Soon to be jumping excitedly into its 42nd year of operation, Santa Ana’s renowned afterschool dance program for low-income and multicultural youth will present its 41st Annual Concert, “Onward,” at the Irvine Barclay Theatre from Thursday, May 30, to Saturday, June 1, 2024. Shows are 8 p.m. each evening, with a June 1 matinee at 2:30 p.m.
Always produced by top-notch adult collaborators, this year’s program includes three premieres created by the elementary through high school students and acclaimed dancemakers. These established artists include Momar Ndiaye, Tristian Koepke and The Wooden Floor Artistic Director Jennifer Bassage Bonfil.
Ndiaye was born in Senegal and is now teaching at Ohio State University. Together with his much younger dancers, they have created a movement vocabulary with which they explore human connection. They are inspired by the Zulu phrase, “umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu,” which translates to “a person is a person through other persons.”
Sharing its title with the work of feminist philosopher Elizabeth Grosz, Koepke’s “Bodies/Cities” is described in promotional materials as a “movement tapestry that … considers how individual actions have large impacts, and how we relate to ever-changing and impermanent environments.”
Bonfil, in tandem with her movers and composer Daniel Manolu, creates a meditative experience in the midst of what is described as “creative frenzy.” Playing with ideas remembered from childhood games, with repetitive actions, swift motion and stillness, this “uplifting” work demonstrates “that minimalism can hold profound complexity and the presumably insignificant can be meaningful.”
—Benn Widdey, Culture Spot LA
LOCATION:
Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine, CA 92612
TICKETS:
INFO:
https://thebarclay.org/Online/default.asp
Photo courtesy of The Wooden Floor