All Events
Children of All Ages
Dances from the Middle East with Cris! Basimah
MCC Lounge
Come learn dances from the Middle East featuring line dances and Egyptian Folk steps in this fun and interactive workshop with Cris! Basimah. Children will be encouraged to forge connections with their own bodies as they engage in this cross-cultural exchange. Cris is the director of the UCSB Middle Eastern Ensemble Dance Company.
Resilient Love in a Time of Hate Series
HeART Work: Poetically Political / An Evening of Spoken Word with Nikkita Oliver
MCC Theater
James Baldwin says, “The poet or the revolutionary is there to articulate the necessity, but until the people themselves apprehend it, nothing can happen.” HeART work is a transformational act of love that challenges and changes the world through poetry. The power of the artist is to creatively speak truths in ways that people can hear and engage in a transformational and meaningful way that does not always happen through lectures or even everyday conversations. Storytelling is one of the oldest and most powerful forms of medicine. Spoken-word artist, community organizer, and current candidate for Seattle’s mayoral race with the People’s Party, Nikkita Oliver shows us how by telling our stories we can heal hearts, change the world, and inspire creative revolution.
Cup of Culture
KIKI
MCC Theater
In New York City, LGBTQ youth-of-color gather out on the Christopher Street Pier, practicing a performance-based artform, Ballroom, which was made famous in the early 1990s by Madonna’s music video Vogue and the documentary Paris Is Burning. Twenty-five years after these cultural touchstones, a new and very different generation of LGBTQ youth have formed an artistic activist subculture, named the Kiki Scene. After the film, the Vogue Club will share a performance. (English, 2016, 94 min)
Watch trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHhs7GY5ft0
Co-presented by the Resource Center for Gender and Sexual Diversity
Co-sponsored by the LGBTQ Studies Minor in the Department of Feminist Studies
DIVERSITY LECTURE
From 9/11 to Now: Immigrant Rights Matter to Us All (Ahilan Arulanantham)
MCC Theater
Reflecting on his own family history, Ahilan Arulanantham, director of the ACLU of Southern California, will guide us through 15 years of his career in Immigrants’ Rights Advocacy spanning the aftermath of 9/11 through the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. Whether representing detained immigrants in New York during the Fall of 2001, defending detained refugees and Central American children, or championing those affected by the President Trump’s “Muslim Travel Ban,” Ahilan shares his experience in upholding immigrant rights for which he has been awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant.
