Indonesia & India in California Festival

The Indonesia & India in California Festival will celebrate the history of these performing arts traditions as practiced & performed in California for over fifty years. Daytime activities will feature free performances and interactive workshops, exhibitions, and talks. The evening formal concert feature Indian master artists and Bay Area Indonesian ensembles (gamelan).

Gamelan Pusaka Sunda is a 12-member West Javanese performing arts group, led by Burhan Sukarma and based in the San Francisco Bay Area with strong collaborative connections to Bandung, Indonesia. Members of the group are all accomplished musicians who have spent most of their lives learning and performing gamelan music. Founded in 1988 by Burhan Sukarma and Rae Ann Stahl, Pusaka Sunda provides a voice for Burhan’s own compositions as well as a means for promulgating the traditional music of West Java.

Gamelan Sekar Jaya's (GSJ) mission is to foster artistic exchange between Bali and the United States through residencies, workshops, performances, and the creation of innovative new works of music and dance; and to share the excitement of this exchange with diverse audiences in California, the US, and abroad.Gamelan Sekar.Three Guest Artist-Teachers from Bali join GSJ for the Spring 2025 season.

Gamelan Sari Raras is a community performing ensemble in the Department of Music at UC Berkeley. Founded in 1988 it includes students and former students at Berkeley as well as musicians from the SF Bay Area. The repertoire consists of traditional Javanese gamelan music for shadow play (wayang) and dance. and is led by Ki Midiyanto, a musician and puppet master from Wonogiri, Central Java, has taught and performed extensively in Indonesia, the US, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia and Canada. who teaches at UC Berkeley.

Bala Dance Center ( Founder/ Director Aggie Brenneman) The Bala Center for South Indian Dance is dedicated to the teaching of Bharatanatyam to the public of all ages, backgrounds and experiences. The Bala Dance Center adheres to the style of T. Balasaraswati and has a commitment to the traditional choreography of the classical repertoire.

Kalanjali Dances of India (Katherine Kunirahman, Director)

Kalanjali believes that dance has the power to promote a healthy self-image and enhance essential life skills that go beyond those acquired in our dance classes. Kalanjali's aim is to teach the most authentic classical form of Bharatanatyam as taught in India, and also to impress upon our students a love for dance, and an understanding of its antiquity, scientifically evolved details and inherent beauty.

Lestari Dance Company (Ninik Lunde, Director)

Ninik began her studies of classical Javanese dance at six years old in Central Java. Ninik has then been teaching Indonesian language and culture for 31 years at the University of California - Berkeley, after 5 years teaching at the University of Wisconsin Madison. In 1996, together with the late Puspawati Dwi Atmini, and Rozalia Kasim, Ninik founded Lestari Indonesian Dance group in Union City, CA, to preserve and promote the diversity of Indonesian ethnic dances for both expatriate Indonesians and Americans in the Bay Area.

Crosspulse/Keith Terry

Inspired by the generation of great US jazz tap dancers he was accompanying in the 1970’s, drummer Keith Terry dove head-on into Body Music (a term he coined) in 1978. He regularly travels the world, performing and teaching in a wide range of settings from villages in Bali to New York City's Lincoln Center. He taught for 5 years in UCLA's Department of World Arts and Cultures. Keith is a Guggenheim Fellow and the founding artistic director of Crosspulse; and the International Body Music Festival (IBMF) - launched by Crosspulse in 2008 to explore the language of Body Music from culture to culture. IBMFs have been produced in the US, Brazil, Turkey, Indonesia, France, Canada, Italy, Greece and Ghana.

Purnamasari, (Founder/Artistic Director Lisa Graciano)

Purnamasari integrates Indonesian gamelan instruments into original songs and compositions. The band creates a unique musical fusion, combining a variety of gamelan instruments with guitars and other western instruments, tuned to harmonize and at times conflict with each other. The group is led by singer-songwriter and guitarist Lisa Graciano, an Indonesian American of Balinese/Menadonese Indo descent, along with veteran Bay Area rock and gamelan musicians from groups such as Gamelan Sekar Jaya and Gamelan X.

Kompiang Metri Davies, (Gadung Kasturi Founder Artistic Director)

Kompiang is from Ngis, Karangasem, Bali, and started her studies of Balinese music and dance at age 5. After moving to the SF Bay Area in 1992, Kompiang founded Gadung Kasturi in 2007, a Balinese performing arts group in Richmond, CA. She performs with her daughter Chandra who is an undergrad at UC Davis in Biology and Public Health.

Other individual artists will join in the Festival. See the website for more information.

www.indo-india-cal-fest.org

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