Thursday, October 20, 2011

Three Nashville-Cuba connections in October: Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Elena Garcia Dance Project, and Musico a Musico trip

Nashville is getting its Cuba on lately. Marlen Santana-Perez was named a Metro Social Services Commissioner, Sheyla Paz-Hicks launched her Entertainment Circle show and threw her annual Copacubana party, and two Cuban-American artists spoke last weekend at the Southern Festival of Books. Most recently, Cuban-American artist Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons started exhibitions at Vanderbilt and the Frist, the Elena Garcia Dance Project comes to the Father Ryan High School Center for the Arts this weekend, and Musico a Musico is about to head out for a week-long worship arts workshop in Cuba starting Monday. More information about Campos-Pons, Elena Garcia Dance Project, and Musico a Musico's trip, below.

Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons
Campos-Pons is recognized for her photographs and multi-media installations that poignantly explore her personal history as well as collective ethnic, racial, national, and sexual identities. Her work symbolically follows the African diaspora from her family’s origin in Nigeria to Cuba, where they worked in the sugar industry, to present day Boston, where Campos-Pons now lives and teaches art.

The Frist Center for the Visual Arts’ Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery features the work of Campos-Pons in an exhibition entitled Journeys  now through January 8, 2012.

Now through December 8, 2011, the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery will also host an exhibition of work by Campos-Pons. María Magdalena Campos-Pons: MAMA/RECIPROCAL ENERGY will feature five large-scale, mixed-media drawings that the artist created as a means to explore themes central to her practice such as identity, exile and displacement as an Afro-Cuban artist living in America. In addition, the exhibition will feature drawings that address specific performances the artist has presented over the course of her career including a collaborative work she created with her son. Also included will be a three channel video from 2003 titled Interiority or Hill-Sided Moon.

Read more about Campos-Pons' exhibitions in Nashville in the Tennessean article, the Vanderbilt press release, and the Frist press release.

Elena Garcia Dance Project: Cuban Roots Saturday, October 22 – 7:30 p.m.
Father Ryan High School Center for the Arts
700 Norwood Drive

Tickets and information available at globaleducationcenter.net

The Elena Garcia Dance Project is an amalgamation of performers from Garcia’s Iroko Afro-Cuban Dance Company and Fuzion Dance Artists, a young Latino troupe for whom Garcia choreographs pieces merging African and Latino culture. Cuban Roots is steeped in history, culture and artistic traditions of Afro-Cuban dance and music and its influence on modern dance, with an emphasis on sharing the stories of the Afro-Latin Diaspora. This particular presentation will include an original piece called Olvido, which is based on the story of a female immigrant who came from Cuba to the U.S. in the 1950’s to become part of the Mambo scene of the Palladium in New York. Dancers will also be performing excerpts from a larger dance drama called Patakin; a dance theatre segment called La Parada; and a traditional solo piece danced by Garcia honoring Yemaya, the Yoruba deity of the ocean. Garcia will be teaching an Afro-Cuban dance workshop at 10:30 am on Saturday, October 22 at the Global Education Center. The group will also be performing at a free festival of cultures at Columbia State Community College on Friday, October 21 at 10:30 am.





Beginning of Musico a Musico from Jon Leiva on Vimeo.


Nashville's Christian worship training and education group Musico a Musico is going to Cuba from October 22-31:
Músico a Músico is making plans to join with Missionaries Roy and Dirce Cooper with Caribbean Itinerant Ministry Team, IMB and their staff of quality music teachers and worship leaders outside Havana Cuba. The MaM team will be small joining me will be Cindy Benitez who will be teaching drama and mime, Steve Krenz teaching guitar and Jamie Wigginton teaching vocals. Each year Roy and Dirce hold week long training for their country’s musicians and worship leaders. In ten years they have established some 75 schools with presently 1,000 worship leaders and musicians in training and during the week of October 24. Our guys will join with this well established ministry to present master classes. The students will be the best of the best and will assemble in a camp-like setting for intensive training that they are anxious to receive and the teachers are passionate about giving.

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