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FESTIVAL DANCERS

DIMENSIONS DANCE THEATER

NATIONAL/ETHNIC IDENTITY: African Diaspora
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR: Deborah Vaughan
First Appearance in SF EDF: 1978
Website: www.dimensionsdance.org

Africa, with its extraordinary colors, textures and rhythms is considered the mother of a multitude of dance and music forms throughout the globe. The immense African Diaspora spawned new dance and music genres that cropped up all over the world, in North, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and Europe. New forms emerged that blended with the local culture, yet contained the original seeds of Africa. The essential qualities of the dance and music are: spirit of rhythm, heart of joy, kinetic strength, verve, color, and pride.

Founded in Oakland in 1972, and appearing in the first Ethnic Dance Festival of 1978, Dimensions Dance Theater has become an icon in the Bay Area dance scene. Since its inception, the company has become widely recognized for their presentation of tradition African dances and those fused with contemporary choreography and modern dance idioms. They have worked on significant cross-cultural projects around the U.S., and collaborated with critically acclaimed composers and choreographers of diverse nationalities.

Artistic Director and Principal Choreographer, Deborah Vaughan, has received numerous local and national awards for her innovative collaborative work and commitment to preserving African American culture. She has received many commissions and awards for outstanding service, contributions to dance and excellence in the arts.

2005 PERFORMANCE

TITLE OF PIECE: Rhythm Harvest
CHOREOGRAPHY: Deborah Vaughan
DANCERS: Althea Anderson, Laura E. Ellis, Denice Koch, Andrea Lee, Anisa Rasheed, Valrie Sanders, Latasha Seiliby, Elize Selverajah, Dorcas Sims, Latanya D. Tigner
MUSICIANS: Drummers: Sekou Gibson, Mohammed Kouyate, Mosheh Milon, James Rudisill
GUEST ARTISTS: James Calloway, John Santos

In the 2005 Festival, Dimensions Dance Theater celebrates the beauty and vitality of the African Diaspora. The collaboration between choreographer Deborah Vaughan and percussionist/composer John Santos weaves contemporary music and dance together that represent the multiplicity of rhythms of Africa as their source. Rhythm Harvest is an offering that reveals the distinctive bold rhythms and robust, yet elegant dance styles of Africa, styles that endure through the passage of time and continue to reinvent themselves.

This dance journey focuses on the passage from Africa across the Atlantic to the Americas. It explores the ways in which African forms impacted the many cultures it touched. In this sense, the journey down a river, over a land, across an ocean, symbolize birth, ritual, work, play and the celebration of life.

Multi-talented artist, John Santos, collaborated on this project with Dimensions. He was born in San Francisco and raised in the Puerto Rican and Cape Verdean traditions of his family, surrounded by music. He is an internationally acclaimed performing and recording artist, writer, composer and teacher whose credits span across film, video, music recording and publications. He has collaborated with distinguished Latin Jazz artists around the world, and, since 1986, has directed the Latin Jazz band, Machete Ensemble.

This dance piece was funded in part with funding from the San Francisco Arts Commission.