Viewing entries tagged
Theater and Dance Department
The UC Santa Barbara Department of Theater and Dance opened its new season with a production of 35 plays presented in 70 minutes, titled “Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind.” Fast moving, improvisational, and interactive, the debut production showcased a small, eight-member ensemble cast running full speed around the stage, with the audience participating.
For Irwin Appel, UCSB theater professor and artistic director of the NAKED SHAKES company, there was no better play to highlight the return of in-person instruction than Shakespeare's famous comedy, Twelfth Night. Approximately 450 people attended four outdoor performances that marked the return of in-person theater this fall after 18 long months of remote performances.
Due to the COVID 19 pandemic, the UCSB Dance Company had to forego its annual European tour and instead starred in its first documentary, UCSB Dance Company: In Flight and on Film. The film kicks off with a sequence of ten solo performances, each choreographed by the dancers themselves, expressing their feelings about the pandemic, followed by a group piece choreographed by company director Delilah Moseley, and three other films by guest choreographers.
Dancer and scholar, Kiri Avelar of Ballet Hispanico, presented her talk, Descubriendo Latinx: The Hidden Text in American Modern Dance, to a UC Santa Barbara audience as part of the Colloquia in Dance series. In her lecture she discussed how the pioneers of early American modern dance pulled from Latinx cultural artistic practices to create the modern dance techniques that are prevalent today.
The student dancers of UC Santa Barbara’s Theater and Dance Department have stepped back in the studios with modern dance teacher Christina Sanchez,adapting class structures to incorporate COVID-19 safety precautions and protocols. Read how she does it and watch a video by student Morgen Allen to get a glimpse into the dancer experience and hear Sanchez’s insights on teaching dance in the midst of a global pandemic.
Sara Shahgholian, a fourth-year UCSB dance major, has turned to social media to share her choreography, which combines modern dance and Armenian traditional dance, in order to raise awareness of and donations for the unfolding war in Armenia.
UC Santa Barbara theater professor, William Davies King and NYU assistant professor, Rebecca Falkoff talk about the relationship that collecting and hoarding have with art and the mind.
Focus on Faculty: A profile of Carlos Morton, a pioneering playwright for Latino Theater, who recently wrote a play called “Trumpus Caesar,” in which he critiques outgoing president Donald Trump. Morton uses his plays to share his experience as a Latino man in the United States.
Why We March is a play written, directed and performed virtually, by UC Santa Barbara Theater students. The action takes place the night before the biggest fictional mass protest in the country. The play touches on heavy topics surrounding our world and the reform needed.
UCSB Theater and Dance’s program Naked Shakes staged its first 100 % Zoom production of the fall season, Immortal Longings, where each actor, theater technician and the play’s adapter and director, Irwin Appel, presented the production from various locations across the country.
As the academic year comes to a close, many stories from this years senior will go unheard as the pandemic forces Commencement to take place online. To highlight some graduates from the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts, Noe Padilla an HFA intern, interviewed the Bruhns Twins, Cooper and Calvin, and asked them to reflect on their time at UCSB. Cooper is graduating in Theater and Calvin is graduating in Film and Media Studies.
Over four decades, UCSB theater professor William Davies King has collected things of no commercial value. These items include 25,000 food product labels, 10,000 business cards, 2,300 cereal boxes, 1,400 bottle caps, 800 envelope linings, and other everyday items. A portion of King’s collection has been curated into an exhibition, located at UCSB Library’s Mountain Gallery and available online.
“This is Not a Drill" won third place in the prose category of UC Santa Barbara’s Division of Humanities and Fine Arts spring creativity contest, in response to the prompt “Stories That Matter.“ The spoken word play focuses on school shootings and spreading awareness about the March For Our Lives movement.
UC Santa Barbara alumna Alex Hoffman is a New York-based costume designer who graduated as a history and theater double major. She combines her knowledge in history and theater to design characters for Broadway, television, and film.
At her virtual Friday evening book launch, UC Santa Barbara writing lecturer and former ballerina Ellen O’Connell Whittet spoke to over a hundred colleagues, friends, family, and students over Zoom about her new memoir: What You Become in Flight. O’Connell Whittet described how ballet normalizes “sacrificing the body, to contort it into something perfect” and why a career-ending injury made her consider how this principle impacted her life.
Fabio Rambelli, the chair of Religious Studies at UC Santa Barbara, organized a series of workshops exploring the music, dance, costumes, and history of Gagaku, the music and dance of the Japanese Imperial Court. The workshops, held last week, were led by the Hideaki Bunno Gagaku Ensemble, a small group of renowned musicians from Japan.
UC Santa Barbara Writing student Greg Silver recently interviewed Dance major Abby LoSole about her time learning and teaching ballet in downtown Santa Barbara.
After over a decade a service, Jamie Birkett is leaving his position as the Technical Director for the Department of Theater and Dance.
UCSB Theatre and Dance professor Delila Moseley gives us a first look into the UCSB Dance Company’s 30th anniversary international tour, in spring 2020.
Theater major Anabel Costa describes how after a lifetime of dance she lost her passion and then found it again after taking a break. Costa is enrolled once again in dance courses at UC Santa Barbara and shares here experience with other creatives in this personal essay.
