Viewing entries tagged
theater and dance
Stained Glass Productions, a new student-run theater collective at UC Santa Barbara, staged its first production, "Seasons of Broadway: A Cabaret," hoping to give students more opportunities to perform musical theater. The ensemble of 16 students performed from multiple renowned musicals, all songs falling into the theme of fall, winter, spring, or summer.
UCSB Theater and Dance professor Ninotchka Bennahum and Bruce Robertson, emeritus professor in History of Art and Architecture, conceived the exhibit Border Crossings: Exile and American Modern Dance, 1900–1955. The exhibit examines how artists of color and indigenous artists had a deep impact on dance as an art form. It is running concurrently at UCSB’s Art and Architecture Museum and the New York Public Library.
Students of Theatre and Dance and the UCSB Amplify Initiative presented the Amplify Drag Festival, the first undergraduate drag show UC Santa Barbara has seen in half a decade. The night of theatrical fantasy and radical self-expression sought to define how queer expression exists on this campus.
Musician and composer Gene Coleman spoke to a UC Santa Barbara audience about his work in Neuro Music. With compositions inspired by the brain’s auditory pathways, Coleman studies music from a neuroaesthetic perspective for creative production.
UCSB Theater and Dance department welcomed students back with The Death of Kings, directed and adapted by Irwin Appel. The Death of Kings combines Shakespeare's history plays, creating a 400-year timeline. The play features stage combat, live music composition, and more. Over the summer, the cast closed the Verona Shakespeare Fringe Festival with this production.
This spring, UCSB’s Humanities and Fine Arts Division hosted a creativity contest to highlight the work of students across the UCSB campus. The following story tied for second place in the prose category.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
