Arts

Sogetsu San Francisco Bay Area announces the return of Sogetsu ArtScape for 2008.

The exhibition of Sogetsu ikebana will be presented on Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 27-28, at the San Francisco County Fair Building, 9th Avenue and Lincoln Way in Golden Gate Park.

The event will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. both days, with demonstrations at 12 noon and 2 p.m. Admission is free.

Asian Improv aRts, Asian American Dance Performances, and Genryu Arts present “Peering Through the Portal,” featuring interdisciplinary works by Melody Takata and Lee & Wang Dance, on Saturday, Sept. 6, at 8 p.m. and Sunday, Sept. 7, at 1 p.m. at CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission S. (at 9th Street) in San Francisco.

The program consists of three pieces:

SomArts Cultural Center, 934 Brannan St. (between 8th and 9th streets) in San Francisco, is presenting “Conversations with the Brush: Three Women Artists” in its Main Gallery until Wednesday, Aug. 27.

This exhibition features paintings and monoprints by Joan Miro and Reiko Muranaga of San Francisco and Yumiko Oda of Hiroshima. The three artists work in very different styles and media, but their works speak across the expanse of the Pacific Ocean, engaging in universal themes.

Asian American Dance Performances' collaborative project "Of Spirits Intertwined" is featured in ODC's annual "House Special" on Wednesday, Aug. 20, at 8 p.m. at Project Artaud Theater, 450 Florida St. in San Francisco.

"For one night only, beautiful, ancient Asian forms will co-mingle with cutting-edge European multi-media work and the wild antics of our own resident drag queen," said an ODC spokesperson.

The Ikebana Teachers Federation will hold a board meeting on Sunday, Aug. 24, at the home of President Suiko Maruyama. For more information, call (510) 494-8220.

by KONAMI YODA
Hokubei Mainichi

OAKLAND — The atmosphere was festive at Scott’s Seafood Restaurant in Jack London Square on July 27, where a hundred well-wishers, including friends, students, and VIPs like the consul general of Japan in San Francisco all came out to celebrate a remarkable teacher of traditional Japanese flower arrangement.

The celebrants were there for ikebana master Suiyo Fujimoto, who has helped spread the beauty of ikebana for 55 years.

Asian American Curriculum Project has announced its publication of Hiroshi Kashiwagi’s second book, “Shoe Box Plays.”

The book contains nine plays that chronicle the experiences of Japanese Americans from the hardships of the Great Depression in the 1930s, through the bitterness and dislocation of the World War II internment, through the rise of Asian American consciousness and pride in the late 1960s and 1970s.

by KONAMI YODA
Hokubei Mainichi

The Omotesenke School of the Japanese tea ceremony, or sadō, continues to this day to teach the art of tea from generation to generation.

This style of tea ceremony is attributed to Sen no Rikyu, an important figure in Japanese history who lived in the 16th century. As a professor of the tea ceremony, Tadao Yoshimizu works actively to continue teaching the traditions as taught by the current 14th-generation tea master, Sen Sōsa.

ALAMEDA — “Ghosts and Girls: The Legend of Morning Glory” will be performed on Saturday, Aug. 2, at 8 p.m. at Rhythmix Cultural Works, 2513 Blanding Ave. (at Everett Street) in Alameda.

Chikamatsu Tokuzo’s unstaged masterpiece is kabuki theater love story about the daughter of a powerful samurai who meets and falls in love with a boy from a poor family. When the boy’s love poem about the morning glory blows into the girl’s boat, she is determined to marry him, turning down each suitor her father has lined up.

Just in time for the fall elections, the Tony Award-winning San Francisco Mime Troupe skewers a system that puts the needs of the voters last with a new musical comedy, "Red State," which opened July 4 in San Francisco's Dolores Park and continues through Sept. 28 at venues throughout the Bay Area.

Written by head writer Michael Gene Sullivan, with music and lyrics by Pat Moran, the show features Mime Troupe veterans Velina Brown and Lisa Hori-Garcia, joined by Bay Area favorites Noah James Butler, Lizzie Calogero, Bob Ernst, and Adrian Mejia.