The University of Tampa is about to get cultured. This chilly November will feel hot as July as Tampa Bay’s Festival of the Americas breezes through campus.
Every year the cultural fiesta, ARTE, one of the largest events on Florida’s West Coast, takes place around the Tampa Bay area to host a myriad of art forms from South America, Central America and the Caribbean.
Collaborating with cultural hot-spots around Tampa, ARTE events have been hosted by Ybor, Hillsborough Community College, the University of South Florida, Straz Center for Performing Arts, the Tampa Museum of Art and the University of Tampa’s very own Scarfone/Hartley Gallery. The mission of ARTE is to shine a spotlight on Latin America’s influence on the visual and performing arts in today’s society.
Once again, UT will have ARTE events throughout the month of November. UT will host guest artist Susan Barnes Pereira. Pereira earned her minor in dance here at UT and went on to earn her masters in dance education from New York University. She is the founding member of the Cayman Islands national dance company Dance Unlimited and is a principal dancer in the company. Pereira is the owner and director of Barnes Dance Academy Limited (BDAL) in the Cayman Islands.
Pereira will begin her stay on campus by teaching a Caribbean dance master class next Wednesday at 4 p.m. in the Edison Building. The class is free to all UT students who would like to attend. Pereira will later present a lecture demonstration called “Caribbean Essence: A Careful Consideration of the Unique Influences and Qualities of Caribbean Dance/Movement.” Students from BDAL, as well as Pereira, will be presenting this lecture on Wednesday at 8 p.m. in the Scarfone/Hartley Gallery.
The lecture will define the Caribbean genre of dance movement, which juxtaposes the main island culture’s historical and present-day society, working and leisure environment and the environmental influence of Caribbean lifestyle on dance movements. The presentation will be free and open to the public.
Finally, Pereira will present a choreographed piece for the Evening of Experimental Dance. This event will feature work from Pereira, as well as other faculty members in the dance department. Each performance will incorporate UT Fine Arts Faculty artwork that is currently featured in the gallery.
The selection this year is titled Celebrating Caribbean Connections, and will feature new work by UT art faculty, including Bahamian native, Kendra Frorup. Audience members will be able to experience both the visual and performing aspects of movement, as contributors blur the lines between stationary and flowing art forms.
Students looking for a way to spice up your November calendar can look no further than ARTE 2010, right here on campus. Come on out to the Edison Building and the Scarfone/Hartley Gallery Nov. 10 and 12, and feel the island breeze.
For more information contact Susan Taylor Lennon at (813) 257-3745 or visit http://www.artefestival.org.
Amanda Sieradzki can be reached at asieradzki@spartans.ut.edu.