Join us for a master class taught by Les Ballet Afrik founder and director Omari Wiles which will explore West African and Vogue dance techniques.
Les Ballet Afrik Bio
Les Ballet Afrik is a multi-cultural dance company that explores the masculine and feminine energies within different dance forms. Our mission is to bridge the gap between the progressive LGBTQ community and the traditions of the Diaspora. We hope to bring awareness to the Black and Latino experience within the ballroom scene, and put a focus on the importance of
community, and connection to ancestry. Rooted in Traditional African, House, Vogue, and Latin movement, and under the direction of legendary Omari “Oricci” Wiles, Les Ballet Afrik has pioneered a new movement style called “Afrikfusion”, a unique blend of dance and movement unlike anything that’s ever been done before.
Omari Wiles Bio
Ousmane Wiles was born in West Africa Senegal. He began his training in West African dance at the age of six years old. Wiles then joined his mother—Marie Basse Wiles—and became the assist director to her company: The Maimouna Ketia School of African Dance. Working with master African dancers, Ousmane devolved the skills needed to teach the art of traditional African. Venturing further into the world of dance, Wiles found himself learning, training and falling in love with other styles such as Hip-Hop, House, Modern, and Vogue. Wiles has been given the chance to work with many artist such as: Beyonce, Jidenna, Rashaad Newsome, Zuma Zuma, Wunmi, Estelle, Gala, Kenya Moore, Cuba Gooding Jr.,and more. Ousmane is now evolving his own style of dance blending African, Vogue and House as one. He is the founder of LES BALLET AFRIK.
ArtPower at UC San Diego is a Partner of the National Performance Network (NPN). This project is made possible in part by support from the NPN Artist Engagement Fund. Major contributors include the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency). For more information visit www.npnweb.org.
Blacktronika presents Sound for Humanity, a series of performances by six music creative artists, who were asked to think about sound, not only in its sonic definition (noun) but sound as an adjective (sound mind) and verb (sound the alarm), and how their choices will contribute in some way to humanity.
Performers include:
Maria Chavez, Conceptual Sound Artist
Lisa Vazquez, Soul improvisor
Stro Elliot, Rhythm scientist
Melz, Mood composer
Ari Melenciano, Sound artist
King Britt, Polymath producer
Blacktronika: Afrofuturism in Electronic Music is a UCSD course created by Assistant Teaching Professor King Britt, that shines a light on innovators of color who have contributed to the global advancement of electronic music.
“The idea behind Sound for Humanity is for each of us to create a message for humanity through our sonic palette and performance. When thinking about the word, Sound, I felt we could express sound as a noun (obvious), adjective (sound mind … safe and sound) and verb (sound the alarm) ….. keeping these intentions in mind within our creative process. Each artist will stretch the boundaries of their personal sounds and process, expanding on sonic space.”—King Britt
Available March 20-28: Listen on your own time
Free
The piece takes audience members on an audio walk where hopes come up against the reality of experience on a trip into the unknown – don’t worry, we’re holding your hand!
With themes of identity, border crossing and migration at the heart of the work, the piece deals with the ‘long moment’ created through the act of travelling, in which hope meets reality, the place where we simultaneously look towards the future and back at what we have just left.
In gently questioning what home is, the piece reflects on all things that make our home- family, friends, environments and possessions- the physical things which support, reinforce and bound our identity.
The piece is based on an autobiographical experience of a girl’s first travel to the UK and her settlement into the new culture. It specifically follows her steps from Sofia airport (in Bulgaria) to taking the plane to London Heathrow and the experience of first encountering the new, the known, the exciting and the intimidating at the arrivals gate before continuing on.
The main narrative of the girl’s journey to the UK is fragmented by a second voice who questions and reminisces on ideas of travel and its availability, home, language, time and what it might feel to be one of the many at the long queue before passport control.
Experience a screening preview of in the absence of things, an experimental short film written and performed by renowned jazz-vocalist Somi and directed by Mariona Lloreta. Created during the COVID-19 pandemic, the work is a lyrical meditation on the profound sense of personal vacancy that a performer feels in the absence of live performance. The film also aims to frame the disruption of otherwise quieted cultural spaces as a larger metaphor for the work most American arts institutions still need to do in service of Black storytelling. Following the screening Somi and Mariona will discuss the conception and making of the film.
This film was originally commissioned by Krannert Center for the Performing Arts at University of Illinois, Baryshnikov Arts Center, and ArtsEmerson Boston.
SuperPOWERED Pricing
SuperPOWERED pricing is listed for all our virtual events. It’s the the average price you would’ve paid to see the event live. Thank you for being our superhero!
Using examples based on her life journey through Lagos, Dakar, Johannesburg, and New York City, Somi leads audiences through a retrospective survey of her recording career to date while offering insight into how personal story, people, and/or place can inspire deeper storytelling. Moderated by Professor Walton Muyumba of Indiana University.
SuperPOWERED Pricing
SuperPOWERED pricing is listed for all our virtual events. It’s the the average price you would’ve paid to see the event live. Thank you for being our superhero!
UC San Diego is proud to partner with Visual AIDS for Day With(out) Art 2020 by presenting TRANSMISSIONS, a program of six new videos considering the impact of HIV and AIDS beyond the United States. The video program brings together artists working across the world: Jorge Bordello (Mexico), Gevi Dimitrakopoulou (Greece), Las Indetectables (Chile), Lucía Egaña Rojas (Chile/Spain), Charan Singh (India/UK), and George Stanley Nsamba (Uganda).
The program does not intend to give a comprehensive account of the global AIDS epidemic, but provides a platform for a diversity of voices from beyond the United States, offering insight into the divergent and overlapping experiences of people living with HIV around the world today. The six commissioned videos cover a broad range of subjects, such as the erasure of women living with HIV in South America, ineffective Western public health campaigns in India, and the realities of stigma and disclosure for young people in Uganda.
As the world continues to adapt to living with a new virus, COVID-19, these videos offer an opportunity to reflect on the resonances and differences between the two epidemics and their uneven distribution across geography, race, and gender.
Join us for a Zoom webinar to learn all about arts on campus. Watch info videos from campus arts departments and student orgs, ask questions to representatives from each of the arts organizations, and play a friendly game of Kahoot to win prizes.
Participating organizations include:
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- ArtPower at UC San Diego
- Ballet Folklorico La Joya de Mexico
- UC San Diego Music
- UC San Diego Theatre & Dance
- UC San Diego Visual Arts
- UC San Diego Division of Arts & Humanities
- Stuart Collection
- UCSD Extension: Arts, Humanities, & Languages
- KOTX
- La Jolla Playhouse
- UCSD Zor
- and more!
GRAMMY award winner, two-time Emmy nominee, and cofounder of GRAMMY award-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops—Dom Flemons has been branded the moniker “The American Songster” since his repertoire of music covers over 100 years of early American popular music. Flemons is an American old-time music, Piedmont blues, and neotraditional country multi-instrumentalist, singer, and songwriter. An expert player on the banjo, guitar, harmonica, jug, percussion, quills, fife and rhythm bones, Flemons is a true modern Songster, engaging audiences from the green Carolinas to the ruddy Southwest with personalized interpretations of folk, blues, early jazz and rock, country, and original material.
Campus Partner:
This program was made possible by a grant from the office for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion at UC San Diego
SuperPOWERED Pricing
SuperPOWERED pricing is listed for all our virtual events. It’s the the average price you would’ve paid to see the event live. Thank you for being our superhero!
“unflinchingly honest”—The Guardian
“We leave, changed. That is what theater is about.”—Glam Adelaide
In June 2016, playwright Emily Steel had a termination at 19 weeks after her baby was diagnosed with Down Syndrome. When she told people about it afterwards she expected them to judge her, but instead they told her stories in return—about abortions they’d had to keep secret, miscarriages they couldn’t really talk about, struggles with IVF. This was the inspiration for 19 weeks—telling her story publicly to encourage more openness and understanding. It’s sad and funny, familiar and surprising, not self-righteous or guilt-ridden but complex and truthful. Come sit by the (virtual) pool, put your feet in the water, and listen.
Some (perhaps surprising) statistics: 18% of US pregnancies (excluding miscarriages) in 2017 ended in abortion. The abortion rate in the US in 2017 was 13.5 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44. 13% of couples in the US struggle to get pregnant at all. These experiences are common, but they can make you feel very alone.
In the US, there are projects like the 1 in 3 Campaign and the Sea Change Program that work to end the stigma around experiences like abortion, pregnancy loss and infertility by sharing women’s personal stories.
Our hope is that, with 19 weeks, we can help open up this conversation.
Performed by Tiffany Lyndall Knight. 2018 tour directed by Nescha Jelk, with music by Josh Belperio.
Original 2017 production directed by Daisy Brown, with music by Mario Späte.
The Dance Camera West (DCW) 2020 touring program features the top 15 award-winning dance films from the 2020 DCW festival, which screened world, US, and Los Angeles premieres of over 50 international dance films. DCW 2020 showcases the best examples of the expanded possibilities of dance beyond what is presented on stage. Films from Asia, Europe, and the Americas represent dancers young and old, tell stories, and show new visions of the body as the moving image.
The film festival is curated by DCW’s Artist/Executive Director Kelly Hargraves, one of DCW’s original cofounders, and a dance-filmmaker herself. Since 2000, DCW has connected diverse cultures and environments through its exploration of dance on screen, bringing hundreds of challenging and provocative films from around the globe. This film screening will be followed by a Q&A with Hargraves and Marlene Mille and Philip Szporer (directors of Bhairava) and Tanin Tarobi (director of The Dérive).
The film screening will include the following:
- The Dérive
- SISTERS
- ALI
- Bhairava
- HOME
SuperPOWERED Pricing
SuperPOWERED pricing is listed for all our virtual events. It’s the the average price you would’ve paid to see the event live. Thank you for being our superhero!
