Dance company presents concert

IU’s African American Dance Company will present its annual Dance Studio concert at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the Willkie Auditorium.

The free event is the end-of-semester project for students in A100 African American Dance Company and A221 Dance in the African Diaspora, courses offered through the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies.

Students from A221 will showcase three dances they’ve studied throughout the eight weeks of the course. They include conga/comparsa, elegua complex and lamba, an African dance students performed at last year’s event.

The Conga/Comparsa represents the carnivals across the diaspora while the Elegua complex dance is Afro-Cuban, according to a press release issued by the African American Arts Institute at IU.

Students from A100 will present the choreographic theme “Through the Looking Glass.”

Music to the dances includes Lupe Fiasco, Emeii Sande, spoken word, poems by Paul Laurence Dunbar — one of the first African-American poets to gain national recognition during the late 19th century —  and a live percussion performance by Miguel Merino.

Other guest performers include Joyce Bekyore, Sancohoco: Music and Dance Collage and more.

The dancers will also perform parts of the Potpourri of the Arts performance, “Dreams of Past and Present,” that dancers from the African American Dance Company performed in October 2011 at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater. The piece demonstrates a dreamer’s subconscious mind that senses unhappiness after a peaceful sleep.

- Jaclyn Lansbery