World Dance Celebration explores global ideas

On the highway of ideas, the arts are sleek, efficient speedsters, able to ferry sometimes complex, emotional or even incomprehensible facts and theories in palatable form.

Chris Walker of the National Dance Theatre Co. (NDTC) of Jamaica knows this well.

“Human differences and diversities combine, and in some cases collide, spawning new ideas and concepts as people seek to learn from each other to better our own lives and the lives of people around us,” he says.

Walker is a guest lecturer in the University of Wisconsin–Madison Dance Program during the 2006-07 academic year, helping the program commemorate 80 years. He will make his Madison performance debut in the World Dance Celebration, part of Arts Night Out on Saturday, Sept. 30.

“I intend to present excerpts from ‘Variations a Ska,’ a modern work that draws upon Jamaican tradition and movements popular during the Ska era in between the 1950s and 1970s,” he says. The World Dance Celebration also will feature an excerpt from the Walker-choreographed “Hill ‘n Gully,” which he describes as “a kaleidoscope of Afro-Caribbean cultural expressions articulated through rhythm, movement and song.”

About 14 UW–Madison students, many of them in the Modern Technique and African Performance class he is teaching, will participate in Walker’s “Variations” piece. Lucy Bernhoft, a freshman from Milwaukee thinking about a career in sports medicine, says that she will be keeping an eye out for commonalities among people rather than the differences, and she hopes the World Dance Celebration audience will do likewise.

“I look for similarities among people because I love learning about others, where they come from, what they’re interested in,” she says. “Once I learn about different cultures I’m able to take what I can from them. I hope everyone keeps an open mind and allows themselves to be introduced to new ideas — you don’t have to like or agree with everything you encounter. You just have to accept and learn from it.”

Walker says openness like Bernhoft’s is really exciting to an artist.

“I will be especially excited to see these students’ interpretation of my material, since they come from such different cultural backgrounds. I know they’re going to take it ‘somewhere else’ — where exactly we will see at the concert.”

Walker, who arrived in Madison late in August, is still busy getting his sea legs here. A veteran of artistic residencies the world over, Walker says that so far, UW–Madison shows great potential for enhancing his own work, and for the fostering of a diverse cultural environment.

“As I walk around campus and read the many plaques in front of the buildings, I can’t help but notice the varying cultural backgrounds that the names on the plaques represent. I doubt very much that the discoveries commemorated on those plaques could have happened in a less diverse climate. Though many of the faces I see here are predominantly Euro-American, the achievements that I read about show that the people here are diverse, in their work, contributions and ideas. I hope that my own work will contribute to that atmosphere,” he says.

Fellow UW–Madison dance professor Jin-Wen Yu is directing the World Dance Celebration. He says that dance is particularly suited to articulate ideas about cultural differences.

“The commonality of movement is naturally embedded in the human spirit. That makes dance a universal language embraced by all cultural traditions and ethnicities,” he says. “At the same time, dance enhances our understanding of and appreciation for our cultural differences.”

At the concert, Yu will present Chinese tai chi, slow, repetitive movement using leverage through the joints. Also appearing will be members of the touring Ballet Folklorico Mexico company, the Ghana All Stars (Ghana Sala), and the Madison-based Gaelic Fusion and Scottish Country Dancers and more.

Margaret H’Doubler, who established the UW–Madison Dance Program in 1926, no doubt would applaud this global initiative. Her goal, she often said, was to democratize dance, an initiative perfectly suited to the Wisconsin Idea. UW’s Dance Program became the nation’s first to offer a degree in dance.

Eightieth anniversary festivities will continue throughout the academic year, with a special emphasis on the work of choreographer and multimedia pioneer Alwin Nikolais, who influenced three generations of UW–Madison Dance Program alumni.

Meanwhile, the World Dance Celebration, free and open to the public, will begin at 8 p.m. in the Wisconsin Union Theater, a co-sponsor of the concert. For more information, call (608) 263-2353.