Theatre Project Presents DA DA DA PAS DE DEUX

Award-winning performing artist Naoko Maeshiba teams up with partner Rohaizad Suaidi in a an original new work, da da da Pas de Deux, opening Thursday for four performances only.

Twenty-three years ago, Naoko Maeshiba and Rohaizad Suaidi met in Honolulu via Japan and Singapore. They reunited in the nation's capital, at the beginning of the millennium. In 2017, they find each other in Baltimore revisiting their experiences living in and outside of the US.

da da da Pas de Deux is a whimsical performance dialogue about what Naoko and Rohaizad left behind/carried forward from their home countries of Japan and Singapore. They drive through a series of verbal and physical explorations, examining their relationships to cultural topography, language, body, and aesthetics. Humorous and meditative da da da Pas de Deux sees Naoko and Rohaizad dancing gleefully up and down the continuum of everyday life/performance and celebrating their East/West make-up.

da da da Pas de Deux
March 8 - 11

Tickets:
General Admission - $25
Senior/Artist/Military - $20
Student - $15

Naoko Maeshiba is a dancer, choreographer, director, and educator. Rooted in the minimalism of traditional and contemporary Japanese art as well as dance improvisation principles, her work strives to awaken the unconscious and the invisible realm of human experiences through the interplay of kinetic, auditory, and sculptural elements.

To date, she has presented over thirty solo, duo, and ensemble works in both traditional and non-traditional venues in the North America, Europe, and Japan, collaborating with the artists from a diverse disciplinary background. Venues include: John. F. Kennedy Center of Performing Arts (DC), Hirshhorn Museum at Smithsonian Institute (DC), Theatre of Yugen Noh space (SF), Tank (NY), Joyce Soho (NY), Baltimore Theatre Project (MD), Questfest (MD), Dialog of Four Cultures Festival (Lodz, Poland), Performance space Celica (Ljubljana, Slovenia), Theatre Jo (Tabor, Czech Republic), Dance Hakushu (Hakushu, Japan), Dance Place (DC). Maeshiba has received the Individual Artist Fellowship Grant from DC Commissions on Arts and Humanities, Individual Artist Award from Maryland State Arts Council in the area of solo dance performance, solo theatre performance, and choreography, Baker award from Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance. In 2015, she launched a solo performance project called Subject/Object which looks into her cultural identity and influence of nurture/nature through the patterns of movements. She is a guild -certified Feldenkrais practitioner and the director of the MFA program in the experimental theatre arts at Towson University.

Rohaizad Suaidi is a performer, director and theatre maker who has worked on more than a dozen original pieces as well as published texts over the years. A graduate of Towson University's MFA Theatre program, Rohaizad is also an educator who has lectured on theatre and taught acting and directing at institutions of higher learning in Malaysia, Singapore and Micronesia. Since returning to live in Baltimore in 2015, Rohaizad has created and performed Giovanni's Room, a site-specific piece based on the well-known text by James Baldwin for the AKIMBO Dance and Movement Art Festival in 2016. Other recent performance works include acting in the play Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them (Iron Crow Theatre), Promenade: Baltimore (Single Carrot Theatre) and The Death of Walt Disney (Single Carrot Theatre). Currently, Rohaizad works part-time at Strong City Baltimore's Adult Learning Center, where he teaches English to new immigrants and refugees, while being a fulltime dad to his 20-month-old son.

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