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 GalassiniCatherine 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.