THE BUZZ: San Diego Dance Theater's Live Arts Festival Returns with a New Focus on Community

By Justin Duyao

January 10, 2023

San Diego Dance Theater (SDDT)’s three-day, multidisciplinary art event “Live Arts Fest” returns; featuring performing artists from the San Diego area, including this year’s winner of the Young Choreographers Showcase and Prize, Marcella Torres-Sanchez, as well as guest artists Lavina Rich and Holly Clark. The event will take place at the Light Box Theater — formerly White Box Live Arts — from Feb. 17-19, 2023.

Initiated in 2012, Live Arts Fest is a multi-night festival intended to expand SDDT’s mission to celebrate and support multi-generational dancers from San Diego’s rich community of performing artists.

“In previous Live Arts Fest events, we featured a lot of artists who came from around the world. Our goal, going forward, will be to focus on our community of artists right here in San Diego,” said Executive Artistic Director at SDDT, Terry Wilson.

During her transition into the role of Artistic Director in 2021, one major change Wilson wanted to make to Live Arts Fest was to narrow its focus to support artists at the beginning of their career. As a full-time educator at both San Diego City College and University of California, San Diego (UCSD), Wilson sees a lot of talented dancers pass through her classes.

“I see Live Arts Fest as an opportunity to support these artists during a time when dancing full-time simply isn’t feasible,” Wilson said. “It’s hard to make a living, if you aren’t able to work three jobs like I do. I’ve been trying to listen to what people in the dance community in San Diego need, and, for many of them, all they want is a place to rehearse, to perform and to be supported in their craft.”

Now three years into her new role, Wilson sees Live Arts Fest as a critical stepping stone for artists looking to move from studying dance to choreographing and performing their own dances.

Lavina Rich, for example, was one of Wilson’s students at San Diego City College and later at UCSD, who won a choreography award at the latter institution. After graduating, however, she found herself having to prioritize making money over making art.

“But all of her friends, myself included, told her ‘You need to make dances. You’re a good artist.’ So she was selected as one of the NTC Foundations’ Emerging Artists, through which she was awarded free studio space,” Wilson said. “On our end, at SDDT, it was a no-brainer to fold her into our Live Arts Fest to give her an opportunity to create an evening of work. It’s been incredibly rewarding to watch her grow.”

Rich is the Artistic Director of Push Process Movement Collective and will present pieces surrounding the written word. Rich has invited Dr. Grace Shinhae Jun and Keomi Tarver to perform alongside her.

Marcella Torres Sanchez followed a similar path. In addition to winning SDDT’s 2022 Young Choreographers Showcase and Prize, last June, she was also awarded support by the NTC Foundation. In her work, Sanchez explores topics of social justice, in order to create awareness of political, social and economic conditions, all while celebrating history and heritage found in folkloric influences.

Holly Larsen Clark, however, was not introduced to Wilson in a university classroom.

After earning a BFA from University of North Carolina, “She came into the dance studio a couple of summers ago and said she wanted to take classes with us, and now she’s performing at the Live Arts Fest,” Wilson said. “I wanted to embrace her, to support her as a young, ambitious artist; and this production has allowed us to do that.”

Clark will explore themes of memory and past bloodlines that run through people’s veins, emphasizing the ways the self evolves in a lifetime, even as it remains childlike deep down.

To conclude Live Arts Fest, SDDT’s creative community will perform on Sunday afternoon, in order to feature the collective works of the organization’s faculty and work study students. Creating Community will perform different pieces crafted by several dancemakers, each a unique program of variety and individuality.

Though the event has changed, since its initiation by former Artistic Director Jean Isaacs, Live Arts Fest still underscores SDDT’s mission to provide opportunities for artists to grow into their craft.

“As an educator, what I hear the most is ‘I could never be a dancer.’ And that’s just not true. I say that to every audience — dancing is for everyone,” Wilson said. “For me, that’s one of my favorite parts of my job: To see these people making great dances and having fun doing it.”

Additional Information:

Tickets available at https://sddt.ticketleap.com/live-arts-festival/

Schedule: