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LAIR Virtual: Featuring Charya Burt

  • Pacific Time - Online Oakland, CA 94606 USA (map)

LiveArts in Resistance (LAIR) Virtual
**Ancestral Knowledge, Art and Resistance**

Featuring Charya Burt
Tuesday, October 6, 2020
6:30-7:30pm

In this time of COVID and amidst powerful calls for racial justice, EastSide Arts Alliance and NAKA Dance Theater are launching the next series of 5 presentations in collaboration with World Arts West.

On October 6, 2020, join us for a conversation between Anne Huang, Executive Director of World Arts West and Charya Burt.

Charya Burt is an acclaimed master dancer; choreographer, vocalist and teacher of Classical Cambodian Dance who has injected new life into the dance form by creating classically inspired, inventive new works.

Among her many honors Charya is a 2019-2020 Dance/USA Fellow and a recipient of the prestigious Isadora Duncan Award for Individual Performance. She has a Certificate of Honor from the California State Senate, State Legislature and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. A 4 time master artist awardee from the Alliance for California Traditional Arts, Charya’s work has been chronicled in KQED Arts, Cambodian’s Dark Past Behind Her, A Dancer Steps into the Light (2014), and in the US Department of State’s Living Legacy Preserving Intangible Heritage, Classical Cambodian Dance Thrives
in California (2010).

Charya is a dance instructor for the Cambodian Cultural Dance Group of San Jose where she has worked for over 10 years and she conducts periodic workshops for dance groups in Stockton, Modesto, and Fresno. Her Children of the Refugees project through UC’s Critical Refugee Studies in 2017 provided a platform for community members to tell their stories of refugee displacement.

Charya’s mission is to continue to preserve and advance her art form, elevate the professionalism of community dance groups, and to create innovative new works that are firmly rooted in tradition. Charya is the founding artistic director of Charya Burt
Cambodian Dance, based in the San Francisco North Bay. www.charyaburt.com

This event will be streamed live on Zoom and Facebook!

Sign Language interpretation by Christine Nakahara and Eboni Gaytan. Sign Language consultation by Leang Ngov.

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LIVE ARTS IN RESISTANCE is a dynamic series of performances, artist residencies, and community town halls to address racial inequity and white supremacy in popular culture. Collectively, we contribute to a new cultural consciousness of self-determination and indigenous knowledge as integral to our resistance to systemic oppression and imperialism.

LIVE ARTS IN RESISTANCE includes dance, theater, poetry and interdisciplinary performances, curated by socially-conscious artists. Together we push the boundaries of our practices and contemplate our role and responsibility in connecting the many struggles of our respective communities both locally and globally.

LIVE ARTS IN RESISTANCE fosters risk-taking, rigor, and a radical critique on the role of political activism, cultural work and art in society. This role is historically rooted in a culture fighting for justice, equity and self-determination —the political empowerment of our people.

We seek to create a place where artists and audience members can engage in a meaningful dialogue about innovative ideas and experimental work; where artists can reflect on the process of creating progressive art and revolutionary movements; redefining aesthetics and ethics that will decolonize minds. There is a profound need to construct a culture of resistance outside of “market forces”; a culture that will defend our communities from the current reactionary political climate. With the absurdity of backward national elections, xenophobia, fascist policing and militarism that has been shaping our lives, all the inflamed racism, sexism and classism is being rekindled on the world stage.

We reiterate Malcolm X’s words that “Culture is an indispensable weapon in the freedom struggle”. And once again, we must SEIZE THE TIME! — to magnify our struggle, giving wings to our imagination and finding new ways to speak our truth.

Earlier Event: September 22
LAIR Virtual: Featuring CK Ladzekpo