October 14, 2004
UW World Series opens tonight — with some changes
When The UW World Dance series opens tonight at Meany Theater, there will be a bit less of the world than originally planned. Instead of the Compania Nacional de Danza from Spain, the series will host Ballet Hispanico from New York City.
It’s one of two substitutions that have been made to this year’s UW World Series. The other is in the World Music and Theatre series, where the Ballet Folklorico Cutumba from Cuba was replaced by Danza Florecanto/USA.
Substitutions aren’t anything new in the world of traveling arts groups, but the reasons for it are changing. Increasingly, presenters such as the UW World Series that emphasize international groups are running into visa problems.
“Booking international groups has gotten interesting since 9-11,” said Matthew Krashan, director of the UW World Series. “You can have a company from anywhere in the world that may have individuals that are part of that company who are on suspect background lists. The larger the company, the more the potential problems.”
Ballet Folklorico Cutumba, for example, involved 23 people, all of whom had to go through background and security checks to obtain a visa. That involves exhaustive interviews conducted at the American consulate in their home country.
“We work with a management company that handles the visa process for us,” Krashan explained. “Unfortunately, these interviews are taking place later and later in the process, which makes it harder to get everyone cleared to come.”
And when groups are barred from coming, as Ballet Folklorico Cutumba eventually was, then substitutions are made, most likely of American groups who don’t have to go through the daunting process. Krashan isn’t unhappy with the substitute groups, both of which have fine reputations. In fact, Ballet Hispanico has been part of the UW World Series before and its director is known as the foremost dance interpreter of Hispanic culture in the United States. But he laments the situation.
“Part of what we’re doing here is helping our audience explore the world through the arts,” Krashan said. “It’s hard to do that when you can’t get the artists here.”
Ballet Hispanico will perform at 8 p.m. tonight, Friday and Saturday. Founded in 1970, the group’s repertory fuses ballet, modern and Latin dance forms into an image of contemporary Hispanic-American culture.
At Meany, the group will perform Nightclub, a full-length dance-theater event in three acts. With images stretching from the brothels of 1920s Argentina to the social clubs of 1950s Spanish Harlem, Nightclub is described as “three stories of the inevitable passions and powerful rhythms that move us.”
Ballet Hispanico is also participating in what the UW World Series calls its Community Connections Program. On Wednesday, group members conducted two master classes in salsa — one for the UW Dance Program and one at Cornish College of the Arts. And on Friday they perform a special youth matinee for K-12 students.
Krashan has already begun planning Meany’s 2005-2006 season, which he does with the help of a programming and education committee. In addition to the dance and world music and theatre series, there is an International Chamber Music Series and the President’s Piano Series to book.
Of the search for the perfect season, Krashan said, “I listen to a lot of CDs and watch a lot of videos. I also talk to my peers around the country to find out what they’ve seen that I haven’t.”
Krashan and his peers continue to hope that the visa situation for artists will open up.
“I think these series are a kind of a symbolic statement that the arts are a part of the whole world,” Krashan said, “and we ought to be sharing them no matter what a person’s background is religiously or ethnically or any other way.”
Tickets for Ballet Hispanico are $43 each for series nonsubscribers and $40 for subscribers, and are available at the Arts Ticket Office, 206-543-4880. For more information about the UW World Series, go to http://www.uwworldseries.org.
