Welcome to the Center for World Arts, College of Fine Arts, at the University of Florida! Explore this site for classes, outreach events, performances, and stories about our intercultural projects at UF and around the world!
Since 1996, the Center for World Arts has been a catalyst for international research, collaboration, and education in the arts at the University of Florida. To date the Center has hosted more than 19 international residencies, 200 artists from Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the USA, and created classes in Guinean dance, Ghanaian dance, African contemporary dance, capoeira, Brazilian Samba, Tango, Bharata Natyam, Odissi, Hip-Hop, Flamenco, Chinese traditional dance, among others. The Center has convened or contributed to 12 major symposia/conferences, notably "Movement (R)Evolution Dialogues," and "Staging Identity: Latin American Music and Dance." and co-presented over 50 concerts of its affiliated student ensembles, Jacaré Brazil and Agbedidi Africa. The Center has produced two prize winning films: NORA and Movement (R)Evolution Africa: a story of an art form in four acts which have been officially selected for over 220 festivals around the world and broadcast on PBS, ARTE, NRK, and ZDF.
To foster democracy in a truly global sense, it is imperative to recognize and nurture the individual voice. The Center has rededicated its efforts to exploring global arts and citizenship in the residency of choreographer Faustin Linyekula of Studios Kabako October 28-November 4, 2012. Faustin will share an evening of his work and ideas on Wednesday, October 31, 2012 in the Nadine McGuire Dance Studio G6. The provocative global artist "pave[s] the way for a qualitative practice of the imagination—a practice without which we will have no name, no face and no voice in history" (Mbembe 2007). We invite you to visit www.arts.ufl.edu/cwa/worldMedia.aspx to learn about the contributions of global artist-citizens such as Boyzie Cekwana (South Africa), Opiyo Okach (Kenya), and Panaibra Gabriel (Mozambique)—to name but a few—to the Equitable Partnership Project with the Africa Contemporary Arts Consortium (TACAC), of which the Center for World Arts is a founding member. We also invite you to be moved by the profound power of women's individual voices in the U.S. tour of Nadia Beugré, Kettly No‘l, Nelisiwe Xaba, Maria Helena Pinto, and Bouchra Ouiguen and Voices of Strength in Huffington Post Arts & Culture and CultureBot.
Also, please join us for the exciting annual performances and workshops of the Brazilian Music Institute and Jacaré Brazil. November 30-December 1, 2012 at the Constans Theatre on the campus of the University of Florida, join us for Agbedidi Africa presented in collaboration with the UF School of Theatre and Dance and New World School of the Arts (Miami), and the UF Center for African Studies!
College of Fine Arts
