Resurface | Remember
“The flow of the river never ceases,
And the water never stays the same.Bubbles float on the surface of pools,
Bursting, re-forming, never lingering.The same is true of people and their dwellings in this world.”
- Hōjōki by Kamo no Chōmei translated by Matthew Stavros
"But this was all a long time ago, long enough that now, much of it feels as though it happened to someone else."
-Kyle Lung
Creator and Dancer: Mariko Ishikawa
Music: Ramin Roshandel
Costume Design: Juliana Waechter
Lighting Design: Alastair Sigala Ramirez
Cinematography: Chase Ishii; Julia Cooper
Stage Manager: Jennifer Sandgathe
Thesis Committee: George de la Peña, Eloy Barragán, Stephanie Miracle
Resurface|Remember seeks to investigate, embody, and understand human connection with natural elements of the earth through dance. Influenced by the philosophies of Shintoism, an indigenous Japanese religion that cultivates harmony between humans and nature, the two part solo is a culmination of my phenomenological experience of my dancing body in relation to the natural elements and lack thereof.
Photos
Special thanks to Ben Magee, Kyle Lung, and Julia Cooper.
Mariko Ishikawa is a dancer, collaborator, and educator, originally from the San Francisco Bay Area.* She is a recipient of the Iowa Arts Fellowship and is currently pursuing her MFA in Dance at the University of Iowa. She has danced with Albany Berkshire Ballet, Menlowe Ballet, Imaginatio Arts, eMotion Arts, New Ground Theatre Dance Company, among others. She has had the pleasure of working with Michael Lowe, Ronn Guidi, Viktor Kabaniev, Reginald Ray-Savage, Mariana Sobral, Alyssa Mitchel, and Chelsea Farrah. Mariko holds a BA in Performing Arts and Liberal Studies from Saint Mary's College (LEAP).
*written in acknowledgment of the ancestral territory of Ramaytush Ohlone (SF) and the Miwok, Yokuts, Patwin, and other Ohlone (Greater Bay Area).
Ramin Roshandel’s compositional work is based around incorporating ‘experience’ as a fundamental concept through a non-experimental approach in performance. Considering phenomena such as instability, cultural identity, and communicational language on one hand, and being inspired by Persian music microtones as a setār (an Iranian instrument) player on the other, has led him to consider indeterminate, improvisatory, and abstract structures in his music to contrast or converge with post- or non-tonal forms. Over the past year, he has been one of the co-recipients of the Public Art Matching (from the City of Iowa City) and the Arts Across Borders Grants (the University of Iowa) for creating two site-specific collaborative pieces, The Parking Space and Mammal Hall. In 2019, he was awarded the University of Iowa Digital Scholarship and Publishing Studio summer scholarship and was a New Music on the Point alumnus. His pieces have been performed by the JACK quartet and LIGAMENT duo, as well as in the Society of Composers, SCI’s Summer Student Mixtape (featuring a group of selected BIPOC composers), Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project’s Summer Sounds, the Midwest Composers Symposium (MCS), and the Exchange of Midwest Collegiate Composers (EMCC). Roshandel was the setār soloist of Jean-François Charles’ opera, Grant Wood in Paris, in its premiere. He is currently a PhD candidate in Music Composition at the University of Iowa, where he has studied under Josh Levine and Sivan Cohen-Elias and currently working with David Gompper. He holds a Master of Music in Composition from the University of Tehran and a Bachelor of Arts in Iranian Music Performance from Tehran University of Art. He has two analytical papers on Hossein Alizadeh’s Neynavā and Elliott Carter’s Dialogues published in Persian journals.
Chase Ishii spent his early years in Los Angeles answering phones and getting coffee for mid-level studio executives and eventually transitioned into sports journalism where he covered college football and Major League Baseball. He now spends his days as a Creative Director for a plucky e-commerce startup in the Bay Area and his nights rock climbing, drumming up fun stories to tell, and figuring out where to park his van.