters and exchanges that increasingly reflect the broader Asian and global context of the U.S.-Japan relationship.
VISITOR INFORMATION: Location: 333 East 47th Street, between First & Second Avenues
Trains: 4/5/6 at 42nd St.; E & V at 53rd St.-Lexington Ave.)
Box Office: (212) 752-3015, Monday – Friday from 10 AM – 4:45 PM
Information: (212) 832 -1155; www.japansociety.org
For more information contact All About Jazz.
