Zakir Hussain
Zakir Hussain, known internationally as a maestro of the tabla—the
classical concert drum of North India—is considered one of the world's
greatest percussionists. He was the recipient of a 1999 National
Heritage Fellowship, the United States' most prestigious honor in the
folk and traditional arts. In 2002, Hussain was awarded the title of
"Padma Bhushan" by the president of India, in recognition of
his artistic excellence and the great contribution he has made in the
field of music.
Son of tabla legend Ustad Allarakha, as well as an accomplished composer
and a chief architect of the world music movement, Hussain has
accompanied many of India's greatest classical musicians and dancers,
from Ali Akbar Khan and Ravi Shankar to Birju Maharaj and Shivkumar
Sharma. His collaborations and projects include Shakti—an acoustic
jazz-Indian crossover band formed in the mid 1970s with British
guitarist John McLaughlin and L. Shankar; the Diga Rhythm Band; Planet
Drum with Mickey Hart; and recordings and performances with artists as
diverse as George Harrison, Joe Henderson, Van Morrison, Tito Puente,
Billy Cobham, the Hong Kong Symphony, and the New Orleans Symphony. In
1987, his first solo release, Making Music, was acclaimed as
"one of the most inspired East-West fusion albums ever
recorded."
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Gordy Ryan
Gordy Ryan has played with Olatunji Drums of
Passion, founded by the late Babatunde Olatunji, a Nigerian elder called
"the world's foremost ambassador of African music," and with
Gabrielle Roth for more than 25 years. He has written and recorded music
for film, theatre, television, and albums with artists such as David
Sanborn, Carlos Santana, Mickey Hart, Airto, and Spike Lee. A founding
member of the Africa Institute, he has explored the clarification of
consciousness in studies with Oscar Ichazo since 1970. |
Ubaka Hill
Ubaka Hill (Ooo-bah'-kah) is a nationally known drummer,
teacher, performer, and visual artist. She began drumming
professionally with a local jazz group in 1974 at the age of 18
in her home state of New Jersey. Since then, Hill has performed
with various creative artists and cofounded percussion
performance groups. "My teachers are many," she says,
though her earliest inspiration as a female percussionist came
from Edwina Lee Tyler. Hill has recorded with various artists
and on soundtracks for educational and creative videos.
Hill is the founder and director of the Drumsong Institute,
based in Brooklyn, New York, which provides workshops,
performances for all ages, and related information and resources
to the drumming community. She is deeply committed to the
emerging tradition of women drummers, and is editor and
publisher of the newsletter Drumsong/Drumming Womyn's News:
Views and Attitudes.
Hill is a shape shifter, a storyteller, an innovative drummer in
the creative tradition of jazz and in the spirit of social
change. Her first drum was the conga; the djembe is now her
primary instrument, her "other voice." She also plays
other kinds of drums and percussion instruments from various
cultures. The root of Hill's drumsong is primarily intuitive,
inspired by the rhythmic drumming traditions of North and West
Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, American Jazz, and
Shamanism interwoven with poetry and song. She has become an
inspiration to many who wish to learn to make and play drums and
to share the power of drumsongs as a tool of liberation,
community building, healing, and personal joy.
Hill has performed and taught numerous workshops on the art and
spirit of drumming throughout North and South America. With
great energy, talent, and sensitivity, she brings drums,
percussion, poetry, and song to hospitals, conferences, music
festivals, universities, rallies, children's programs, community
centers, and to various celebrations and ceremonies. As a
teacher, she has the unique ability to make drumming easily
accessible to all who want to feel their own voices through the
voices of drums.
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Omega Workshops:
Drumsong: The
Art & Spirit of Drumming for Women
September 12, 2003 - September 14, 2003, Rhinebeck
Campus
Drumsong: The
Art & Spirit of Drumming
October 6, 2003 - October 10, 2003, Omega
at The Crossings |
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Faculty
Contact Information:
website: http://www.ladyslipper.org |
Gabrielle Roth
Noted artist, philosopher, and dancer Gabrielle Roth has devoted
her life to honoring and communicating the language of primal
movement and experimental theater. Since the mid-1960s, Roth has
taken thousands of people on a journey from physical and emotional
inertia to the freedom of ecstasy, from the tyranny of the
chattering ego-mind to the blessed emptiness of stillness.
Roth's labs and retreats have an electric intensity that mates
contemporary currents of rock music, modern theater, and poetry to
the ancient pulse of shamanism. Author of Maps to Ecstasy
and Sweat Your Prayers, Gabrielle is the artistic director
of her dance/theater/music company, The Mirrors, and has been a
member of the Actor's Studio. Her award-winning musical recordings
are on the cutting-edge of shamanic trance/dance music. She is
currently teaching experimental theater in New York based on The
Roth 5 Rhythms™ and training others to use shamanic methods
within artistic, education, and healing contexts.
She is often joined in her classes and workshops by her son,
Jonathan Horan, who teaches with her at Omega Institute and other
venues around the country.
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Omega Workshops:
Sweat
Your Prayers: Movement As Spiritual Practice
July 11, 2003 - July 13, 2003, Rhinebeck
Campus
Waves
September 5, 2003 - September 7, 2003, Omega
at The Crossings
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Books
by Gabrielle Roth:
These books are available on-line through our association with
Amazon.com. Omega receives a portion of the proceeds for all
purchases made when you follow a link from our site to theirs.
Maps
to Ecstasy : A Healing Journey for the Untamed Spirit
Sweat
Your Prayers : Movement As Spiritual Practice
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Faculty
Contact Information:
The Moving Center
P.O. Box 271, Cooper Station
New York, NY 10276
phone: 212-760-1381
website: http://www.gabrielleroth.com
email: ravenrec@panix.com
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Morocco
Morocco (Carolina Varga Dinicu) has more than 40 years of
experience as a performer, writer, choreographer, and teacher of
Raks Sharki, an ancient and enduring folk dance misnamed
"belly" dancing by body-fearing Victorians. She is an
inductee of the AAMED Mideastern Hall of Fame, speaks 11
languages, and is founder/director of the Morocco and Casbah Dance
Experience. She frequently travels to the Middle East to perform,
teach, and research.
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Omega
Workshops:
Raks
Sharki: Being the Beauty of the Music
August 25, 2003 - August 29, 2003, Rhinebeck
Campus
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Faculty
Contact Information:
6 West 20th Street
New York, NY 10011
phone: 212-727-8326
website: http://www.casbahdance.org
email: morocco@casbahdance.org
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