Fourteen-year-old Kyle Jones (left, with "Oman...O Man!" co-star Rami Pinchasi) says a research trip to Oman "opened [his] eyes to a whole different culture and how they live." (Photo by DADA)
Story Created:
Dec 9, 2009 at 7:47 PM PST
Story Updated:
Dec 10, 2009 at 12:35 AM PST
After nearly a decade of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, there have been few times in history when the gulf of understanding between the United States and the Middle East has been wider.
But dance legend Debbie Allen is doing her small part to mend broken fences, with her South Los Angeles-based dance troupe’s latest production, “Oman... O Man!” It is the tale of two 12-year-old boys — one an Omani Muslim, the other an American Christian — who meet at a diverse military academy. Through music, song and dance, they find a way to look past their differences and find friendship in their similarities.
“It is really about, in this day and time, how people all over the world have much more in common than they do in terms of their differences,” said Allen, “and how those cultural relationships can be navigated just by talking to one another and creating a sense of understanding.”
Commissioned last year by festival organizers from the Kennedy Center, where the dance-driven narrative was first showcased in March in front of a standing-room-only crowd, Allen was asked to create an original piece that incorporated Omani and American culture, while also reflecting traditional and modern dance.
Initially, little-informed about the tiny Arab country — bordered by the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Yemen — it took Allen more than a year to write and create the score with legendary jazz trumpeter Arturo Sandoval.
To research the piece, she read about 15 books and interviewed a number of artists and scholars. Allen then took about a dozen dancers from the Debbie Allen Dance Academy to Oman for a three-week training course, where they met the country’s sultan along with Omani dancers and dignitaries. While there, Allen enlisted 10 Omani dancers who will perform with the 75-member cast — ages 6 to 26 — Dec. 10-12 at UCLA’s Royce Hall.
“I [also] reached out to the Muslim community [throughout greater Los Angeles] because we specifically needed some of those young artists,” said Allen. “The real hope of the project was for these young people — who were American, Christian, Jewish and every other religion — to combine and when they finished working together, become brothers and sisters. … It has been very revealing and eye-opening for them. It is a cultural journey for a lot of them.”
Fourteen-year-old Kyle Jones, who plays the lead American boy, Joseph, said he was enlightened by both the overseas trip and the show.
“It opened my eyes to a whole different culture and how they live,” he said. “They got to show us how they dance and we got to show them how we dance. And [now] with them being here, we get to show them about American life.”
Allen hopes to, in her words, “reveal this amazing country of many colors and a varied history. It is a journey that will whet your appetite … to know more and to open [your] eyes to the culture. There are so many misunderstandings about it, there is more love and peace than there is the other coming from this religion. It is definitely something to behold.”
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