ROVA SAXOPHONE QUARTET, the acclaimed all-saxophone ensemble, has fundamentally extended the horizons of music since forming in 1977. Rova has become an important leader in the movement of genre-bending music that has its roots in post-bop free jazz, avant-rock, and 20th century new music as well as traditional and popular styles of Africa, Asia, Europe and the United States. With its potent mix of stellar musicianship and compositional creativity, Rova explores the synthesis of composition and collective improvisation. The result is adventurous works that are ardent and riveting, exhilarating and free-spirited.

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INKBOAT's signature style of fractured, filmic, delicate and decayed environments is a hybrid of myriad traditional and experimental dance and theater forms that challenge and expand their physical theater and Japanese butoh dance basis. Founded by artistic director Shinichi MOMO Koga, inkBoat digs into the shadow side of human nature, breaking down barriers between dance and music, horror and humor to re-infuse meaning and possibility into the performance experience. inkBoat's works have been presented throughout Europe, Japan and North America.

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GAMELAN SEKAR JAYA is recognized as the premier Balinese gamelan outside of Indonesia. Founded in 1979, the fifty-member ensemble of musicians and dancers has presented hundreds of concerts in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Bali -- in venues ranging from the Art Center in Denpasar to remote village squares. Sekar Jaya has sponsored the creation of more than sixty major new works for gamelan and dance, including unique collaborative projects that have brought the group together with composers, theater artists, puppeteers, Indian dancers, and symphony orchestras. In 2000 they received a Dharma Kusuma -- Bali's highest award for artistic achievement, never before given to foreign performers. GSJ will be performing music for gamelan jegog -- the giant bamboo marimbas of West Bali, seldom heard outside of Bali. The jegog enemble will be under the direction of special guest artist, master musician I Made Terip.

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LEYYA TAWIL is the artistic director of Oakland based Dance Elixer. Her work explores the glamourous, exhilarating, and evocative aspects of dance, delivering motion that strikes kinesthetically as it communicates subtly.

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