Rachel Cooper, Director for Cultural Programs and Performing Arts at Asia Society, did her undergraduate and graduate work at UCLA in Ethnic Arts and Dance Ethnology and lived in Indonesia from 1983-1989. She has extensive experience in the presentation of traditional and contemporary Asian and Asian-American performing arts and the development of nterdisciplinary programs. Among other projects at Asia Society, she commissioned, produced and presented several new works, including In What Language, a theatrical work for music and spoken word by composer Vijay Iyer and poet Mike Ladd and Empty Tradition/City Of Peonies with Chinese choreographer Yin Mei and Indonesian composer Tony Prabowo. Prior to joining Asia Society, Ms. Cooper was the Associate Director of the UCLA Center for Intercultural Performance where she assisted in establishing the Center and implemented phase one of the Asia Pacific Performance Exchange project. From 1988-1993, she directed the Festival of Indonesia In Performance program. Ms. Cooper is the co-founder, former director and current board president of the San Francisco-based Balinese music and dance company, Gamelan Sekar Jaya. She is the recipient of the 2006 William Dawson award for Programming Excellence, an ‘Izzy’ (Isadora Duncan) award for the Festival of Indonesia, a Rockefeller grant for choreography, and the Clifton F. Webb award for film.