Trinity Laban at the US Embassy
Fri 22 June 2018Music and Dance students performed a specially choreographed piece as part of US-UK Fulbright Commission’s 70th Anniversary celebrations.
Trinity Laban were invited by US-UK Fulbright Commission to create a new performance work to reflect the Commission’s dedication to cross-cultural collaboration and mutual understanding and celebrate its 70th year.
Devised by Dean of Dance Sara Matthews, Co-Lab Director Joe Townsend, and current Trinity Laban Fulbright Scholar Roman Baca, the immersive and interactive work Journeys was presented at a special reception hosted by US ambassador to UK Robert Wood Johnson at America’s New London Embassy in Nine Elms. The event on Thursday 21st June was in honour of British Fulbright and Sutton Trust students departing for study in the US.
Reminiscent of wandering minstrels, five instrumentalists from across Trinity Laban’s Faculty of Music in collaboration with twelve dance-artists from Transitions Dance Company moved in various groupings through the guests and around the Embassy’s impressive spaces, generating improvised real-time responses to American and British popular music and the theme of journeys.
Roman Baca, co-devisor of Journeys and Trinity Laban’s current holder of the Fulbright-Trinity Laban Award, commented –
“I was honoured to be a part of the creative team that brought Journeys to the new US Embassy. Together, through music and dance, we realised Senator Fulbright’s vision that ‘the greatest power of such intellectual exchange is to convert nations into peoples and to translate ideologies into human aspirations’. Collaborating with amazing Trinity Laban artists who hail from all over the world is a dream come true.”
Penny Egan CBE, Executive Director of the US-UK Fulbright Commission said –
“The rich partnership that has developed between the US-UK Fulbright programme and Trinity Laban was beautifully exemplified last night at the US Embassy when dancers and musicians performed a specially choreographed interactive piece for the Fulbright Commission’s 70th anniversary reception. We are delighted to again be working collaboratively with Trinity Laban and salute Fulbright Scholar and choreographer Roman Baca who has cemented the relationship.”
Trinity Laban is the only UK conservatoire to offer a Fulbright Scholarship: the Fulbright-Trinity Laban Award in Music & Dance, which offers US citizens the chance to pursue postgraduate study at Trinity Laban.
For more information on the Fulbright-Trinity Laban Award in Music & Dance see the Trinity Laban website.
Pictured: Joe Townsend, Sara Matthews, Penny Egan, Roman Baca