Native Dance Ensemble at SBU

The Kevin Locke Native Dance Ensemble will open the 2009 world music series at St. Bonaventure University’s Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts with a performance at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 22.

The performance, “The Drum is the Thunder, the Flute is the Wind,” will be presented by Friends of Good Music in association with The Quick Center for the Arts.

“We are thrilled to be able to offer Kevin Locke as the first concert in this unique world music series,” said Nancy Consedine, president of Friends of Good Music. “We offered the series for the first time last year and it was extremely popular.”

The one-of-a-kind Kevin Locke Native Dance Ensemble features award-winning Native American performers representing the Plains nations of Lakota, Anishinabe and Comanche, the Southeastern tribe Choctaw, and the Woodlands Nations of Ojibwe and Oneida. Their performance offers a rich variety of native traditions and aesthetics in dance, instrumentals, song, storytelling, sign language and audience interaction, and includes visionary hoop dancing, fancy dancing, elegant traditional dancing, soaring powwow vocals, ancient flute songs, and authentic stories of the First Nations.

Kevin Locke is known throughout the world as a visionary hoop dancer, a preeminent player of the indigenous Northern Plains flute, cultural ambassador, recording artist and educator. The National Endowment of the Arts has awarded him a National Heritage Fellowship, honoring him as a master traditional artist who shapes artistic traditions and preserves the cultural diversity of the nation.

The Kevin Locke Native Dance Ensemble has been performing for the past seven years. Recent appearances at the opening of the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian and at the World Culture Open at New York’s Lincoln Center, sponsored in part by the United Nations, have been met with high acclaim.

The ensemble’s “The Drum is the Thunder, the Flute is the Wind” program represents the Return of the Thunders and a revitalizing of the spirit within people, just as spring revitalizes the spirit within living things. Each instrument represents a part of nature: The drum is the thunder, the rattle is the rain, the flute is the wind and the voice is the lightning.

This performance is being presented in conjunction with the exhibition “Land and Spirit Re-visited,” which is on view in the Kenney Gallery on The Quick Center’s second floor. The exhibition provides a fresh look at the Edward S. Curtis photographs of Native Americans with the addition of photographs taken 100 years later. The gallery will remain open throughout the intermission.

Tickets for the performance are $18 at full cost; $15 for Friends of Good Music subscribers, St. Bonaventure University staff members, and senior citizens; and $5 for students. For tickets and information, call The Quick Center at (716) 375-2494.

This performance is supported in part by the New York State Council on the Arts.

For this and all other performances, the museum galleries will open one hour before the start of the performance and remain open throughout the intermission. Regular gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, and noon to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Museum admission is free and open to the public year round.

For more information, visit The Quick Center for the Arts at www.sbu.edu/quickcenter.