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Brian Slattery |
Jun 9, 2022 8:45 am
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Seny Tatchol Camara, giving instructions on how to strike the drum.
On a recent Saturday, the main hall of Yale’s Afro-American Cultural Center echoed with the sound of drums, playing driving, intricate rhythms together — compelling enough to bring someone in off the street to ask if she could join in. She was in luck: the drums were part of an African drumming and dancing class offered by the New Haven School of African Drum and Dance, which, after a long Covid-imposed hiatus, has resumed, holding classes Saturday afternoons and Monday evenings for the forseeable future.
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Brian Slattery |
May 23, 2022 8:31 am
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On Sunday afternoon, dancers blessed the elements in four cardinal directions, following the traditions of generations — traditions carried from Oaxaca, Mexico to New Haven, and presented in the Elm City’s first-ever guelaguetza.
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Brian Slattery |
Apr 6, 2022 1:03 pm
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McDonald: Ready for the digital age.
With a new team and vision in place, Anthony McDonald begins his second year running New Haven’s historic Shubert Theatre with an eye fixed on the future as more people venture back out to public events.
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Kimberly Wipfler |
Jan 31, 2022 5:00 pm
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CeCe Brown Sugah performs Sunday night at Jazzy's.
A new Harlem Renaissance-inspired burlesque performance turned up the heat at Jazzy’s Cabaret supper club Sunday night, as the debut of The Sugar Strut: World Famous Burlesque Revue left audience members thirsty for more.
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Brian Slattery |
Dec 6, 2021 1:23 pm
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Stewart and Taylor.
The Wandering, an event organized by artists Anika Stewart and Elizabeth LaCroix Taylor, turned Bregamos Community Theater into an arts bazaar, music venue, and burlesque stage all at once on Saturday night.
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Brian Slattery |
Nov 8, 2021 9:04 am
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The ceremony for the Arts Council of Greater New Haven’s 41st annual arts awards returned to being an in-person event on Friday, as people gathered at the John Lyman Center for the Performing Arts at Southern Connecticut State University to honor several of New Haven’s artist educators: Miguel Gaspar Benitez, James and Tia Russell Brockington, Allen “Dooley‑O” Jackson, Linda Lindroth, Patrick Smith, and Bill Brown and Sally Hill.
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Natalie Kainz |
Aug 15, 2021 12:17 pm
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Natasha and Naomy Velez at Saturday’s fest.
Natasha and Naomy Velez flew across the stage, shaking their white skirts to the rhythmic beat of a barriles drum. The twin sisters were performing the Bomba — a traditional dance from Puerto Rico — in front of more than 100 people Saturday in Criscuolo Park.
The young people set the rhythm for the Cha-Cha-Slide, and the cops joined in — with the hope of making one “right foot stomp” fit into a broader effort to connect police with developmentally disabled youth.
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Brian Slattery |
Jul 21, 2021 12:07 pm
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Tuesday night’s Salsa session on Central Avenue’s one-block “patio.”
Jason Ramos of Baila Con Gusto moved fluidly between English and Spanish as he stood before a group of about 20 students Tuesday evening on the newly closed-to-traffic Central Avenue Patio between Whalley Avenue and Fountain Street.
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Karen Ponzio |
Jun 22, 2021 9:32 am
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Briana Williams and Cliff Schloss.
As the sun began to set Monday evening, Make Music New Haven hosted an afterparty on the rooftop of the Arts Council building, with five acts and a DJ spinning tunes in celebration of another year of international Make Music Day.
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Brian Slattery |
Jun 9, 2021 8:46 am
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Maria and Ndemeh.
Making a painstaking cup of coffee the traditional way while recounting a harrowing story of flight from Ethiopia into an unknown future. Family photographs lovingly thumbed through, even while the speaker mourns a sense of childhood lost. And dancing that invokes ancestors and reaches back into the past to both face trauma and draw strength.
Curated and produced by Jasmin Agosto and featuring Haben Maria, Colleen Ndemeh, Paul Bryant Hudson, Zvlu, Yexandra Diaz, and Ch’Varda, Yerba Bruja is part ceremony, part storytelling, part music, spoken word, and dance performance, and all honesty and respect, as the participants ruminate on what it means to leave home, lose home, and reconnect and stay resilient, in ways large and small.
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Karen Ponzio |
Jun 4, 2021 10:38 am
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DJ B the T Jr.
Cafe Nine brought back another beloved series to its in-person scheduling last night as Shake ‘N’ Vibrate — the DJ-led, all-vinyl dance party — helped New Haven ease back on to the dance floor.
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Karen Ponzio |
May 24, 2021 8:52 am
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Alexis Robbins, Cliff Schloss, and Dylan Olimpi McDonnell.
When Suzannah Holsenbeck and Robb Blocker were organizing a party for their children this year, they knew exactly where to turn to provide the entertainment: The International Festival of Arts and Ideas Arts On Call program.
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Brian Slattery |
Apr 28, 2021 9:29 am
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Armando Muñoz, a.k.a. Decoy, danced at the top of East Rock, popping and locking, the city of New Haven unfurling behind and beneath him all the way to the Long Island Sound. In front of him, armed with a tiny handheld camera, cinematographer Mike Pollack moved with Muñoz, following the arcs of Muños’s steps, the bending of arms, the fluttering of fingers.
A few families were at the top of East Rock at the same time, and one of them drifted close to watch.
“You’re so good!” one of the family members exclaimed.
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Brian Slattery |
Feb 26, 2021 11:01 am
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Dr. Don C. Sawyer, a sociology professor at Quinnipiac University, mentioned on Thursday evening that he’d co-edited a book called Hip-Hop and Dismantling the School-to-Prison Pipeline, out now as of this week. The book’s themes — of how hip hop can be used in the education system as a force to empower and uplift students — could have been the subject of a lecture.
But “rather than me talking about the book,” Sawyer said, he wanted to “bring together people who are doing the work.”
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Brian Slattery |
Feb 9, 2021 11:01 am
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Ty Scurry.
“I have so much stuff planned for this place, and everybody’s like, ‘you’re crazy, you’re only 19 — how are you going to get all this done?”
So Ty Scurry — actor, singer, Wilbur Cross graduate, and theater director at Hillhouse High School — said with a humble chuckle about assuming ownership of Family Music Center in Hamden, which he hopes to not only rebuild out of its Covid-19 shutdown, but expand into a community-based center for students of the visual and performing arts.
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Brian Slattery |
Dec 3, 2020 10:41 am
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Host Babz Rawls-Ivy beamed from the offices of the Arts Council at the over 100 people gathered virtually Wednesday evening to celebrate the Arts Council of Greater New Haven’s 40th annual arts awards. She noted that it was an historic occasion — but not because pandemic restrictions had prevented the audience from gathering in person at the New Haven Lawn Club, as they have in years past.
“Forty years,” she said, “and all the awardees are Black. I love to see it.”
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Cara McDonough |
Jun 29, 2020 10:51 am
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Robbins in her Erector Square space in February.
Tap dancer and instructor Alexis Robbins has had plenty to keep her busy during the Covid-19 pandemic — especially as the history of her chosen art form is inextracably entangled with the story of race relations and racism in the United States.
Tuesday was the first of two nights that the Harlem deejay would be spinning tunes via Facebook and Instagram Live to celebrate the Class of 2020 and to help raise money as part of the program’s annual Great Give fundraiser to support their College Access program.
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Karen Ponzio |
Apr 6, 2020 9:17 am
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Jessica Lynn.
Jessica Lynn — founder, owner and instructor at Polefly Aerial Fitness — has a travel pole that has made its way over the past six years through a variety of New Haven locations, from a talent show at the Yale Forestry School to a burlesque show at Elm City Social and many places in between. Currently, however, it resides at Lynn’s house as she and her staff seek out ways to share the same talent and training typically available at Polefly’s Wooster Street studio with their beloved community during the Covid-19 pandemic.
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Karen Ponzio |
Feb 20, 2020 1:23 pm
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Elisheva performing at The State House in December.
Belly dance: the phrase alone is usually enough to elicit a variety of reactions — often from those unfamiliar with its extensive history and endless variations. Two dancers are hoping to make belly dance more familiar, offering a setting where both the seasoned performer and the emerging student can share an experience in a safe and fun environment with those who already appreciate the art form, as well as those who want to learn more about it.
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Cara McDonough |
Feb 6, 2020 12:40 pm
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Cara McDonough Photos
Observing Alexis Robbins’s Friday evening tap class, held on the top floor of Building 5 at Erector Square on Peck Street, one has to wonder if the people one floor below — and perhaps the people below them — are distracted by the sound. But one also has to wonder if those people, artists themselves, after all, might excuse the ruckus. It’s such a joyful noise.
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Brian Slattery |
Dec 8, 2019 5:20 pm
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Babz Rawls Ivy.
Babz Rawls Ivy, member of the board of directors of the Arts Council of Greater New Haven, looked out over the crowd seated in the ballroom of the New Haven Lawn Club Friday afternoon for the Arts Council’s 39th Annual Arts Awards. “We are all connected,” she said. In New Haven, it is “just a few steps” from Newhallville to East Rock to downtown, and in those steps you found affluence and poverty, creativity and despair.
“Whatever happens in this city, it is all our responsibility, all our care.”
