Dance Performance: Spring PACHEDU

Join us for a reprise of our Spring (all) ensembles performance. This year the students and faculty will examine how we present performances as a collective of movement and storytelling practitioners. Please join us to support our explorations of how we present a year’s worth of work!

Artistic Program Directors Sandra L. Burton, Erica Dankmeyer,  Tendai Muparutsa,  Janine Parker
Sankofa Presidents Tiffany Vargas ’24  And Obi Nwako ’24
Sankofa Drill Sergeants  Shayla James ’24 And  Mariana Garcia ’24

Kusika is in our thirty-seventh year as an ensemble studying and performing dance and music from the African continent and the Diaspora. The word Kusika means to create in the Shona language. Our name speaks to continued dedication to experimentation, innovation and adaptation fueling art forms rooted in past and contemporary experiences.This year we will revisit repertoire and delve deeper into dance and music originating from Southern Africa. This year our work is anchored in West African dance and music.

Artistic Directors Sandra L. Burton And Tendai Muparutsa

CoDa continues to value individual growth and creative discovery through immersion in diverse choreographic languages. Studio practices in ballet and modern dance provide the gateway for the rehearsal and performance of an exciting array of new works and reconstructed repertoire. We continue to foster collaboration across disciplines and community partnerships. Now, more than ever, we celebrate the unique, irreplaceable experience of sharing time and space, doing what we love.

Artistic Directors Erica Dankmeyer And Janine Parker

Sankofa is Williams College’s first and only step team. Since our founding by five women of color in 1997, the team has worked hard to develop our own artistic styles and continue to celebrate the origins of stepping. This art form finds its roots in gumboot dance, military drilling, and HBCU culture. We hope to continue the growth the team has experienced these past 26 years and step into an even brighter future. Through countless hours of practice each week, Sankofa works hard to make our two to three big and numerous smaller performances as crisp as possible – we also make sure to have a fun time doing it!

Presidents Tiffany Vargas ’24 And Obi Nwako ’24 Drill Sergeants Shayla James ’24 And Mariana Garcia ’24

The Zambezi Marimba Band plays music from Zimbabwe, Afrocentric and other world cultures. We maintain a repertoire that embraces music broadly. Our musical depth is enhanced by the quality of student musicianship and orchestration that includes brass, woodwinds, strings and percussion as an expression towards hybridity. The Zambezi Marimba Band is a popular concert band for fans to listen and dance to.

Artistic Director Tendai Muparutsa