Event

Paradox of Balance

The dancer seeks balance, the musician seeks balance, and the observer seeks balance, all wanting to experience the comfortable stability of being on firm ground.

But once attained, balance is quickly lost. The momentum of seeking swiftly moves the seeker into states that tilt one way or another groundless or weighted, loud or silent, contained or out of control.

Drawing on the stability of traditional Iranian melodies and American jazz, the musicians find and lose balance as they interact with one another through composed music and improvisation, as well as extended techniques that take them away from the stability of the instruments themselves.

To the musicians, the dancer plays both mirror and catalystreflecting the seeking, grasping and letting go of the musical elements while interjecting her own destabilizing movements, as all performers find ways to communicate and, ultimately, find their way back home.

Join performers Lynea Diaz-Hagan, Shahrzad Korsandi, and Ramin Zoufonoun, for this shifting exploration of sound, movement, and states of mind.

Paradox of Balance is performed without intermission.

Performer Biographies

Lynea Diaz-Hagan (vocalist/lyricist) and Ramin Zoufonoun (pianist/composer) are the founders of Merkuri, a San Franciscobased performance ensemble formed in 2008. To learn more about Merkuri, please visit merkurimusic.com.

Shahrzad Khorsandi, founder and director of Shahrzad Dance Company, is a contemporary dancer and choreographer living and working in the Bay Area. Among the first Persian dance practitioners to create a formalized vocabulary and structure for Persian dance, she has helped archive an art form that has been outlawed in Iran for the past three decades. To learn more, please visit dancepersian.org.