Sheng Dong is a Taiwan-based troupe whose name means “A Moving Sound”—a fitting moniker for a company that not only blends music and movement, but moves, so to speak, between the worlds of Chinese and other Asian traditions and modern Western forms. The ensemble’s performance at UMass next Wednesday is the first in a three-part series of performing arts events presented by the Fine Arts Center’s Asian Arts & Culture program with a major grant from the Taiwanese Ministry of Culture.
Sheng Dong’s approach to cultural fusion has been called “an inspired marriage of Taiwanese traditional sounds and Western pop experimentation that forges an important new musical dialogue.” The Spotlight Taiwan series continues over the next year, including the Taiyuan Puppet Theatre in an all-ages showcase of traditional puppetry and the Cloud Gate Dance Theatre in a contemporary piece using the rice harvest as a metaphor for environmental destruction and rebirth.
Also coming up this month in what Asian Arts & Culture director Ranjanaa Devi calls “a season that defines diversity in the truest sense” are two programs from Japan. On Sept. 23, singer/musician Makiko Sakurai performs ancient Buddhist chants and pre-Geisha Shirabyoshi songs, followed Sept. 30 by Yuko Eguchi in “The Art of the Geisha.”
Sept. 17, 7:30 p.m., Bowker Auditorium, UMass-Amherst, (413) 545-2511, fac.umass.edu/online.
