All of Asia seems to be represented in "Dragon Bond Rite," a dance/drama created by Korean-American composer Jin Hi Kim. Her music fuses Eastern and Western elements, and she herself is a virtuoso performer on the komungo, a Korean fourth-century fretted zither. In 1993, when she saw a Noh performance in Japan for the first time, she began to realize the close connections among mask dramas of many Asian cultures, and out of her research came this evening-length work.
Her work uses the dragon, a mythical pan-Asian symbol of creativity and fantasy, as a unifying metaphor to bring together techniques from the mask drama of four cultures: Indian kudiyattam, Korean talcum, Indonesian topeng and Japanese Noh. Each dancer-performer is accompanied by vocal and drum music: otsuzumi drums from Japan, changgo drums and kagok/pansori song from Korea, kendang drums and dalang song from Indonesia and mizhavu drums from India.
With a libretto drawn from Armand Schwerner's epic cycle of poems, "The Tablets," based on the inscriptions on Akkadian clay tablets, "Dragon Bond Rite" features an international cast of 14 performers. Kim performs on komungo; and, adding to the rich blend of music and movement, there is a Tuvan throat singer, creating his own breathtaking overtones to accompany his own voice.
