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blendDRUMStheatre #3
CRT Milano / Susanna Beltrami Dance Company
Leonard Eto, one of Japan's most famous and innovative percussionists, was appointed a 2014 "Japanese Cultural Ambassador" by the Japanese government's Cultural Affairs Agency. He thus had the opportunity to organize a world tour of meetings with musicians, dancers, choreographers and directors in various nations.
Over the course of this long year, Milan's Teatro dell'Arte offered him - as CRT Milan's artist-in-residence - a place where he could develop his "blendDRUMStheatre" project, bring to fruit from his international experiences and cross his creative path with that of other Italian artists.
Under the acronym "blendDRUMStheatre"-which already highlights from the name the nature of his artistic research-Leonard aims to compose a "Taiko Trilogy" (the Japanese drum), with the development of a precise dramaturgy of feelings, which are from always associated with the sound of drums.
Leonard Eto's is unique in the originality of his musical creations. He creates an astonishing range of emotions with his instruments-despair, exhilaration and all the gradations that exist between the two opposites-causing the audience to fall at his feet. Eto loves music that stimulates dance, and he loves the audience that dances to his music.
artistic collaboration Susanna Beltrami
staging assistant** Matteo Bittante**
with soloists from the Susanna Beltrami Company
Fabrizio Calanna, Alice Carrino, Cristian Cucco, Giulia Murgianu, Lara Viscuso
light designer Marcello Lumaca
product from
CRT Milan
in collaboration with
Change Performing Arts
Susanna Beltrami/DanceHaus Dance Company
with the support of
Agency for Cultural Affairs of Japan
Leonard Eto's performances are a concentration of sonic energy and instrumental virtuosity, in which this innovative artist succeeds to in exploiting the full potential of the coloristic and timbral range of the Japanese "taiko" drum, revisiting its meanings and percussive techniques with singular expressiveness.
Leonard Eto was born to New York in 1963. He joined to the renowned percussionist group Kodo' in 1984, for which he was to long musical director and composer. In 1992 Leonard began his solo activity, which has gradually led him to to revive the ways in which taiko is played and to direct his vision toward multidisciplinary projects, which combine music with dance, live painting, and electronic imaging.
With his performances, he has performed in 50 different countries and has collaborated with artists of various disciplines, musicians and composers of the stature of Bob Dylan, INXS, The Chieftains, Bon Jovi, Michael Kamen, Ray Cooper and Roger Taylor, Zakir Hussein, Andreas Vollenweider, Milton Cardona, Doudou Ndiaye Rose, Max Roach, Michael Shrieve, Siouxie Sioux, The Creatures, Patrick Dupond, and Nina Anianashvili.
In addition to his concert activity, Leonard is a composer of film scores. Memorable appearances to JFK, The Lion King, The Thin Red Line, The Hunted-The Prey, and others.
The Susanna Beltrami Company was founded in September 2008 out of a desire to raise a new generation of dancers. The choreographer has built an ensemble of young professionals, guided from an indefatigable tension to evolution sprung from from a continuous putting herself on the line. Path and goal of the company is the reworking of the intrinsic mechanisms of dance, which are being merged with the languages of contemporaneity. Its avant-garde artistic peculiarity is the stage, conceived not only as a theatrical stage, but as research in the field of site-specific. Multiple artistic creations and collaborations. Among the most recent: "Le Vent Noir" - Festival Exister, "Estrad'eau" - Milan Fashion Week 2013, "Homesick" - Next 2013 in collaboration with Milanoltre and "blendDRUMStheatre" by Leonard Eto - CRT Milan.