Light for Haiti

In honor of celebrating Haitian culture, Rara Tou Limen Dance Troup received a standing ovation at the opening of their Fall Season’s first full-length Repertory Concert.

Limye pou Ayiti…Lavi Kontinye!, Light for Haiti…Life Continues, is the choreo-prayer and artistic offering to Haiti – performed by Rara Tou Limen at Laney College Theatre in Oakland, CA.

As the media topics have shifted to other parts of the world, for Haitian people, life will not be the same for those severely affected by the earthquake.

RTL bridges the gap in solidarity as it showcases the stories, struggles and spirit of Haiti, the first free Black Republic in the world. 

Known for performing at festivals, cultural and academic institutions throughout the bay area, including The San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival, The Malcolm X Jazz Arts Festival, the deYoung Museum, San Francisco Carnival, UC Berkeley and more, RTL was established in 2004 by Artistic Director Portsha Jefferson.  

“She is the centerpiece,” says Patrice Roland, lead male dancer with Rara Tou Limen Dance Troup.  

According to Roland, RTL offers Bay Area residents and dancers nationwide the opportunity to experience Haitian music, dance and culture through classes, workshops, performances and educational events in the United States and Haiti.  

The season kicked off with the Dance Workshop on Thursday, October 6th at the Malonga Casquelourd Center in Oakland taught by world  renowned visionary choreographer, and educator Jeanguy Saintus, from Haiti.

Saintus goes globally teaching master classes around the world.

With the closing of Haiti’s leading arts institution and cultural hub due to the major earthquake, instructors and dance companies have no where to train and produce quality and meaningful work. 

Saintus is founder of Ayikodans and Artcho Danse, a dance center training program for children and adults in Port-au-Prince. The center provides scholarship programs to those unable to afford tuition.

Invited guest artists from around the world teach there.

“What most of America know about Haiti is its misery. They don’t know that the people are happy when they dance and dream of being onstage. Helping others realize their dreams to be onstage, especially those kids coming from a hard time, is what I am about,” says Jeanguy Saintus.

Haiti born Saintus, honorary guest choreographer for the season’s premier says, “I want to give dance its place. First in Haiti, and then being able to share it with the world. I first place myself where I come from,” says Saintus.

The ever-present history and identity, the collective past and the personal present, the paradoxical state of being that is the condition of the spirit of Haiti reflects the resilience and strength of the culture and remains as a candlelit ritual in the memory of the victims.

The performance began in a darkened theatre with prayer chants echoing throughout as the audience is taken on a meditative journey to the mythical land of the ancestors, invocating stories, mystery, social identity and a quest for the self.

The curtain rises on a dimly lighted stage of blue lights with a large full moon superimposed in the background. Blue lights shine on flowing silk panels of fabric across the stage creating blue waters brought to evoke life. Shifting vertical lights create an ocean of beautiful projections. The ever-changing landscape materializes with magical inevitability.

The lighting is as brilliantly realized as the visual design.

Permeated by fascinating movement and style, dancers stomped out rhythms as a ritualistic village scene arrives.

The embodiment of the village people in magnificent colors fed the drummers as the audience became one with the performance.  

“The piece on the ancestors is so moving and beautiful,” says Gena O’Brien, a bay area dancer from Berkeley.

“There was beautiful technique, not everyone can do that kind of dance with the freedom of movement as seen here tonight,” says Samar Nassar, of Hipline Studio, in Berkeley.

The beautiful dance skirts take at least 6 to 8 yards of fabrics.

Daniel “Brav” Brevil, musical director, from Haiti, brought down the house with traditional Haitian Folkloric rhythms as well as contemporary jazz and reggae beats.

“In the last dance, the Rara piece, the personalities of the musicians and the dancers come out,” says Roland.

These experiences are the heart of Saintus’, Jefferson’s and Brevil’s work.

Saying Goodbye to 2011 - Shakespeare Resonates With Oakland School for the Arts in: Comedy of Errors

 

While some universities have dropped the Shakespeare requirement for English majors, Oakland School for the Arts’ weekend performance got standing ovation on their version of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors.

Featuring acrobats, aerialists, mistaken identities, slapstick, puns, word play and much more, these middle and high school students under the direction of Terry Bamberger, Theater teacher, received  standing ovations all weekend long from a packed house at the Kinetic Arts Center in Oakland.

The Comedy of Errors is one of William Shakespeare’s earliest, shortest and farcical comedies. 

In the OSA’s version, the town of Ephesus is suggestive of a 10^th century Italian circus town preparing for their town’s performance. The setting of the comedy involves a history of portrayal in a fashion done with clowns and jesters in 19^th century London productions that resurged in the 21^st century by the Brothers Karamazov, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival’s 2009 production.

According to Bamberger, it was their first Shakespeare production and it was transformative. “To watch the cast of students go from the first reading after never having done this before, the kids got a crash course in scanning lines, imagery and research as well as a crash course in history that created meaning for them now – within a two month period.” 

With a cast of 28 actors and crew members, the make-up and exquisite costumes created a magic on stage that was impressive. “A lot of the costumes were on loan from American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco,” says Bamberger.

OSA provides students with intensive conservatory style training in the arts while maintaining a rigorous college-preparatory curriculum. “Our students work and study hard and really know how to play hard as well,” says Don Harris, Executive and Artistic Director.

Filled with the dramatic mix of trickery, nimble jugglers deceiving the eye, amazing acrobats and dark working sorcerers, this skilled cast of circus arts and theater student actors’ delivered a five–show run in one weekend. 

“The most fun of all for me were the cool tricks I got to do, says 8^th grader,” Isabella Miller. Miller is a member of the Circus Spire Youth Group.

The college prep arts school is a charter from Oakland Unified School District and was the dream child of California Governor Jerry Brown.

Starting at the Alice Arts Center Building in downtown Oakland in 2002, by January, 2009 it moved to the newly remodeled historical Fox Oakland Theater.

The first senior graduation class of 2006, graduated with 100 percent of the class being accepted at four-year colleges. Students were accepted at a wide variety of academic and artistic institutions to include, Le Cardon Bleu California Culinary Academy, Columbia University, Stanford University, Spelman College, Howard University, Berklee College of Music, Boston Conservatory, California College of the Arts, UCLA, UC Berkeley, San Francisco State, our own CSUEB and many more.

Known as one of the most supported schools in Oakland by parents, teachers and the community, the school has done international productions in New York, England, and all over the globe.

 

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In charge of advertising and publicity, Andrea Fullington and Terese Merrell, parents of middle school students participating in the performance worked diligently to attract advertising for the performance from a variety of sources, including KQED and KCBS.

“The students are amazing and represent the culture of visual arts in Oakland,” says Rosie Fogelman, mother of Primo Stockton, 7^th grade, who played the First Merchant in the production.