About this Artist

EKO SUPRIYANTO (dancer/choreography) is an alumnus and full-time faculty member of ISI Surakarta/The Indonesian Institute for the Arts in Solo, Central Java, Indonesia. He holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in Dance and Choreography from the UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures (2001). He began studying Javanese court dances and the Indonesian martial art Pencak Silat with his grandfather in Magelang, Central Java when he was seven. His works have been presented in Indonesia, the United States (American Dance Festival 1997, APPEX 1997, 1999, and 2000, ACDFA, Highways Performance Space, The Getty Museum, Japan American Theatre), Asia, and Europe.

Supriyanto was a featured dancer on Madonna’s Drowned World tour in 2001 and has served as a dance consultant for the Los Angeles and national tour of Julie Taymor’s Lion King Broadway production. He has been artistic director of Solo Dance Studio in Surakarta, Indonesia since founding the group in 1996. Recently he danced and choreographed for Peter Sellars and John Adams’ opera A Flowering Tree, which premiered at the New Crowned Hope Festival in Vienna in 2006 and was subsequently performed with the Berlin Philharmonic under Sir Simon Rattle, the San Francisco Symphony, the Barbican Centre in London, the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, Lincoln Center in New York, and now here at Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Supriyanto is an actor, dancer, and choreographer for the Opera Jawa film (2006) directed by Garin Nugroho and produced by Peter Sellars. Most recently he danced and choreographed for The Iron Bed, directed by Garin Nugroho at the Theatre Spectacle in Zurich, Switzerland (August 2008) and the Indonesian Dance Festival (October 2008) in Jakarta. He was invited to dance in Lemi Ponifasio’s Tempest at the Auckland Festival New Zealand, and premiered his new work Possible Dewa Ruci at the Festival de l’Imaginaire in Paris in March 2009.

Supriyanto received a Fulbright Scholarship grant to pursue a doctoral degree at UCLA in 2007. He is now a doctoral student of Performance Studies at the Gajahmada University in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. His research interests span traditional Javanese to contemporary dances, including the exploration of traditional styles versus modern, pop culture, film, and cross-cultural collaboration. Drawing from his ethnic origin in Kalimantan/Borneo, where he was born, and his upbringing in Magelang folk dance combined with a new interpretation of the classical/court Javanese dance, he engages in new situations and contemporary realities while continuing to observe traditional values.