This is the first of two recitals which give student musicians participating in the Berkshire Symphony Student Soloist Competition an opportunity to play their pieces for an audience before their auditions. The competition winners will appear with the Berkshire Symphony in the final regular season concert Chapin Hall in April, a concert which showcases the remarkable talents of our Williams students.

Displacing the Mapalé: Sankofa Danzafro’s La Mentira Complaciente The mapalé is an Afro-Colombian dance that showcases a dancing body’s rhythmic physical dexterity to exuberant drumming and singing. Its origin story, like most popular dance forms from Latin America, emerges from the transatlantic slave trade. In Colombian folkloric dance shows, the mapalé emphasizes a stereotype: the erotic-exotic spectacle of Black dancing bodies. This representation misses the … Continue reading "Prof. Melissa Blanco Borelli – Class of 1960 Music Lecture"