JazzAntiqua Dance & Music Ensemble presents THE STORIES WE TELL

LOS ANGELES - Feb. 12, 2024 - PRLog -- JazzAntiqua Dance & Music Ensemble returns to Highways Performance Space with THE STORIES WE TELL - an intimate evening of jazz-theatre. Featuring excerpts from company works "Songs My Mother Taught Me" and "Congo Square," along with eloquently crafted collaborations with special guest storytellers Jahanna Blunt, Tashara Gavin-Moorehead, Charles Reese, and S. Pearl Sharp, THE STORIES WE TELL explores universal themes of struggle, challenge, love, growth and hope through a richly jazz imbued lens. This one night only performance takes place on Saturday, March 2, 2024, at 8:30pm. A reception immediately follows the performance. Highways Performance Space is located at 1651 18th Street @ The 18^th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica, CA 90404. Tickets are priced at $25 (general admission) and $20 (students/seniors). For more information and to purchase tickets online, visit: www.highwaysperformance.org.

JazzAntiqua was founded in 1993 by choreographer Pat Taylor to celebrate the jazz tradition as a vital thread in the cultural fabric of African American history and heritage. The company has been presented in performance at the prestigious Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, Playboy Jazz Festivals (Hollywood Bowl), Music Center of Los Angeles County, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California African American Museum, The Jazz Bakery, CIAEI Theater (Brazil), San Francisco's Dance Mission Theater, Mesa Performing Arts Center (AZ), and other distinguished venues. Recognitions include support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Los Angeles County Arts Commission, Black Art Futures Fund, California Arts Council, Center for Cultural Innovation, California Humanities and Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. www.jazzantiqua.org.

Guest storyteller Jahanna Blunt is the 2023 recipient of the Chuck Davis Emerging Choreographer Fellowship and the founding artistic director of LE BALLET DEMBAYA West African Drum and Dance Ensemble, committed to heal, educate and unify while paying homage to our elders and ancestors. Community focused dance artist, choreographer and educator, Tashara Gavin-Moorehead takes an ethnographic approach to her practice that integrates the Nguzo Saba, the seven principles of Kwanzaa, into her creative process and builds on jazz improvisation as the primary mode of performance. Charles Reese is an actor, author, and programmatic curator with 25 years of acclaimed work as an advocate and purveyor for the legacy of James Baldwin; work which has taken him from Off-Broadway to around the globe. Writer, actor and filmmaker S. Pearl Sharp has merged her poems with the flow of dancers for more than 50 years and shares true stories live with the groups Tales By The Sea and Strong Words, with her essays broadcast on National Public Radio collected in The Evening News.

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