Minh Tran & Company
http://www.mtdance.org
Forgotten Memories
Friday through Sunday, November 2,3,4 @7:30PM & 9PM
Sunday, November 4
Post-performance discussion w/ guest facilitator Kilong Ung, President of the Cambodian-American Community of Oregon, Minh Tran & Company, and collaborating artists.
Imago Theater
17 SE 8th Avenue (Corner of SE 8th & Ankeny)
Portland, OR 97214
$20 / $18 / $18 (General / Student & Senior/Working Artist)
http://www.brownpapertickets.com or 503.284.8686
Information: 503.998.0381, http://www.mtdance.org
Hi-resolution images available upon request.
Called "a blistering evocation of genocide's ghosts," by the Oregonian at it's 2005 work-in-progress premier, Forgotten Memories centers on Tuol Sleng [hill of the poison tree], an abandoned suburban Phnom Penh high school that was code-named S-21and transformed into a Khmer Rouge interrogation center from 1975-1979. Headed by Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge combined extremist ideology, ethnic animosity, and a disregard for human life to produce murder on a massive scale. Approximately 1.7 million people lost their lives (21% of the country's population) under the Pol Pot regime. Over 17,000 prisoners were interrogated, tortured, and executed inside the walls of S-21.
Tran toured Tuol Sleng in 2004 while on exchange in Cambodia with the Mekong Project, a program of Dance Theater Workshop in New York. After the first work-in-progress showing of Forgotten Memories in 2005, Tran returned to Cambodia to conduct additional research in order to complete the work.
Endeavoring to engage the audience viscerally through the combined mediums of film, original music, sets and movement, the completed Forgotten Memories is performed in the intimate setting of Imago Theater, inviting audiences acquire a first-hand taste of the horrors associated with war.
More than twenty-eight years after the Pol Pot regime was defeated in early 1979, there is now the real prospect that a small number of surviving Khmer Rouge leaders will be brought to trial before the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, officially known as the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). When this happens it will be the first occasion that any Khmer Rouge leader appears before a properly constituted court.
There will be a post performance discussion on Sunday November 4, 2007 with the artistic staff of Minh Tran & Company and featured guest facilitator Kilong Ung, President of Cambodian-American Community of Oregon and Khmer Rouge survivor. Other Cambodian-American survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime will attend the performance and participate in the post performance discussion.
Tran's company of dancers (Angela Haugejorden, Samuel Hobbs, Jennifer Hong, Riho Katagiri, Carla Mann, and Tran), along with long-time collaborators visual artist Christine Bourdette, filmmakers Chel White and Ryan Jeffrey, composer Dariush Dolat-shahi, and lighting designer Jeff Forbes, combine talents to create a compelling response to this atrocity. The development of Forgotten Memories is made possible in part with support from the Regional Arts & Culture Council, and the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.
About Minh Tran & Company
Minh Tran & Company is a nonprofit dance organization based in Portland, Oregon under artistic direction of Vietnamese-American choreographer Minh Tran, a recipient of the 2005 Oregon Art Commission Individual Fellowship Award. With a growing body of original and distinctive contemporary dance work and an increasing national presence, the company is noted for its singular fusion of traditional and contemporary techniques. Spanning architectural, cultural and social contexts, Minh Tran & Company's repertory reflects its choreographer's fascination with the personal identity, popular culture, sense of place, and the compelling interplay of eastern and western traditions. The Company aims to promote artistic dialogue and educational exchange with audiences and communities through the use of artistic expression as a catalyst for breaking down cultural and racial barriers.
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