Guest artist d. Sabela Grimes will present an original work based on the 2016 unrest in the Sherman Park area as part of the UWM Dance Department’s annual Winterdances.
Winterdances: Transit will be at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 1-4 on the Jan Serr stage at Kenilworth Square East, 1925 E. Kenilworth Place.
Winterdances is the Dance Department’s largest event each year. It features three or four contemporary works choreographed by UWM dance faculty and performed by undergrad dance majors. The performance also features a new piece choreographed by a guest artist.
Grimes, a hip-hop fusion artist who teaches at the University of Southern California’s Glorya Kaufman School of Dance, created Bubbling Utterance for Winterdances.
“Bubbling Utterance is a movement practice that reflects the mindfulness needed to formulate and utter a word,” Grimes wrote. “A word that shows support, love, calls to action, and, hopefully, reveals the capacity to operate from a place empathy. To bear witness and respond to injustice sincerely and with integrity. To re-member. To re-mind.”
Sabela, a 2014 Rockefeller Fellow, has been called “the Los Angeles dance world’s best-kept secret,” and is known as one of the few choreographers who excel in the style of hip-hop fusion.
In previous years, Winterdances has been held at UWM’s Mainstage Theatre, but this space is still undergoing renovations after a fire in the Peck School last spring. The Jan Serr Studio, where the event will take place, is still under construction, but the space in its current form will serve well for Winterdances’ modern aesthetic.
Tickets for Winterdances are available at the Peck School of the Arts box office.
