As part of the 20th annual season of Performing Arts events at the Pollak Theatre, The Center for the Arts at Monmouth University has announced that tickets are on sale for a Sunday matinee performance by Lakota Sioux Indian Dance Theatre.<\/p>\n
Scheduled for 3 p.m. on October 4, the event represents the exclusive opportunity for area audiences to catch Cokata Upo! \u2014 Come to the Center, the acclaimed touring presentation from artistic director Henry Smith and his New York-based troupe of Native American dancers, singers, and musicians. Described as the story of the birth, death and rebirth of a nation, Cokata Upo! frames its sprawling saga in traditional dance, song and storytelling forms, and sets it against a modern-world backdrop of spectacular video imagery.<\/p>\n
The performance also represents a further validation for The Center of the Arts mission, here in its tenth year at Monmouth. The program that has introduced coastal New Jersey audiences to the cultural ambassadors of numerous nations continues to bring the world to Monmouth\u2019s doorstep in the 2015-2016 season. It\u2019s a schedule that spans the sounds of western Europe and southern Africa; classic English literature, contemporary South Asian drama and, on October 4, the voices of North America\u2019s indigenous people.<\/p>\n
An adopted member of the Lakota Sioux \u2014 in addition to being a Shaolin Buddhist monk, a champion martial artist, and a producer of Bollywood films \u2014 company founder Henry Smith has made a specialty of cross-cultural dance theatre collaborations that have found common ground between the far-flung traditional forms of the Lakota Nation, Japan, India and West Africa, and that have resulted in several award winning broadcast projects.<\/p>\n
Evolving from the company\u2019s first public performances at the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota \u2014 and composed with the input and support of traditional Lakota teachers, healers, pow-wow dancers, storytellers and community elders \u2014 Cokata Upo! celebrates Lakota history through a three-part theatrical experience that weaves traditional narratives, sacred dances, courting songs and creation stories into a life-affirming mix that\u2019s energized by visceral lighting effects, projections, and the drumbeat of a culture that\u2019s determined to make its voice heard in the new millennium.<\/p>\n