People sometimes wonder why we are called the SITI Company. What is SITI? 

When we originally came together in 1993, we called ourselves the Saratoga International Theater Institute. And the intention was that we would hold symposiums and panel discussions and talks along with performances. In our first two summers in Saratoga we did conduct these activities, but as time went on we became more and more focused on our performances.

You are free to choose what you want to make of your life.  It’s called free agency or free will, and it’s your birthright.
(Sean Covey)

The moment that Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanatta first encountered David Bowie on the cover of his record album Aladdin Sane at the age of 19, her perspectives and attitude were forever transformed. She said, “It was an image that changed my life. It was the beginning of my artistic birth.” She put the vinyl record onto a record player that sat on the stove of her tiny apartment and began to evolve into the Lady Gaga that we know today.

Dear  friends;

Please allow me to re-post my personal Skidmore summer memory here again. (I posted this in March 2015 on facebook.) I edited a bit this time.

smile

*****
Before Joining SITI company, I participated the summer workshop @Skidmore College in 1995 & 1996. In those days, my English was a mess. I was in a kind of lost status after quitting from Suzuki Company of Toga.

Starting today on the SITI Company blog, every other Friday we’ll be spotlighting an alum of SITI’s many training programs. Today, we have the great pleasure to introduce you to Kim Ima.

Kim has a long history with SITI Company. She first encountered SITI in Toga, Japan, before training with us in New York and in Saratoga Springs. She has performed with us, and now sits on the SITI Company Board of Directors. 

These days, Kim can be found most often on her much lauded Treats Truck. SITI Co-Artistic Director Leon Ingulsrud caught up with her the other day:

For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.
(Elie Wiesel)

Poet and activist Maya Angelou wrote, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you.” In small quotidian affairs as well as in the context of large world events, bearing witness to the suffering of others matters tremendously. The fact of being seen with empathy, especially in light of persecution or distress, provides the event an objective meaning. Bearing witness makes it real.

SITI Company has launched SITI Work/Space!

What does that mean?

23 years into our life as a theater ensemble SITI Company has begun working in a new way. I have been trying to think of how to describe this new way of working, and perhaps the best way to describe it is to say that we are being who we have always been. We are coming together and activating our interests. We are making the work that we want to.

Composer, music theorist, writer and influential artist John Cage, known for his delight in the unplanned and the unexpected, nevertheless recognized the necessity for an artist’s rigorous preparation and training. “Energy at its highest level,” he said, “energy that can be expressed by the movement of the human body, will not burst forth unless the dancers have had the courage to train themselves with extreme meticulousness.” 

You need something to open up a new door
To show you something you seen before
But overlooked a hundred times or more.
(Bob Dylan, from Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie)

“If two roads open up before you, always take the most difficult one.  Because you know you can travel the easy one.” (Raymond Belle – Parkour Traceur)

As a teenager I was deeply enamored with French impressionist paintings. The canvases, even in reproduction, lit up my heart and fired my imagination and I wanted to live my life as if in an impressionist painting.  The first time I visited Paris, at the age of fifteen, my high school summer program organized a visit to the Louvre, and for me even better, the adjacent Musée du Jeu de Paume.  

As the SCOT company clears away the debris of what was probably their most ambitious festival ever, they nurse injuries, sweep through guest rooms to clear out flip flops, broken umbrellas, half empty bags of coffee, “gifted” packages of nuts and cookies, and little surprises left by those of us who had to return to our own country. Simultaneously the SCOT company launches plans for new rehearsals and tours as they settle in for a long winter.