bigsnit

JUNE 19 – JUNE 23, 2017

10:00 AM-3:00 PM
(with Add-on Ballet class – day ends at 4:15pm)

The first week of PPS summer vacation there will be an all day dance camp at da Vinci Arts Middle School. The week-long camp from June 19-June 23 will be five full days of Jazz, Tap, West African, Hip Hop and dance conditioning classes; with the option to add-on a Ballet class at the end of the day.

Registration is now open here!

Teaching artists include: Karida Griffith, Sekou Soumah, Kemba Shannon, Sarah Fuhrman, and Éowyn Emerald Barrett

Space is limited and the camp always sells out. Registration forms will be processed on a first come, first served basis.

Students who are not currently enrolled at da Vinci Arts Middle School are welcome to enroll as long as they meet the minimum requirement of one-year of tap and jazz. This marks the 19th annual year of this incredible camp brought to you by Dancescape After School Dance & Summer Dance Program.

Éowyn Emerald Barrett – Jazz

Éowyn Emerald Barrett is a Canadian born choreographer, dancer, and teacher, currently creating in Portland, Oregon. She was selected by the Times of London as “a talent to watch.” Her company Éowyn Emerald & Dancers are based in Portland, OR, and have toured internationally multiple times to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The company is planning to relocate to Aberdeen, Scotland in the summer of 2017. Éowyn is a graduate of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and is the creative producer of Pacific Dance Makers, a biannual show in Portland, OR that highlights work by choreographers from across the Pacific region. Éowyn is currently on faculty at BodyVox, Columbia Dance, Dancescape, The Portland Ballet, and Wilson H.S.

Sarah Fuhrman – Ballet

Sarah Fuhrman is originally from Portland, OR, and trained with The School of Oregon Ballet Theatre under Haydee Gutierrez and James Canfield. She spent time in St. Petersburg, RU for additional training with the Mussogrsky Opera and Ballet Theatre. Sarah joined Oregon Ballet Theatre as a company member and danced corps and principle roles. She moved on to dance with Colorado Ballet, State Street Ballet and most recently danced principle and soloist roles with Nevada Ballet Theatre as well as acting as rehearsal assistant for the company and academy.

Karida Griffith – Tap

Karida Griffith (karidagriffith.com) is a Portland native who has established an extensive career in New York as a professional dancer, teacher and choreographer. Her credits include the Rockettes, Boardwalk Empire (HBO), Cirque du Soleil, and others. Karida was also on tap dance faculty at Broadway Dance Center in NYC, and a Professor in Pace University’s cutting-edge BFA Commercial Dance Program.

Kemba Shannon – Conditioning

Kemba Shannon received her BFA from Towson State University and trained at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater,  Martha Graham School, the Edge, Lula Washington, Peridance, and Morgan State University.  She has taught dance classes at UCLA, Loyola Marymount, El Camino College and Portland State University among others. Kemba’s stage credits include: The Lion King (LA cast), The Color Purple (Broadway cast), Cirque du Soleil (Zumanity), Aida and FAME. Kemba’s ambition and drive have won her world recognition with icons MADONNA (“Drowned World Tour”), PINK (“Try This World Tour”), Celine Dion (“Taking Chances World Tour”), RIHANNA (Nike Rockstar World Tour), Kanye West, R. Kelly and FANTASIA just to name a few. Her television credits include: American Dreams (NBC), Oscars (“Chicago” Performance), MTV Music Awards (Pink performance ), the Emmys (Kristin Bell performance), World Music Awards (Kanye West & R. Kelly), NAACP Awards and the Grammy’s.

Kemba’s multifaceted dance style continues to inspire her students to be fierce and dance with their heart and soul.

Derrell “Sekou Soumah” Walker – West African

Derrell “Sekou Soumah” Walker is a Portland, Oregon native and a strong presence in the West African Drum and Dance community. He is the perfect blend of drum and dance; Western and West African. He effortlessly inhabits the highest levels of Mandingue drum and dance, and blends these skills with his American roots and a deep knowledge of the Mandingue culture.

The embodiment of these traits combined with a natural gift for teaching and mentoring make Sekou one of a kind. Africans and non-Africans alike respect him worldwide. This is reflected in Sekou’s starring as both a dancer and a percussionist in Moustapha Bangoura’s Tinkanyi instructional dance videos in 2003. In 2004 Sekou received his teaching certification from Mamady Keita and Tam Tam Mandingue, followed by a teaching diploma in 2008.

Sekou began his dance career in 1998, after several years of training as an athlete. The path from athlete to dancer is an unusual one. As a result of thousands of hours spent training and competing in track & field and baseball, Sekou possesses a grace and power in dance that is rare, particularly amongst American-born African dancers. Sekou continues to refine these skills through performing and teaching dance all over the United States and internationally in countries including Scotland, Singapore, Mexico and Bali.

Edinburgh Dance: Eowyn Emerald & Dancers at Greenside, Royal Terrace

Seven short pieces that are emotionally suggestive, physically precise, yet expansive and perfectly calibrated for an intimate space

Donald Hutera
August 15 2016, 12:01am,
The Times

The American choreographer Eowyn Emerald makes the kind of caringly crafted work that the Fringe can usefully help audiences to discover.

Tucked away in Portland, Oregon, and back in Edinburgh for a third time, she and her small company present a virtually seamless hour of seven short pieces that are emotionally suggestive, physically precise, yet expansive and perfectly calibrated for an intimate space. Think of it as a kinetic concept album with varieties of contact between human beings as its mathematic connective tissue.

Set to a selection of mainly rhythmic electronic or instrumental music, the curtain-raiser is a consistently watchable oddity. Emerald, petite but powerfully elastic, and her fellow dancers Holly Shaw and the strapping Joel Walker start out moving mechanically in boiler suits. Soon the drab garb is stripped off, with the cast now sporting flannels and stocking caps in different bright, solid colours: red, green and blue.

Josh Murry, all in white, soon joins them. Together the four look and behave rather like elves indulging in a peculiar night on the razzle.

Having unobtrusively slipped offstage, Shaw returns for a trio that finds her in particularly flirty mood, casting coy, come-hither looks at us as she flits between Walker and Murry in a jazz-ballet fashion. She’s replaced by Emerald, whose quietly charged duet with Murry is built round the exchange of a bowler and jacket.

Three more pairings follow, Shaw and Walker’s more loving and lenient than the subsequent harder one between him and Emerald. Next comes a duet with a decidedly Sapphic edge expressed through the women’s polished and daring physical proximity.

The finale, another quartet, seems like a summation of all that’s come before it but with an extra dimension — as if all that we’ve seen till then has finally reached a point of resolution.

None of these dances outstays its welcome, nor do they convey any explicit “message”. Emerald is too wise an artist to be that reductive. Her work may not be radical in form, but it is cumulatively impressive.