Lead Artists
Midiyanto (Composer)
Midiyanto, an internationally known musician and shadow master (dhalang), has performed in Indonesia, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore over the past twenty years. He established a gamelan foundation in 2000 in his home town, Wonogiri, and financed the education of 50 students between five and 15 years of age. Currently he is Lecturer of UC Berkeley and the co-director of Gamelan Sari Raras.
Jason Jong (Composer)
Jason Jong is founder and director of HEI GU Chinese Percussion Ensemble, which seeks to reclaim the legacy of Chinese percussive arts through traditional and contemporary works. For the past 20 years, Jason has used percussion as a medium to explore ways in which rhythm and sound can give voice to culture and community. Jason performs with Asian Crisis , Vanessa Vo and Breath of Asia, and Kulintang Dance Theater. He has performed with Noh Buddies, Melody of China, Gen Taiko, Anthony Brown and the Asian American Orchestra and Yuenlin Chen.
Kompiang Metri-Davies (Choreographer)
Kompiang Metri-Davies is an accomplished traditional dancer who began studying Balinese dance at the age of five in her village of Ngis in Eastern Bali, Indonesia. Soon after arriving in the United States in 1994, she became a lead dancer and played music with the premier American Balinese dance and music ensemble Gamelan Sekar Jaya. She was a member of this organization for ten years before forming her own ensemble in 2007, Gadung Kasturi Balinese Dance and Music.
Wan-Chao Chang (Choreographer)
Since arriving in the US in 1995 from Taiwan, Chang has performed with critically acclaimed companies such as Ballet Afsaneh, Gamelan Sekar Jaya, Gadung Kasturi Balinese Dance and Music, Harsanari Indonesian Dance Company, Chinese Folk Dance Association, and Westwind International Folk Ensemble, which she directed from 2001-2002. Chang has followed her passion, celebrating the harmony of world dance and bringing her diverse disciplines together. In 2008 she founded Wan-Chao Dance, an ethno-contemporary dance company which aims to create new works rooted in traditional dance forms. Her goal is to sensitize audiences to the human commonality, while embracing the diversity and beauty reflected in society through the language of dance.
Performance Organizations
HEI GU Chinese Percussion Ensemble
Wan-Chao Dance
Wan-Chao Dance, founded in 2008 by Wan-Chao Chang, is an ethno-contemporary dance company aiming to create new works rooted from traditional dance forms. WCD premiered at WestWave Dance Festival 2008, and was selected for the Festival of Silk Road and San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival in 2009 and 2010.
Gadung Kasturi Balinese Dance and Music
Gadung Kasturi has as its mission the preservation, promotion, and development of traditional dance and music of Bali, Indonesia, through live performance, workshops, classes, lectures, and publications. The name Gadung Kasturi refers to the scent of the Gadung flower. Incorporated in 2007 by Kompiang Metri-Davies, the group is the first Indonesian performing arts organization to be founded and directed by an Indonesian American in the Bay Area.