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Theater and Dance Department
This spring, UC Santa Barbara’s Humanities and Fine Arts Division hosted the annual creativity contest to highlight creative student voices across the UCSB campus. The following are the winning submissions in the Photography and Visual arts categories.
Fourth-year Theater and Dance major Sophie Lynd finds she is able to enhance the emotional impact of her productions through theater lighting design. Lynd has worked on many productions and recently adapted previous lighting designs for the UCSB Dance Company.
UC Santa Barbara composition program chair Joao Pedro Oliveira recently showed his latest visual music opera — “The 70th Week” — in downtown Santa Barbara, as part of the Corwin Chair Concert Series. In an interview with communication student Sarah Phan, Oliveira talked about the work’s biblical inspiration, and the challenges he faced as a composer during the COVID-19 lockdown.
UC Santa Barbara Dance Team competed at the ESPN World Wide Center in Orlando, Florida last month and took home a bronze medal. They were the only self-coached team at the at the Universal Dance Association’s national competition. A quarter of the members of the team are part of UC Santa Barbara’s dance program, allowing them to apply what they learn in the classroom to the team dances.
UC Santa Barbara professor of Theater and Dance Jessica Nakamura organized a lab event on decentering Japanese performance. She recently spoke about the outcomes of her lab event in an interview.
Jody Enders, medievalist and UCSB Distinguished Professor in the department of French and Italian Studies, recently translated two books of French farce. Enders spoke at a recent IHC Humanities Decanted event with Leo Cabrantes-Grant, a professor of Spanish and Portuguese. They discussed contemporary themes in medieval farces that resonate with a 21st-century audiences and how Enders approaches translating.
Santa Barbara Dance Theater held its first show of winter quarter, presenting a series of performances curated by artistic director Brandon Whited with guest choreographers Helen Simoneau and David Maurice.
UC Santa Barbara’s department of Theater and Dance put on its third annual LAUNCH PAD AMPLIFY Reading Series Festival earlier this month. LAUNCH PAD and AMPLIFY, two UCSB initiatives in theater, co-organized the festival and brought four playwrights from around the nation to workshop their new plays. The festival ended with staged readings.
UC Santa Barbara Theater majors Sophia Papalia and Hannah Froman directed the one-act plays Dash Climbs a Rope and Reunion, both by renowned playwright and department friend James Still, under the mentorship of theater professor Risa Brainin for UCSB’s Fall One-Acts.
During the pandemic, Stephanie Kraus left the Dance Department to pursue Sociology. After being confined to dancing in her isolated Isla Vista apartment, she began to feel unmotivated and doubtful of her decision to pursue dance. Although Kraus enjoyed her new classes, she missed being able to express herself without words, with only movement. The Kinetic Lab, the closing performance of the year for the dance department, gave Kraus the opportunity to reconnect with her passion for dance.
After two years of pandemic-related prohibitions the UC Santa Barbara Theater and Dance Program ‘s a Naked Shakes company returned indoors this fall with its production of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Performances were packed for the in-person audience experience. Director Irwin Appel discusses the show and the theater experience of recent years.
The Humanities and Fine Arts division hosted a panel of three UC Santa Barbara faculty members to discuss Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month. They said the need for a designated time to pay attention to AAPI individuals’ experiences indicates a need for societal change in America.
This spring, UCSB’s Humanities and Fine Arts Division hosted a creativity contest to highlight creative student voices across the UCSB campus. Explore the music submitted by Noah Vela, Charlie Prindle, and Violet Joy Hanson.
The UC Santa Barbara Dance Company departed early this week for its annual trip to Europe, where the company will perform its repertoire across multiple countries as well as take and teach dance classes while immersing itself in international culture. This year the company will visit Krakow, Prague, and Barcelona, and will even perform twice on April 29 in celebration of International Dance Day.
UC Santa Barbara second-year dance and biology double major Riley Haley balances being a full-time student and performing with the Santa Barbara Dance Theater, a professional dance company. Though she must devote a significant chunk of her time to these academic and artistic passions, she is grateful to UCSB that she does not have to choose between the two.
The Art, Design, and Architecture Museum at UC Santa Barbara has multiple art exhibitions on display year-round. Currently, it is showing a collection of instruments used for gagaku, an ancient Japanese style of orchestral music and dance.
Theater, Dance, and Music at UC Santa Barbara have persisted through the COVID-19 pandemic with a common strength: creativity. Theater and Dance department chair Irwin Appel, UCSB Dance Company director Delilah Moseley, and UCSB Gospel Choir director Victor Bell recently spoke at a Humanities and Fine Arts Division event HFA Speaks: Arts Evolving in a Pandemic, to discuss how the arts have changed, struggled, and adapted throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Earlier this month, Santa Barbara Dance Theater began its 2022 season under the new artistic direction of Brandon Whited, marking a return to live performance after a pandemic-induced hiatus. In downtown Santa Barbara the company presented a series of performances, curated by Whited with guest choreography by fellow dance faculty member Nancy Colahan and UCSB Dance alumna Weslie Ching.
UCSB Theater and Dance’s BIPOC Reading Series Festival took place over this past week, hosting a diverse group of emerging and veteran playwrights from across the country to collaborate with UCSB students and staff on their newest works. The festival, born out of a need for more diversity in theater, creates an interactive space for playwrights and performing artists of color to present their work.
UCSB’s Middle East Ensemble has performed at Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall, marking their return to live performances since the COVID-19 pandemic required social distancing. The ensemble has been performing as an ethnomusicology performance ensemble in UCSB’s Music department for 33 years. The concert showcased the diversity of Middle East cultures through a series of music and dance performances from across the region, including pieces by Egyptian legend Umm Kulthum.
