Press Release 2012 La MaMa

Love Story, Palestine

Concept, Design, and Choreography by Yoshiko Chuma

Weds - Sat; May 9-12, 2012

Image left: Qattan Foundation; Image right: Robert Flynt

Ellen Stewart Theatre at La MaMa

66 East 4th Street (between 2nd Ave and Bowery)

Part of La MaMa Moves! Festival/ 50th Anniversary Season

Featuring members of Palestinian Dance Troupe El-Funoun from Ramallah

In association with ROOT CULTURE in Kamakura, Japan.

Dance by Miriam Parker, Saori Tsukada, Tatyana Tenenbaum,

Ryuji Yamaguchi, Sari Husseini, Anas Abu Oun and Yoshiko Chuma

with Francisca Benitez, Sara Galassini, Catherine Galasso, 
Hazuki Homma and Mina Nishimura

Music by Sizzle Ohtaka, Aska Kaneko with Robert Black

Photography by Robert Flynt

Sound Design excerpts from "6 Seconds in Ramallah" by Koji Setoh

'Dabke' Choreography by El-Funoun Dance Troupe

5 monitors perform video documentation

5 moveable panels and 30'x30' tarps fill the space

Conceptual Artist/Choreographer/Artistic Director of The School of Hard Knocks Yoshiko Chuma continues a lifetime obsession with danger in her new work, Love Story, Palestine. Intentionally confusing documentation with history, Chuma tasks El-Funoun members Sari Husseini and Ana Abu Oun and NYC-based talents Miriam Parker, Tatyana Tenenbaum, and Saori Tsukada-—three performers who have never been to Palestine—with re-creating segments from her own documented works and experiences in Ramallah, Palestine. Chuma assembles a mosaic of images and interviews which pertain to pain and longing, as if framing theater with barbed wire. Traditional dance is juxtaposed with contemporary movement, video projection and spoken text in a borderless environment constantly reshaped by sculptural objects. Yoshiko Chuma herself performs on the backdrop of Robert Flynt's photography.