Shadow puppetry is a traditional art form in many parts of Southeast Asia. Javanese shadow puppetry is considered one of the main types of shadow puppetry forms which has circulated widely and which has been transformed into local forms in other parts of Southeast Asia. While there are other local and indigenous stories told through shadow puppetry and music, two Indian epics, the Mahabarata and Ramayana, have been the major sources and inspiration of story telling traditions in shadow puppetry performances.
Featuring: Yale Community Gamelan Suprabanggo with guest musicians, directed by Maho Ishiguro & Darsono Hadiraharjo, dalang (puppeteer)
Special Guests: I.M. Harjito (Artist-in-Residence, Wesleyan University), Sumarsam (Wesleyan University and Yale ISM Fellow)
Phil Acimovic (Smith College), Wayne Forrest, Stuart Frankel, Marc Perlman (Brown University), Aaron Paige, Ian Quinn (Yale Dept. of Music), Jon Rea and Anne Stebinger
Special speaker: Dr. Michael Dove (Margaret K. Musser Professor of Social Ecology; Professor of Anthropology, Curator of Anthropology Peabody Museum; Chair Council on Southeast Asian Studies)
About the dalang (Puppeteer):
Darsono Hadiraharjo is a visiting scholar at Cornell University, as an artistic director of the Yale Community Gamelan Ensemble. Darsono has taught gamelan all over the world, traveling and performing in Europe, Asia and the US. He has been an artist-in-residence at Wesleyan University and Bates College in the past, and has performed and given workshops at Emory University, Tufts University, Smith College, and Brown University to name a few. Darsono is a leading musician at the Mangkunegaran Court in Solo, Indonesia and hails from a long line of a family of puppetry and karawitan traditions from Delanggu, Klaten, Central Java.
About the Director:
Maho A. Ishiguro holds a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University. Maho began her studies of Central Javanese gamelan at Smith College when she was working on her Master’s degree in musicology at UMass Amherst. Currently, her primary research focuses on how localized forms of Islam interact with dance and music traditions in present-day Aceh, one of the provinces on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia. She is also an avid practitioner of various dance forms such as South Indian Bharatanatyam, Central Javanese court dance, and Acehnese dance. She is a lecturer in music at Yale University.