UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance presents the choreographic work of the students in Senior Projects in Dance in the capstone performance of soulstice, taking place in the Glorya Kaufman Dance Theater at 120 Westwood Plaza in Los Angeles on May 5th and 6th, 2022 at 7:30pm. The show features the work of graduating Dance majors Miel Lei Apostol, Gurmukhi Bevli, Lane Fricke, Juliette Martinez, Luke Nelson, and Bernice Wang. Enter the campus from Sunset Blvd at Westwood Plaza. Parking is $14 in Structure 4.
First on the program is Gurmukhi Bevli, an Indian American dance artist interested in exploring the intersections of culture, heritage, and identity as they manifest within her personal movement vocabulary. She is reclaiming an identity perspective and examining the overlap between the personal and political by tracing her familial history with the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan in her piece Go Here, Stay There.
Luke Nelson presents his work, Fenestrations. Luke is a modern and postmodern movement artist from San Diego and is invested in healing through movement. Fenestrations are the splits that appear in mature leaves of some plant species, allowing for wind to pass through without harming the leaf. This work aims to explore plant growth alongside transition.
Miel Lei Apostol showcases a piece, entitled Ang Pangalan Ko Ay (My Name Is), developed around a personal experience after a month of hospitalization at the age of ten. This piece is in honor of transformation as a human from then to now. The shift from dreaming about becoming a pediatric cardiologist to having a passion for movement, education, and the arts has created a journey of healing from that early repressed trauma. Through the cycle of metamorphosis, this dance displays the horror and ethereal beauty of different identities rediscovering each other after coming back to life.
Lane Fricke is a primarily classical and contemporary ballet-trained dancer whose work at UCLA centers around dance as a personal practice for body awareness, meditation, self-empowerment, and physical and emotional wellness. Her piece On the Mend explores her personal experience of undergoing and recovering from hip surgery. The piece is centered around the process of building her strength back up, being able to walk again, and beginning to dance again, all the while investigating the feeling of sudden change and the memory of injury in the body.
Juliette Martinez is a San Diego native who is presenting her work, efflorescence, in this year’s edition of soulstice. Juliette aims to create work that combines her prior knowledge of ballet, jazz, and contemporary movement, since the age of two, with her newfound passion for street dance, fostered at UCLA. Majority of her work concomitantly acknowledges and challenges elements of societal and gender norms, due to knowledge gained in her double major of Gender Studies. efflorescence demonstrates a desire for, and implementation of, acceptance of movement training. This work addresses and unravels elements of conflicting movement standards. She explores an incorporation of past modern-based movement into present street dance movement to create an authentic, embodied experience that is symbolic of her personal journey and transition through different forms of dance.
Bernice Wang closes the show with Chang Cho. Bernice is a Taiwanese-American interdisciplinary artist, trained in classical ballet, modern, traditional art, and manga graphic art. She wants to capture the exuberance of movement and harness the very human capability to think and empathize. This piece presents personal commentary on the representation of Asian characters in the West, with original musical composition by Shirunyu (Rainnie) Li. Chang Cho zeros in on what Cho Chang, the token East Asian character in Harry Potter, meant to a young child wanting to belong. Chang Cho aims to translate the complex introspection and bitterness of acculturation, while - quite literally - rewriting a literary character to reclaim girlhood.
The class of Senior Projects in Dance is proud to bring soulstice to the stage for the first time. soulstice will be a return to stage and live performance, after two years of online performances by the previous senior classes. The six movement artists are looking forward to presenting their original choreography as the capstone project of the two-quarter-long course and their education at UCLA. soulstice will be the final opportunity to showcase the entirety of knowledge gained before the six seniors presenting work leave the department with a B.A. in Dance.
Date: Thursday, May 5th, 2022 and Friday, May 6th, 2022
Time: 7:30 PM
Venue: Glorya Kaufman Hall, Glorya Kaufman Dance Theater (Room 200)
Ticket Price: n/a (free)
Ticket info: Eventbrite