Courtesy of: The Morning News
By: Rosalie Klein
Aruba‘s Cas di Cultura is proud to announce they will be hosting an International Festival of Dance from August 5 through 10, with workshops and performances by three of the most renowned performers in the international world of dance.
Artistic Producers for the festival are Adriana and Leonid Kozlov, who for years have been part-time residents of Aruba, bringing his famous production of “Nutcracker” to the island at holiday time over the last five years. Mr. Kozlov was a principle dancer of the Bolshoi and New York Ballet, Creative Director of the Australian National Ballet and New Jersey Ballet, and star of George Balanchine’s Broadway revival of “On Your Toes.” His wife, Adriana, is a prima ballerina and noted dance instructor. They will conduct a classical ballet workshop which combines the fluid Russian style with the light and quick Balanchine style.
Joining the Koslovs will be the highest caliber of professional dancers in modern dance, Christine Dakin and Tommie Waheed Evans. Christine Dakin is a former artistic director and principal dancer of the Martha Graham Dance Company. Ms. Dakin is in high demand as a Graham technique instructor, having worked extensively with Martha Graham. Among her many honors was the Dance Magazine Award (1994), and she was a Fulbright Senior Scholar (1999.) She is the recipient of two Rockefeller-US-Mexico Fund for Culture grants (1998, 2001) for choreography, research and teaching. She is currently faculty at The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre and the Ailey School in New York. Ms. Dakin is listed in “Who’s Who in America” and “Who’s Who in Entertainment.”
Tommie Waheed Evans is an alumnus of the Ailey Dance School. He has performed at Radio City Music Hall, during the Oscars and been featured on TV shows, as well as the Lula Washington Dance Theater, Complexions Contemporary Ballet and is a principal dancer with the Philadelphia Dance Company (PHILADANCO!) He founded his own dance project, “Waheed Works” while continuing to give master classes on the road with PHILADANCO, which in 2012 received a National Medal of Arts and Humanities from President Barak Obama.
This exciting mix of top talent will be giving stimulating workshops at Cas di Cultura beginning on August 5, from 9:00 AM until 5:00 PM daily. The festival will end with gala performance in the main auditorium on Saturday evening, August 10, with the stars and participants in the workshops. Dance disciplines taught will be Classic, Contemporary and Modern. Films of noted performances and discussion of dance technique will punctuate the workshops, which are open to all dancers from the ages of nine years old and up. There will be a Junior Workshop specifically for children ages five to eight years old, daily, from 1:00 to 2:30 PM. Cost of the workshops are 175 Aruban florins ($100) for the full day, including lunch, and 50 Aruban florins ($28) for the Junior Workshop.
During the week of the festival, there will also be an exhibit in the Cas di Cultura exposition room of the life and career of Leonid Kozlov, from the time he was selected by the Bolshoi Ballet at the age of 12, to become part of their company. He defected to the west in 1979 and has toured and performed in nearly every capital city in the world, as well as across the U.S. Mr. Kozlov and Adriana after being long-time visitors to Aruba annually, have now made it their permanent home.
Interested parties can sign up for the workshops and purchase tickets for the final gala performance of the Aruba International Dance Festival at the Cas di Cultura offices, or call 582-1010 or visit the website: www. dancearuba.com.
