Centrum launches its 2014 Summer Season at with a special one-night-only event for families in celebration of Centrum’s youth programs and the 10th anniversary of NANDA, Port Townsend’s, Acrobaticalist Ninja Theatre Troupe. Incorporating kung-faux fighting, dance, juggling, and acrobatics NANDA performances are known and loved for their mishmash of classic vaudeville, circus and theater innovations.

This special event occurs at 7:00 p.m. on Saturday, May 31, 2014 in McCurdy Pavilion, Fort Worden State Park, Port Townsend, WA. Produced by Centrum and Thunderbull Productions. A portion of event proceeds will benefit Centrum’s youth programs.

There will be a short intermission. Total run time = 2 hours.

• Purchase Tickets to the 5/31 Show!

PLEASE NOTE: Ticket buyers who purchase “A-section” seating will also have access to a VIP reception following the show with light snacks, cake and music. A-section tickets are $40 for adults and $30 for youth under 18 years old. Tickets in B section seating are $20 for adults and $15 for youth under 18.

NANDA (pronounced, nah-n-dah): A colloquial Japanese expletive used in reaction to something strange or unusual. Literal translation; “What??!”

Characterized by a calculated chaos of comedy, high-energy kung-faux fighting, and irreverent pop-culture parodies, NANDA has been performing original action packed theater based shows since 2004. Also utilizing dance, juggling, and acrobatics, NANDA performances are a mishmash of traditional theater, vaudeville, circus and modern live entertainment innovation.

The four performing members of NANDA grew up together in Port Townsend, WA and within the supportive environment cultivated there, developed a vision of limitless creative expression free of predefined labels, which has become an ideal for an entirely new and unique idea of performance art. Using this idea of “acrobaticalism” as a window to the world, NANDA has invented material gaining inspiration everywhere from cinema and pop-culture icons to rock music and even cartoons.

This explode-out-of-the-box mentality has inspired extensive explorations into a variety of other avenues, including live video projection, animation and sound. Nearly every second of the action being performed is accompanied by a tightly integrated cinematic sound track making the show a visceral audio/visual blast. This full sensory experience along with the high degree of physicality used to convey the action make NANDA shows accessible not only to audiences of virtually any age or background, but also of any language or nationality.

NANDA MEMBERS
Tomoki Sage
A founding member of NANDA, Tomoki is half Japanese, half French/European, as is his brother and co-founding member, Kiyota Sage. Tomoki focuses his creative talents on the choreography, music, video direction, production and, of course, performing.

Kiyota Sage
A founding member of NANDA, Kiyota is half Japanese, half French/European. He joined NANDA “to be able to work as a ninja business director who practices Acrobaticalism and travels the globe pretending to be a nine-year-old who imagines he’s invincible while on stage in front of other folks. It’s the american-childhood-dream-come-fused!”

Chen Pollina
A founding member of NANDA, Chen is the youngest of the NANDA performers, having become part of the group during his senior year of high school in 2004. Half Sicilian and half Swedish/European, Chen’s focus beyond performance within the NANDA family is in animation creation for the NANDA films seen throughout the shows, music, NANDA’s website, the occasional prop, as well as support in writing and choreographing the performance material. Of joining NANDA, he commented, “I didn’t really join NANDA. None of us did. We formed NANDA. It was a pretty natural and obvious thing to do. We had been working together in various duo’s for a couple years beforehand, and we were all friends, so one day, it became obvious that we should put a show together…together.”

Misha Fradin
A founding member of NANDA, Misha is French American. He joined NANDA because “there is nothing better then working, traveling, laughing, training, growing and being myself with my best friends. At the time we created NANDA, I was going to school at Evergreen State College and pursuing a life as a visual artist. Visual arts were not really my passion in life, so when the opportunity to develop our first theatre show ‘Once Upon a Time in P-Town,’ in 2004 I could not pass it up. After a couple of performances I was hooked! We then pushed ourselves harder and harder every day challenging each other to do better and have more focus.