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Karen Ponzio |
Dec 9, 2024 9:27 am
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Karen Ponzio Photos.
The Mercy Velvet Project taps it out at Katalina's.
Going to a bakery for a few cupcakes seems like an obvious choice, but going to a bakery to preview a tap dance-based rock opera seems less obvious. Fortunately, the New Haven arts community has become more and more creative at working together to allow new projects to seed, germinate, and grow.
On Saturday night, Katalina’s Bakery was the latest alternative space used, this time to host a fundraiser for The Mercy Velvet Project, a re-creation of the 1999 album Live in Vain by the band Mercy Velvet in rock opera form.
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Jabez Choi |
Oct 14, 2024 12:18 pm
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Shayel Rodriguez (center) with her parents at Hispanic Heritage Month celebration.
On the lookout, at Cross.
Wilbur Cross tenth grader Shayel Rodriguez gathered with 12 other student dancers in the school’s gymnasium to perform Puerto Rican bomba, Colombian cumbia, and Brazilian samba– to help celebrate the cultural heritage of the school’s diverse and growing Hispanic population.
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Eleanor Polak |
Jun 27, 2024 9:23 am
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Eleanor Polak photo
CONTRA-TIEMPO's Ruby Morales: "We’re gonna practice ancestral technologies.”
Bennie Morris was not having a good day. Somebody had hacked his bank account, and he was on the way back from the bank to cancel any outgoing checks. Not to mention, it was 88 — and felt like 92 — degrees out, and he had to walk through the New Haven Green under the burning sun, wearing a full suit.
But then Morris passed the Arts and Ideas tent where CONTRA-TIEMPO, an activist dance theater, was holding a dance workshop in anticipation of its show, ¡AZUCAR!, this weekend. As he was about to walk right on by, somebody waved him over and invited him to join. Suddenly, Morris’s day changed drastically for the better.
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Karen Ponzio |
Apr 29, 2024 9:42 am
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"Addiction."
The arts and sciences, the movement and stillness, the rhythm of breath and step: on Saturday afternoon, all came together in the performance space at St. Paul and St. James Episcopal Church on Olive Street for Creative Circle, a delightful dance and music performance that saw two dance companies — the New Haven-based kamrDANCE and the New York-based SYREN Modern Dance — engage each other as well as the audience in their latest works in progress.
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Karen Ponzio |
Mar 29, 2024 9:18 am
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artidea.org
Jazz vocalist Samara Joy, an A&I headliner this year.
Shakespeare in circus, choral fusion, climate activism and optimism talks, making your own empanadas: this eclectic mix of events and more is part of this summer’s International Festival of Arts and Ideas, which is returning with a full schedule of programming that covers just about anything an arts and culture lover would have a taste for — and maybe something they have never tasted before.
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Maya McFadden |
Feb 26, 2024 11:46 am
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Watch Friday’s fashion show above.
Long polka dot skirts from the ’50s, black leather jackets from the ’60s, and bell bottoms from the ’70s all made a return to Hill Regional Career High School as it celebrated Black fashion throughout the years.
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Nora Grace-Flood |
Nov 21, 2023 11:01 am
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Nora Grace-Flood photo
F.A.M.E. Middle Schoolers from dance Cumbia with their senior citizen counterparts in Fair Haven.
Fair Haven school kids filed into the Atwater Senior Center to keep their senior counterparts company in advance of Thanksgiving — and to dance cumbia with New Haveners like 73-year-old Yvonne Sheppard, who said the celebration was less a loneliness intervention than it was a special occasion among a vibrant city full of friends.
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Eleanor Polak |
Jun 21, 2023 8:42 am
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Eleanor Polak Photos
Alisa Bowens-Mercado teaches a salsa lesson at Salsa Night.
The foot-tapping rhythms of “Triste y Vacía” by Héctor Lavoe & Willie Colón reverberated throughout the blocked-off space outside 650 Central Ave. in Westville.
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Brian Slattery |
Jun 20, 2023 8:57 am
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Brian Slattery Photos
The dancers in the circle were lifting up their own spirits and the spirits of those around them. They were participating in a culture that was now in its third generation of practitioners. And, as was explained, they were helping strengthen and preserve it; if they didn’t, they could lose it.
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Brian Slattery |
Jan 16, 2023 12:42 pm
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Brian Slattery photo
Hanan Hameen of Dance and Beyond Sunday at New Haven Museum.
Through words, music, and movement, storytellers, drummers, and dancers offered dozens of families a chance to find their place in the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., the broader causes of social justice he dedicated his life to, and the rich culture he came out of.
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Brian Slattery |
Jan 6, 2023 9:58 am
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Brian Slattery photos
Movimiento Cultural drummers and dancers liven up Wilson Library.
Kids making crowns for themselves, with and without parental aid.
As Movimiento Cultural Afro-Continental’s drummers played driving rhythms and singers instructed families in the traditions of bomba, one young dancer learned fast about the ways that she could converse with lead drummer Kevin Diaz during the ongoing library-hosted Three Kings Day fest.
She made a gesture, and Diaz, fully attentive, responded with a crack from his drum. She gestured again, and he responded in kind on his instrument. The smiles that passed between them needed no words to convey their meaning.
With a look of defeat, Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School (BRAMS) eighth grader Dakarai Langley lifted his left foot and dangled it over the edge of an auditorium stage as a song shook the dark room with the lyrics: “Would anyone cry if I finally stepped off of this ledge tonight?”
And then Langley kept dancing, proving to everyone in the room before him just how lucky this city is to have this young artist call New Haven his home.
The following writeup about a recent performance of The Nutcracker ballet at the Q House was submitted to the Independent by the nonprofit Leadership, Education, Athletics in Partnership (LEAP).
SYREN Dance members Rivkins Christopher and Lynn Peterson coordinating an improvised dance.
Two dance crews collaborated to create improvised choreography in front of a live audience and towering pencil-drawn cityscapes — and in turn brought new energy to a West Street arts gallery.
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Maya McFadden |
Oct 24, 2022 8:51 am
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Maya McFadden photos
Erika Zelocuatecatl: "When we get together as diverse as we are, we come as a united chorus."
Maya McFadden Photo
Career students perform "Latino Moves" at Friday's fest.
The sounds of salsa, bachata and merengue filled Hill Regional Career High School alongside a host of Spanish-language pride as staff and students celebrated Hispanic Heritage Month.
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Karen Ponzio |
Oct 17, 2022 10:45 am
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Long Wharf Theatre leaders at Audubon St. fest Saturday.
Lucy Gellman / New Haven Arts Paper photo
Bidding adieu to 222 Sargent stage on Friday.
Audubon Street burst into party mode Saturday as Long Wharf Theatre celebrated its move from a Sargent Drive stage to offices downtown — as well as the beginning of a new itinerant model of presenting works across various locations in Greater New Haven.
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Brian Slattery |
Sep 30, 2022 9:13 am
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Duvall.
Amanda Duvall, of the New Haven-based dance studio Baila Con Gusto, danced a solo salsa on the stage of the New Haven Green Thursday afternoon with a heady mixture of strength and grace. As the music churned out its unstoppable rhythm, a sense of joy and play surged through her, a smile never leaving her face even as the moves became more athletic. Her enthusiasm, it turned out, was contagious. Five minutes later dozens of people, adults and high schoolers alike, would join her and Baila Con Gusto co-instructor Jason Ramos in a dance and history lesson that deepened understanding as it taught steps.
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Karen Ponzio |
Sep 28, 2022 8:25 am
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Leigh Busby Photo
Alexis Robbins.
Tap dance is an indelible form of American art, a practice we have all seen on screens little and big, but have you ever seen it done in a public park? And have you ever thought, “Hey, I wish I could do that?” Tap dancer and choreographer Alexis Robbins is here to tell you that you can see it and practice it, on a stage and in a park, right here in New Haven in the days and weeks to come.
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Brian Slattery |
Sep 15, 2022 9:44 am
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Brian Slattery Photo
Iridessa Søul LaFlare performs for PRIDE.
Host Maddelynn Hatter broke in the crowd at Gotham Citi Cafe on Orange Street Wednesday night by establishing a few guidelines regarding drag shows.
“If you ever know any drag queens, you know the most important rule — other than to be able to paint your face — is to be kind,” she said. “All of the queens have passed the test. They are very kind. Which is good, because I am an awful person.”
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Brian Slattery |
Aug 29, 2022 9:17 am
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Brian Slattery Photos
Rev. Jeremiah Paul.
The Rev. Jeremiah Paul, pastor for Hamden Plains United Methodist Church, held his hand high as he spoke to the crowd assembled to hear him at Hamden’s Town Center Park on Friday evening. His audience were members of his congregation, but also from the greater New Haven community, a mix of languages, ages, cultures and creeds. Among them were artists selling their pieces and food truck vendors feeding the people.
“We had a little rain shower, which I consider a blessing from the heavens,” he said amiably. With the sun out, the show was ready to start.
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Brian Slattery |
Aug 19, 2022 9:20 am
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Brian Slattery Photo
Rania Das moved gracefully across the stage set up on the New Haven Green Thursday afternoon, her gestures precise yet fluid, graceful and controlled. They were about practicing a tradition that began in India over 2,000 years ago. They were telling a story, about a prankster god getting into mischief. But they were also about crossing thousands of miles, halfway around the world, to make connections to people here in New Haven.
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Kimberly Wipfler |
Aug 15, 2022 9:50 am
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Scott Troublefield and New Vision.
Far out behind the crowded audience at Goffe Street Park, beyond still the stragglers who spread out among the opposing baseball diamond’s outfield, tucked just inside the entryway of the third-base dugout, a woman with gray hair and blue Nikes called out: “Amen!”
The Sunday sun had set, but the sound of gospel from the stage still echoed as far as Crescent Street. The woman, silhouetted by the park floodlights, said she was taking her church from all the way back there.
