Editor’s note: This was taken from an Idyllwild Arts press release.
Every year the Idyllwild Arts Academy (IAA) Fall Dance Concert showcases the brilliance of the student dancers and the choreography of their teachers.
This year’s concert, which will be livestreamed at https://idyllwildarts.zoom.us/j/96600778598 at 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday, Nov. 18 and 19, and at 3 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 20, also will feature the Dance Department’s ability to train young choreographers.
PHOTO COURTESY OF IAA
Zuko Nyaawie, a 2016 IAA graduate, was born in Austin but has lived mostly in Southern California. She joins faculty members Hai Cohen, Patrick Frantz, Yuka Fukuda, Ellen Rosa-Taylor, Jonathan Sharp and Leslie Stevens in choreographing for the three performances. Cumulatively — and in most cases individually — these teachers have decades of experience in choreography behind them.
The fact that Zuko’s work will share the stage with theirs highlights the exceptional training given to IAA dancers.
PHOTO COURTESY OF IAA
She recalls that in three years of study with the IAA Dance Department chaired by Rosa-Taylor, Frantz “made me fall in love with ballet,” and she also received world-class instruction in every other major dance form. But her own specialty is modern dance. Her piece, “Illuminara,” to be performed by seven student dancers, originated as her Junior Project at her university, but its completion was delayed by the coronavirus pandemic.
“I was at the SUNY [State University of New York] Conservatory of Dance, at Purchase College, when COVID hit early last year and put so many things on pause. I graduated from SUNY this past spring, but ‘Illuminara’ was some unfinished business that it feels great to have wrapped up.’
Zuko describes “Illuminara” as “an exploration of darkness and of becoming comfortable with it,” a theme that may be appropriate to the times.
“This dance is not about denying the darkness,” she adds. “That would be dishonest. But darkness and hard times can expose our vulnerabilities, and I think that it is possible to find strength in those places.”
Yet it seems that wherever strength is found, some rays of light must emerge. Zuko, whose full first name, Pambazuko, means “at dawn” in the East African language of Swahili, is the right person to show us that emergent light.
