In 2015, the Institute's Dance Symposium Series is celebratng ten years of bringing quality arts programming to our urban community. As part of a special commemorative season, the Institute proudly presented the Lula Washington Dance Theatre on Thursday, February 26, 2015, 7:30 p.m in partnership with the New Jersey Performing Arts Center’s Victoria Theater in Newark.
Founded in 1980 in inner city Los Angeles, the innovative and provocative Lula Washington Dance Theatre has thrilled audiences with its powerful, high-energy dancing. Lula Washington focuses on using dance to explore social and humanitarian issues, including aspects of African-American history and culture. The company has become one of the most admired African-American contemporary dance ensembles in the West. As part of this special dance symposium, the ensemble will be teaching a master class at Arts High School, Newark, as well as a one-hour community class open to the public in the campus’ dance studio at 11 a.m. on February 26.
Lula and the company have a passionate commitment to education both at home and in every community in which it performs.
The Dance Symposium Series is mounted semi-annually by The Rutgers Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience, an interdisciplinary academic center that offers the Newark metropolitan area the finest thinkers and artists engaged with key issues of modern life. For ten years, the Institute’s Dance Symposium Series has brought internationally acclaimed dance artists directly to an urban audience, including diverse groups of students, families, and lifelong learners. Former dance programs have included Middle Eastern, Indian, African, and Afro-Brazilian, North African, Flamenco, Cambodian, South African, Chinese, Hip-Hop, Contemporary, and Bharatnatyam dance.
The Lula Washington Dance Theatre was a co-presentation of the Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience at Rutgers university-Newark and the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. The Symposium is supported in part by funds from: the National Endowment for the Arts; the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/ Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts and administered by the Essex County Division of Cultural and Historic Affairs; the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation; an ArtStart Project Grant from the Newark Arts Council; and by the Cultural Arts Programming Fund at Rutgers University-Newark.