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Dancers perform as part of the Art of Rice Traveling Theater in downtown Los Angeles on Sunday ni

International cultures collided, literally, on stage last Sunday at the Aratani/Japan American Theatre in Little Tokyo as the Art of Rice Traveling Theater performed their production about Asia’s essential crop.

The company made their message clear midway through the night as two rice farmers – one American and one Balinese – bumped into each other, sparking a comic dialogue about how scientific advances have increased grain production into a highly profitable industry, even as the farmers’ conditions remain meager.

The 11-person troupe will perform the show for free at the Fowler Museum Amphitheater this Friday, Oct. 3 at noon, in association with USAC.

The UCLA engagement is an appropriate closing of the Traveling Theater’s tour since the idea for the collaboration began at UCLA with the Fowler exhibit “The Art of Rice: Spirit and Sustenance in Asia.”

Presented like a sampler platter of Eastern arts, the program shows each individual on stage retaining his or her unique culture in a symbiotic community.

Judy Mitoma, the director of the UCLA Center for Intercultural Performance and program director of “The Art of Rice,” welcomed the opportunity to introduce the differing artists to each other.

“Artists can often feel very isolated, so the project gave them a chance to actually create new friendships and bonds both professionally and artistically,” Mitoma said. “They developed new creative strategies, new techniques of performance and new staging of ideas.”

Swinging alongside the political commentary is a vibrant festival of dance styles, from the abstract modern/postmodern performance by Cheng-Chieh Yu and Roko Kawai, to the unpredictable Chinese theater choreography of Peng Jingquan.

South Indian Kathakali dance artist Ettumanoor Kannan Parameswaran exercises impressive control of his facial muscles with twitching eyebrows and lips to the rhythm of a snake’s rattle in the piece “Nature.” Parameswaran’s dramatic eye movements as a water serpent match the physical energy of Yu’s graceful sunbird character as she joins him in gliding across the stage.

Many of the pieces are sung in a foreign language or lack vocal narration. In these cases, music is the international language. When taiko drummer Kenny Endo, gamelan musician I Dewa Putu Berata and Burmese drum-circle artist Kyaw Kyaw Naing aren’t center stage layering breakbeats, the composers melt synergistically with the dancer’s rhythm. Fluid arm gestures roll along to the melodic bell chimes of the gamelan music, while wind instruments mimic sounds of nature.

Using projected images of rice fields, shadow puppets evolve into a versatile multimedia space.

One minute a family of ducks bobs against a lush green background amid the soothing patter of drums, and a minute later, the shadow of a pot-bellied figure resembling the personality of a crooked car salesman bids to the Balinese masked farmer on stage for his rice fields.

The performance ends with a piece similar to how it began. The opening displays the company members isolated from one another on separate mats performing their own rice story on their individual mat spaces. To close the piece, the company members walk hand-in-hand off the stage with their mats piled on top of one another.

The cyclical motion of the narrative signals the regeneration of nature, with a message of hope and the celebration of life.