WACD’s Willy Souly featured in Dance Teacher. Five artists who bring the music and dance of West Africa to U.S. Campuses. People are flocking to West African classes across the country. Students are enticed by the sounds of the drums, exhilarated by the movement and want to come back for more. Each dance has a meaning and function, so they are also learning about the many different cultures within West Africa. In Burkina Faso alone there are more than 60 ethnic groups, each with its own language, instruments and dances. Listening to the music, one may hear sounds that are reminiscent of reggae, salsa, highlife or Afro-beat. This is part of the allure for American students. Click here to read the story.

WACD graduate student Francesca Albrezzi co-curated an exhibition with I-Wen Chang (a WACD department graduate) that opened recently in Taiwan at the Taiwan National Museum of Fine Arts. The exhibition: Hot Body, Cool Tech: Performative and Choreographed Bodies in New Media focuses on looking at how performative and choreographed bodies exist in an era of new media. The unique collection of new media works in this exhibition prompts deeper thinking around the relationship between people and new technologies, such as: How is performance conceptualized and investigated? How does technology affect our understanding of the human agency in theorizing the body? How do we understand and define our humanness within a growing digital world, where machines are programmed to act like humans and humans are encouraged to perform like machines? For more information on the exhibition click here.

 Victoria Marks, professor of choreography in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance and chair of the Disability Studies minor has accepted the position of associate dean, academic affairs for the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture, effective July 1, 2017. Marks will be taking over for Professor Diane Favro, who has served in this role for the past two years and is retiring after 33 years of service to UCLA.

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