Roulette 2024-25 Resident Nava Dunkelman returns to Roulette to present an audio-visual performance in collaboration with electronics and visual artist Maria Takeuchi, movement artist Yoko Murakami, and scenic and costume designer Akiha Yamakami.
Arrhythmia—the fragile rhythm of life, suspended between steadiness and instability. As tension and release merge and reshape one another, irregularity and order find their own unsettling beauty. In their shifting balance, life reforms itself, always seeking a new rhythm. Beyond a mere pattern, it is the resonance of harmony and discord, the meaning found in both silence and sound, stillness and motion. A visceral expression of contrast, it mirrors the rhythms that shape us, break us, and bring us back together.
Nava Dunkelman percussion, electronics, and voice
Maria Takeuchi electronics and visuals
Yoko Murakami movement
Akiha Yamakami scenic and costume design
Nava Dunkelman is a percussionist and improviser based in Brooklyn, NY. Born in Tokyo, Japan and raised in a multi-cultural environment by an American father and Indonesian mother. Her musical approach is innovative and dynamic, combining virtuosity and intuition. Meticulous in an intrinsic way, she uses her distinctive sound palette to explore and give life to a vast spectrum of musical possibilities.
Nava’s current projects are electro-percussion experimental noise duo IMA with Amma Ateria, and percussion duo NOMON with her sister Shayna Dunkelman. She also has performed and collaborated with Angélica Negrón, Brandon Seabrook, Du Yun, ÉMU (Maria Takeuchi), Fred Frith, gabby fluke-mogul, Ikue Mori, John Zorn, Pauchi Sasaki, William Winant, yuniya edi kwon, and many others. She has performed classical and contemporary pieces with the William Winant Percussion Group, Joan Jeanrenaud, Raven Chacon, San Francisco Girls Chorus, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, and others.
Her work has been recognized through notable awards and residencies, including the Jerome Artist Residency (2024–2025) and Jerome Commission at Roulette (2023–2024), the Hermitage Artist Retreat (2025), Loghaven Artist Residency (2024), create Award with the American Composers Forum (2023), and the New Music USA Creator Development Fund (2022).
ÉMU aka Maria Takeuchi is a composer and audiovisual artist who creates sonic and visual poems, merging organismic soundscapes with generative art and illuminating objects inspired by nature. Maria plays and conducts the sound-objects with a delicate yet intentional focus. The subtle sound textures created by water, dry leaves, and shells on the handmade primitive instruments are processed with modular synthesizers for added aesthetic atmosphere.
Yoko Murakami (she/her) is a Tokyo-born and New York City-based artist. She creates movement-based work in forms of site-specific installations and experimental film. She enjoys creating works for spaces that are not traditionally designed for performance and is interested in finding new ways to activate and question the way we interact with our environments. She has presented her creations in spaces like Mabou Mines (New York, NY), Ace Hotel (New York, NY), Triskelion Arts (Brooklyn, NY), TheaterLab (New York, NY), Da Da Da Gallery (Seattle, WA), Eshk Salon / Room Salon (Brooklyn, NY), and Aileyan Accessories (Brooklyn, NY). Her new venture into experimental film has led to her works being selected and screened in festivals in Seoul, Moscow, Naples, Belfort, Cyprus, Mexico City, and Lincoln Center in NYC. Yoko is a recipient of the 2025 NYSCA grant and has served on the Bessies Award Selection Committee in 2022-2024.
Akiha Yamakami was born in Nagano Prefecture, Japan in 1984. She studied at the graduate school of Tama Art University, Tokyo in 2009 for an MA in Printmaking and Lithography. She has lived and worked in New York City since 2012 and actively presents her work both in Japan and overseas. Akiha creates soft sculpture works with print and cloth on the theme of the human body. She started to collaborate with dance projects 15 years ago and makes costumes for dancers as well.
