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8 Thursday, April 27, 2017 Island Beat Hawaii Tribune-Herald ONE GALLERY an artists’ collective Art & Wine Classes 961-2787 $35 onegalleryhawaii.com Paradise Restaurant Supply Downtown Hilo. 808-933-3675 Largest Kitchenware Dealer on Island We Specialize in: Large Woks - Stock Pots - Sinks Stainless Tables - Bar Mixers - Steamers Dishes - Silverware - Thermometers We Do knife SHarPening Thousand of Products Bring this coupon in for 10% off open 7 Days a Week 250 kamehameha x Haili the students to let them improvise and show how they feel about the piece.” Other offerings include guest choreographer Goody Cacal’s urban dance number and three alumni dancers from the Dance Ensemble: Kawai Soares, Scott Wuscher and Lawrence Mano in their edgy piece, “#CHOiCES.” “The quality of dancers seems to improve every year,” Staton says. “Audiences are going to get a number of entertaining pieces that will uplift them. There is always something for everyone. But my hope is that — if it’s something new for the audience member — it will introduce them to ways that dance can express the human condition. Celebrate our ʻUKULELE YOUTH and help us honor GEORGE CAMARILLO SENIOR! The Waiakea ʻUkulele Band with BJ Soriano and students will perform! Tickets only $8 in advance or $10 Day of Show. Bring your own ʻukulele, get in for $8 and join in our ʻUKULELE FINALE! Some will be pure entertainment but other numbers will have deeper meaning. Audience members shouldn’t be shy about interpreting what it means to them. Dance doesn’t always have to be what the choreographer intended it to be.” Graduating senior Leilani VisikoKnox- Johnson will take on Carl Jung’s ideas of the persona, shadow and true self in her pieces, which depicts the internal conflict of humankind. “For my senior project, I wanted to combine my two majors, dance and psychology, to create a culmination of what I have learned at UH-Hilo,” VisikoKnox- Johnson says. “Everyone you meet is fighting a battle of their own,” she explains. “This is essentially what my dance is about, and it is dedicated to everyone out there fighting their own personal battle.” A New York native, VisikoKnox-Johnson says the UH-Hilo dance program feels like family and that her time on the Big Island and in the dance program helped her to realize she’d like to become an expressive arts therapist using dance as a way of helping others heal. “Whether I am dancing in my apartment or dancing in a class, I will always make time for doing what I love,” she says, noting this is her 10th “Great Leaps” concert, but will be the first time she will showcase her own choreography. “I may be graduating, but I will never graduate from dance.” Another interesting dance is instructor Annie Bunker’s UH-Hilo modern dance and HCC modern jazz classes, who will combine to perform “Relentless” — a piece that examines the human condition of being lost or found in our own thoughts and realities. UH-Hilo dance student Sarah Dunaway is in six of the “Great Leaps” numbers, including “Relentless.” “A few years ago, I was questioning what my purpose really was and what I wanted to do with my life,” Dunaway says. “I was on the verge of dropping out of school. The semester drama professor, Jackie Johnson, put on ‘Miss Saigon,’ I finally realized the stage is where I had to be. I am currently a senior in the dance program and it has been an amazing journey.” “Relentless” has been something Bunker has wanted to try put together for a while. She says an overlap in students who take both classes from her this semester inspired her to do it now. “It’s been rewarding for me as a choreographer and fun for the dancers to see it coming together and to be a part of that collaboration,” Bunker says. Also, as a tribute to her aerial dance mentor, Robert Davidson, Bunker will perform an aerial duet with her son, Wrenn Bunker Koesters, in a piece Davidson choreographed in 1995 titled “Ave Maria.” “I met Robert 26 years ago when we commissioned him to come work with our dance company OTO Dance in Tucson, Arizona,” Bunker explains. “He was one of the real founders of aerial dance.” In 1995, Bunker performed “Ave Maria” with Davidson when her son Wrenn was just 3 years old. Through the years, Bunker has performed the piece several times with Davidson and just one other dancer, but she thought it might be time to have her son learn it and perform it as well. “Wrenn learned to walk holding on to a low bar on a trapeze,” Bunker says. “He’s been around it all his life. He finally moved back to Hawaii last November and I contacted Robert to ask what he thought about Wrenn learning the piece. He said he thought it would be like completing a circle. Two weeks later, Robert died suddenly. So this performance pays homage to him.” Bunker explains that aerial dance is not the type of “circus aerial acrobatics” many are familiar with. “This piece in particular is a very slow piece and the hardest thing to do in aerial dance is to move in slow time,” she says. “The dance happens when you’re moving from one place to another … it’s not so much in arriving anywhere and making a pose. Aerial dance is about the journey. And the apparatus is a partner. We work with it as if it’s another person.” Bunker says the piece will be very emotional for her, but she’s happy to see her son carry on the legacy of her mentor. “I think overall the show will have a lot of different offerings — lots of new things for people to absorb and challenges for the audience to take on,” Bunker says. “Art is supposed to transport you somewhere different, not just give you what you already know and have already experienced. Art is to question, to enjoy or not enjoy, maybe. It is what keeps humanity continuing to grow in the imagination.” LEAPS From page 7


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