Check out a sneak peak of Irishia Hubbard’s “Sacred Matters” performing at the BlakTina Festival next weekend!
Performing next Friday & Saturday at 7:30pm in LA!
Get your tickets at www.bootlegtheater.org
$15 tickets, keyword: “dancer”
Joey Sellers Joins JazzXchange!
New enterprises for exploration are afoot at JazzXchange. Bringing his insight from an long and impressive career of freelance trombone and piano playing, arranging and composing for big Jazz names such as Doc Severinsen and Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, Conrad Herwig, Dave Liebman, we welcome Joey Sellers to the JazzXchange family for exciting new projects that will be announced officially in the coming months.
Sellers was assistant professor of music at Northern Illinois University from 1999 to 2002 and he is currently Director of Jazz Studies at Saddleback College.
JazzXchange Director and Founder Sheron Wray and Sellers will synergize their expertise in a collaborative investigation fueled by their mutual curiosity about the relationship between jazz dance and jazz music. Through embodied research and interdisciplinary interplay, Wray and Sellers will search for a transformative paradigm that returns Jazz to its dance music roots.
For more on Joey, check out his website.
Welcome Joey!
This upcoming Wednesday from 5-6pm on the radio station KUCI, Artistic Director, Sheron Wray will be interviewed about our upcoming event “Jazz: the House that America Built”. Please tune in to hear more about the programmed show and the non-profit JazzXchange!
Jazz: The House That America Built
Join us at the Camino Real Playhouse in San Juan Capistrano, CA!
Envision a nation without division; this is – Jazz: The House that America Built. While many people perceive jazz as a 20th century musical phenomena, JazzXchange exists to show audiences how the art of jazz continues to be a space for 21st century innovation; a space where diverse communities come together through art, in the moment, to create anew.
Learn more about the Camino Real Playhouse
Receive Discounts on Local Dining
One Night Only…
Jazz is a process of creation which embraces difference melded together through a commitment to swing into time. It has always represented a multitude of nationalities that make up the United States and this JazzXchange performance embodies exactly this. Visibly, artists from different ethnicities create together.
Jazz music and jazz dancing are American inventions; each exists because of the other, embracing uncertainty with dynamism in surprising new ways. JazzXchange brings together six dancers, three musicians and three spoken word artists who combine their talents to create an inspired evening of musical performance. Join us, as we navigate through “Jazz: the House that America Built,” and witness the intimate connections between cross artform dialogue, insightful improvisation, and soulful expression. Led by Artistic Director Sheron Wray, the artists include, Mark W, The Dylan Romaine Trio, Makeda Kumasi and Jamielle Rankin.
The program also includes a new work-in-progress from the OC choreographer Leann Alduenda. Leann is delighted to be the newly appointed Assistant Professor of Dance at Santa Ana College and is an adjunct faculty at Chapman University. Leann was the Artistic Director of the Jimmie DeFore Dance Center for 15 years, where she taught technique and performance classes, headed the teen performance company, and co-directed the scholarship program. She is currently still an instructor there and co-directs the faculty choreography showcase “PULSE” each January.
Mark your calendars for June 23rd! We would love to share our latest works with you.
Here are some photos from JamXchange that took place on April 30th.
Jannet Galdamez was born and raised in Los Angeles, CA. She started dancing at the age of 5 years old with ballet and at the age of 15 fell in love with Salsa and Hip Hop. It was at this age she realized that dance was her passion, her career interest. She attended the University of California Irvine, receiving her Bachelors of Arts in Dance and a minor in Education June of 2012… Jannet will be instructing the Beginning Adult Salsa-Jazz Class! Learn more about Jannet at JamXchange on April 30th!
Featured Choreographer and Dance Photographer:
Irven Lewis
A United Kingdom dancer, choreographer, and dance photographer, Irven Lewis has an unique ability to bridge gaps and fuse urban dance styles with classical forms in an enjoyable way. Irven’s first experience of dance was through the local community center in Leeds. There was no formal dance training but he observed and experimented with the improvisational street jazz styles being developed.
After Dancing and performing in local shows in Leeds, Irven auditioned for the Urdang Academy in Covent Garden winning a three-year scholarship. Upon leaving his training at the Academy, Irven Lewis created the company, Brothers in Jazz. The company uniquely combined British Street Jazz with classical techniques, giving the company’s style an edge. It was the foundation of Be-bopdance, a mixture of Nicholas Brother style Jazz combined with Ballet, Contemporary and the dancers’ own quick and precise footwork with expansive mambo movement.
After touring extensively with Brothers in Jazz, Irven broke away from the company to found his new company, Irven Lewis Dance Theatre. Irven then started exploring the traditions of Jamaican culture passed on to the new generations in the UK from a different perspective. Instead of representing tradition through existing dance forms, he is now exploring a dance language that emerges from the communications of young Britons with Jamaican heritage. The rhythms of conversation along with dynamics and spatials form of body expressions inform the dancer, which merges into physical theater and text. Irven Dance Theatre has performed and toured nationally and internationally.
His work’s include a residency with Bucks dance Step Afrika UK, a 6 week community project as part of the Sadler’s Wells Community Dance Showcase, and Rhythm Blast residency for Free Summer on the South Bank. Irven is also engaged in a 3-year relationship with Derby Dance in collaboration with Punch Records. Irven also received an Arts Council England Continuing Professional Development Award under Pro-Motion and a Trailblazer Fellowship from Dance UK and ADAD.