Connections
We are thrilled to be part of the first U.S. tour of Creole Choir of Cuba. It is not often that we get to experience artists coming out of Cuba. And admittedly, it’s always an interesting lead up to performance day, hoping, wishing, praying that visas will all come through. And they did! (In fact, Laura Stauffer, Ovations’ Programming and Development Administrator, and I tried to see them at the beginning of their tour, earlier in the year in NYC only to have it cancelled because the artists had not arrived.)
The opportunity to bring this extraordinary ensemble and the uniqueness of their visit to Portland made the decision to include them in our 2011-12 season an easy one. But even when I think I know it all – the who, what, and especially why – going in, I can still be surprised and moved by what comes next.
Earlier this week, our fabulous Ovations Offstage staff – Gretchen Berg and Marieke Van Der Steenhoven – returned to the office after doing workshops with 4th graders at Riverton Elementary School. It was clear it had been a special day.
Soon we learned that in preparing to come to the School-Time Performance of Creole Choir, the fourth graders had joyfully discovered the parallel between their own life stories and those of the visiting artists. Just as members of Creole Choir share a history in which their ancestors came from Haiti, Domenica and Africa to Cuba, the young students in this Portland classroom recited with excitement their homelands, including Burundi, Uganda, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Egypt, Ireland, and Czechoslovakia to name a few not to mention Massachusetts, Texas and North Dakota. Once they had exchanged this similar but unique-to-each history, they created movement sequences illustrating stories of travel and immigration, all the while dancing to the music of Creole Choir of Cuba.
Ahhh… every once in a while, even in the flurry of getting things done, I am caught off-guard and awed by moments like this: moments that remind me in a very concrete way of how the arts truly bring people together – helping us to better understand ourselves, each other, the commonalities, and differences that make us human.
Karinthia says:
Hey, subtle must be your mdilde name. Great post!