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Led by dancer/choreographer Vincent Mantsoe, Men-Jaro, a performance troupe named after South African slang for “friendship,” will take the Williams Center for the Arts stage at 8 p.m. Tuesday, March 20.
Tickets are free for students, $4 for faculty and staff, and $18 for the public. They can be obtained by calling the Williams Center box office at (610) 330-5009.
In addition to its performance, the Men-Jaro ensemble will conduct a workshop for Lafayette students 6:30 p.m. Monday, March 19 in Kirby Sports Center room 136, dance studio. There will be a class in African dance styles for all interested students, taught by Vincent Mantsoe. There will also be a workshop in African drumming and song led by South African composer Anthony Caplan and his musicians at the same time in the Williams Center room 123.
There will be a reception for the 10 members of the Men-Jaro ensemble 8 p.m. Monday, March 19 at the Portlock Black Cultural Center. Lafayette students, faculty, and staff are invited to attend.
In Men-Jaro, described by the Washington Post as “exhilarating” and “poignant,” Mantsoe and Caplan explore contemporary forms of African dance and music rooted in traditional movement styles. The international dancers of Association Noa/Company Vincent Mantsoe will perform to live music played on indigenous instruments by African Music Workshop Ensemble, creating a celebratory and energetic atmosphere.
Mantsoe hails from Soweto, South Africa. During his formative years he danced with youth clubs, practicing street dances and trying to imitate dance moves from music videos. At the same time he woke everyday to the sound of the drum his mother played to greet the ancestors. A descendant of a long line of Sangomas, or traditional healers, Mantsoe participated in rituals involving the use of song and dance. It was not until he began his training at Johannesburg’s Moving Into Dance Company that Mantsoe was able to merge these two distinct dance forms into his own style which he describes as Afro-fusion. Mantsoe’s work draws on traditional African dance forms with a contemporary approach from modern, ballet, and Asian forms such as Tai Chi, martial arts, and traditional Balinese dance.
Mantsoe has performed at international venues and festivals and is the recipient of the 1995 Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year Award; First Prize at Dance Encounters of Contemporary African Dance in Luanda, Angola; 1996 First National Bank (FNB) Male Choreographer of the Year; and Fifth and Sixth Recontres Choreographiques Internationales awards for Independent Choreographers in 1996 and 1998 in Paris, France. In 1999, he received the FNB VITA awards for Choreographer of the Year and Most Outstanding Performance by a Male Dancer as well as the Prix de Peuple at the Festival International de Nouvelle Danse in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. In 2001, he won the FNB Vita Choreographer of the Year and Best Male Dancer in the contemporary style.
In 1999, Mantsoe worked in Japan on the creation of “Traduction Simultanée,” a collaboration with Michel Kelemenis and Takeshi Yazaki. Mantsoe has been teaching in Japan for the past four years. He was associate artistic director and resident choreographer for six years with the Moving into Dance Company in Johannesburg and was the company’s associate artistic director from 1997-2001.
Mantsoe has also created works for Dance Theatre of Harlem in New York, Ballet Theatre Afrikan in South Africa, Skanes Dans Teatre in Sweden, Inbal Dance Company in Israel, and Coba Collective of Black Dancers in Toronto, Canada.
Mantsoe spent two weeks in Zurich and Bern for the Sharp Sharp Festival celebrating the 10-year anniversary of democracy in South Africa. His work is featured in the documentary film African Dance: Sand, Drum, and Shostakovich.
Men-Jaro’s engagement is supported in part by an ArtsConnect grant from the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation and by a grant from the National Dance Project of the New England Foundation for the Arts, with lead funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.
The nationally recognized Performance Series at Lafayette attracts more than 10,000 people each season. It has been cited for performing excellence by the National Endowment for the Arts, National Dance Project, Chamber Music America, Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Fund, Pennsylvania Arts and Humanities Councils, and Association of Performing Arts Presenters.
The 2006-2007 Performance Series is supported in part by gifts from Friends of the Williams Center for the Arts; by provisions of the Josephine Chidsey Williams Endowment, Alan and Wendy Pesky Artist-in-Residence Program, James Bradley Fund, and Ed Brunswick Jazz Fund; and by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, Pennsylvania Performing Arts on Tour; the F.M. Kirby Foundation, Dexter and Dorothy Baker Foundation, and New England Foundation for the Arts.