UAA website offers new research showcase called 'Spotlight'; premier project is 'Secrets Under the Skin' by dance professor Jill Flanders Crosby

UAA's website now offers a virtual showcase to display faculty and staff research and creative projects. It's called "Spotlight," and can best be demonstrated by visiting the first effort featured, Secrets Under the Skin by Dr. Jill Flanders Crosby of the Department of Theatre and Dance.

Crosby's work is the result of two decades of research on dance at religious ceremonies in Africa and Cuba, linked across continents as a result of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Her work culminated in a collaborative, multi-disciplinary art installation in Havana, Cuba in December 2010 and at the Kimura Gallery at UAA in January, 2011. This rich website documents both of the art installations, but also includes documentary research footage, oral history, images of collaborative 2D and 3D artwork, video of original choreography and statements from collaborating artists.

The site also includes commentary. Here, art professor Charles Licka reflects on the project:

"Secrets Under the Skin is one of those remarkable creative collaborations involving the fusion of ethnographic concerns and creatively based works that represents one of the more viable approaches to looking at cultures outside of our Eurocentric predispositions.

"The videos, manuscript illuminations, photographic works and paintings were enlightening and moving. If academe is to be a venue for new ideas and directions this exhibition certainly did that.

"These works were resonant with a beautiful poetry that reminded me of Nicolas Calas's comment that the poet's job is to reduce the speed of light. Secrets Under the Skin made you decelerate and take notice of the power and beauty of the Ghanaian culture and its connections to Cuba."

Visit Secrets Under the Skin here. The exhibit opens at the the Bunnell Street Arts Center (106 W. Bunnell Street) in Homer from April 29-May 4.

How to get your work into 'Spotlight':

If you've got a research or creative project that you'd like to see documented in "Spotlight," contact UAA Advancement at aynews@uaa.alaska.edu.