Perles d’ailleurs

To celebrate Central Asian art and culture, Festival Accès Asie will wrap up this year’s edition with a vibrant mix of music and dance performances, an encounter with the artists and a series of workshops from Thursday, May 26th to Sunday, May 29th, 2016. 

edition 2016
Perles d’ailleurs
May 26 — 8:00pm
May 27 — 5:00pm
May 28 — 10:00am
May 29 — 10:00am
Gesù – Centre de créativité

Description

Following our earlier tributes to Iran, India and Anatolia, the music and dance of Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Iran will be honored in our closing week. 

The International Arts component of Festival Accès Asie will present three major performances: Golestan (Persian for «flower garden»), on Thursday, May 26th at 8:00 pm. This show will bring together artists serving as cultural ambassadors from vast areas of Central Asia. Through her dance, the internationally renowned dancer and choreographer Miriam Peretz will take us on a journey to Central Asia, featuring the music of Ziya Tabassian (percussionist), Efrén López (Afghan rubab) and Bashir Faramarzi (Iranian santur and dutar). 

On Friday May 27th from 5:00 to 7:00 pm at Salle Custeau, Le Gesù – Centre de créativité, everyone is invited to meet Israeli dancer Miriam Peretz. Dancer Sarah Hubert de Margerie will host this event. 

Miriam Peretz will host four «master workshops» on Saturday May 28th and Sunday 29th at Studio Caravane, in the morning from 10 am to 12 pm, and in the afternoon from 1:30 to 3:30 pm. The program will encompass classic Persian, Sufi, Afghan and Turkish Romani dance. A weekend not to be missed!

Medias

Biographies

Miriam Peretz

Dancer, choreographer, and instructor Miriam Peretz specializes in traditional, mystical and contemporary dances from the Silk Road (Persia & Central Asia) and beyond. Her style draws inspiration from her diverse dance background in Persian, Central Asian, Flamenco, and Contemporary dance as well as her training in various Martial Art forms. Miriam has been a principal dancer, assistant director and choreographer for many years with Ballet Afsaneh dance company. She currently performs with her own dance company, Nava Dance Collective as well as performs as a featured soloist in festivals throughout the U.S, Middle East and Europe. Miriam’s love of dance has led her on a lifelong journey in search for ways to use the arts as a bridge between people of different backgrounds and spiritual traditions. She sees dance as a uniquely powerful means of expressing deep emotion and spiritual yearning, and therefore the perfect embodiment of prayer

©Juan Carlos Pometta

Ziya Tabassian

Iranian born artist Ziya Tabassian began playing the tombak (Iran percussion instrument) at the age of ten. He studied classic Western percussion, and is very active in the traditional and contemporary music scenes. As founding member of the Ensemble Constantinople, Tabassian has toured around the world. In addition to performing with the ensemble, he has recorded many albums. His first solo production, Tombak, was released in 2007 under the Ambiances Magnétiques record label. He also performs as a member of Ensemble Âstân, founded by Bashir Faramarzi in 2013.

Website

©Michel Pinault

Efrén López

Efren López is a Spanish multi-instrumentalist, with a passion for strings. When he was younger, he joined a rock band as a sound assistant; it was an intense learning experience that put him in contact with everything related to musical production. Through his travels to Puerto Rico and Colombia, he began playing traditional doubled-stringed instruments. He has recorded numerous albums of Medieval and Renaissance music. In recent years, he has been specializing in Afghan rubab.

Website

©Gisela M.

Bashir Faramarzi

Born in northeast Iran, Bashir Faramarzi showed, from a very early age, a strong interest in the traditional music of his native land and Azerbaijan. At the age of fifteen, he learned how to play the santur (a stringed instrument related to the zither), and afterwards enrolled in the University of Tehran as an Iranian music interpretation student. He then pursued studies in ethnomusicology in Paris, where he also carried out the recording of dutar players’ musical repertoire and literary heritage. Today he performs as a player and composer for the Ensemble Âstân, a Montreal group he founded in 2013. The ensemble’s first album, Qazalvâreh, has recently been released.

Website

©Marcel Mueller

Sarah Hubert de Margerie

After pursuing a career in classical ballet and jazz ballet, Sarah Hubert de Margerie began her training in Eastern dance (baladi) in 2003. Her travels to Morocco and Pakistan fueled her curiosity of this dance style. She has mastered classical and folkloric dance styles from North Africa, India, Iran and the Arabian peninsula. Passionate about Asian music, she has taken up playing the oud,an Asian lute. If that were not enough, this talented dancer has also earned her MA in Philosophy from the Université de Québec à Montréal (UQAM).

©Léo Laflèche

With

Miriam Peretz – Dancer and choreographer 

Ziya Tabassian – Percussions 

Efrén López – Afghan rubab player

Bashir Faramarzi – Santur and dutar player

Sarah Hubert de Margerie – Host and dancer

edition 2016
Perles d’ailleurs
May 26 — 8:00pm
May 27 — 5:00pm
May 28 — 10:00am
May 29 — 10:00am
Gesù – Centre de créativité