FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Tamar Fortgang
213-237-2873 (do not publish)
REDCATpr@calarts.edu

REDCAT's Inaugural Season Begins With Los Angeles Debut of Japanese Collective dumb type

October 28-November 2
Memorandum

November 5-8
Voyage
U.S. Premiere

8:30pm all performances
Tickets: $36 general admission

Los Angeles, October 2 - Japanese media and performance collective dumb type open the inaugural season of the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT) with two unique works presented during two weeks of performances. Making its Los Angeles debut is a piece titled Memorandum, which runs from October 28 to November 2. The U.S. premiere of Voyage will be November 5 with performances running through November 8. General admission tickets are $36 and can be purchased at the REDCAT box office located on the corner of 2nd and Hope Streets in the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex in downtown Los Angeles or by phone at 213-237-2800.

dumb type makes its Los Angeles debut with Memorandum. A frenetic audio-visual spectacle that combines inventive video projection techniques, live dance and fragmented narrative, the piece explores the importance of personal visual memory in an increasingly technology-driven society. Sensory overload is both the medium and the message as dumb type offers a truly unique examination of the mechanisms that control our perceptions.

Following its performance of Memorandum, dumb type gives the U.S. premiere of a new piece called Voyage. The group combines its signature amped-up sonic environments and striking visual tableaux with a large-scale reflective installation as it examines the uncertainty and dislocation that accompany today's shifting realities. Using movement and motion, speed and stillness, nature and illusion, Voyage pricks the skin of anxiety and leads us to question where we are and where we may be going. The piece will include unique elements developed in special workshops held at CalArts during the week of October 20.

dumb type was founded in 1987 in Kyoto, Japan by artists working in a variety of disciplines. The group was formed in the vibrant climate of Kyoto's cultural scene, where dumb type soon moved into a central position. They founded Art Space, an institution that offers space for regular meetings working groups and the development of local initiatives. The piece 036 - Pleasure Life brought their first international success in 1988. The collective then secured a global triumph with pH which had its premiere in autumn 1990 in Tokyo and was also performed in 1991 at the Granada festival in Spain. In this multimedia masterpiece by Teji Furuhashi, the head of the group who died of AIDS in 1995, the stage acted as a huge photocopier which scanned the dancers from right to left like some copy object, subjecting them to innumerable choreographic constellations in the rhythm of an "exposure process." In 1994 Furuhashi worked with the Canon Art Lab to produce the video installation Lovers (Dying Pictures, Loving Pictures), which is now part of the permanent collection at the New York Museum of Modern Art.

dumb type appears as part of REDCAT's Worldview Series, which presents interdisciplinary performance works by international artists and companies which often incorporate new media technologies. Its program puts a special emphasis on artists from Mexico, with upcoming appearances by the group Delfos Danza Contemporánea from Mazatlán and Mexico City's trailblazing cabaret artist Astrid Hadad. Also included are cutting-edge performing groups from North America, Europe and Japan.

Memorandum is a co-production with le Centre de Developpement Choreographique, Toulouse; Le Maillon - Theatre de Strasbourg; Maison des Arts, Croteil; REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater), Los Angeles; Theater Drama City, Osaka.

Voyage is a co-production with Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Croteil Maison des Arts; Festival d'Automne ? Paris; Le Manage Scene Nationale de Maubeuge; Pilar de Yzaguirre - Ysarca Madrid; la Batie Festival de Geneve; the Museum of Art, Kochi ; New Opera of Tel Aviv, with the support of the town of Ajaccio, Institut Franco-Japonais du Kansai Villa Kujoyama and the Kyoto Art Center.

The 2003 dumb type tour is funded by Bunkacho, Agency for Cultural Affairs of Japan.

A presentation of the Sharon Disney Lund Dance Series
Funded by The Japan Foundation