The third annual Dance for Peace in Old Saybrook, overflows with the power to promote and spread peace through the arts.
For Sonia Plumb, the Dance for Peace is about the mission and the message. The mission: to spread peace through the arts. The message: We can all be part of it.
Sponsored by the nonprofit Artists For World Peace, the third annual Dance for Peace will feature performances by Plumb’s dance company and eight others at the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center in Old Saybrook, Connecticut on June 27.
The Odyssey | Photo by Carrie Ricciardelli
“There is power in dance,” says Plumb, whose West Hartford, Connecticut-based company celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. Her dancers will perform “The Lotus-Eaters,” an excerpt from the company’s forthcoming production of Homer’s The Odyssey, which premieres in October at the University of St. Joseph in West Hartford, where the company is in residence.
“Artists For World Peace wants to not just share the experience of [the power of dance] with other dance companies,” Plumb continues, “but to share peace through dance with the audience as well.”
Lotus Eaters | Photo by Rich Davis
Founded in 2003 by Wendy Black-Nasta, the Middletown, Connecticut-based Artists for World Peace raises money through the arts to feed, house, educate and provide healthcare to people in need.
Middletown native Kerry Kincy, who is producing her third Dance for Peace, says the event will showcase an international variety of music and dance styles by both emerging and established artists. A master’s student and artist, Kincy teaches creative expression to children and adults in the community, schools and residential facilities through her residency program, Telling Voices. She is also on the faculty of the Shared Abilities Dance Ensemble, and is a member of the American Dance Therapy Association and The National Inclusion Project.
“As humans we’re not so complicated. There’s a heart and soul to every person, and music and dance is a way of accessing that,” she says. “[When I’m] working with children and adults that have different abilities, there are no words sometimes, and movement becomes this language we all speak all over the world.”
The Elm City Dance Collective will bring a bit of Brazil to the event, performing an excerpt from “Contemporanea,” a contemporary dance piece fused with Capoeira, a Brazilian martial art.
The Odyssey | Photo by Carrie Ricciardelli
“Service to the community is part of our mission,” says Lindsey Bauer, one of the collective’s founders, “whether that’s the global or local community.” “Contemporanea” will be accompanied by live music performed by the dancers.
Proceeds from this year’s Dance For Peace benefit the Dr. Yoram Kaufmann Scholarship Fund for students of the arts, given since 2009 by Artists for World Peace.