Ray Smith Symposium Concludes with Events Devoted to Latino/a Dance, Movement

Anthropologist Ángel Quintero Rivera, photographer Milagros de la Torre headline scholarly discussion

Latino/a movement is the focus of the final installment of this year’s Ray Smith Symposium in The College of Arts and Sciences. Events include a keynote lecture and mini seminar by Puerto Rican anthropologist Ángel Quintero Rivera and conceptual photographer Milagros de la Torre, April 4-5. Rounding out the program are a screening of the film “Mirror Dance” on March 28 and a Brazilian dance workshop and performance by the Toronto-based Dance Migration on April 5.

The events are part of “Moving Borders: The Culture and Politics of Displacement in and from Latin America and the Caribbean,” a yearlong symposium organized and presented by faculty members of the Program on Latin America and the Caribbean in the Moynihan Institute for Global Affairs in the Maxwell School. All of the events are free and open to the public, but preregistration is required for the mini-seminar. For more information, call Elane Granger Carrasco, associate director of the Slutzker Center for International Services, at 315-443-2457.

Sydney Hutchinson, assistant professor of art and music histories, co-organized the symposium with Granger and nine other faculty members. “Changes in global conditions, brought on by political, military, cultural and economic crises, have caused mass movements of people,” says Hutchinson. “These movements, in turn, have sparked intense debates over identity, politics, economic policy and immigration. We will examine issues of borders and displacement through various disciplinary perspectives and forms of representation, including film, music, dance and literature.”

Adds Granger: “We seek to understand how cultural, political and economic displacement affects individuals and nations, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean. With displacement comes emerging notions of borders, homeland, citizenship and movement that need to be explored, questioned and redefined.”

The schedule is as follows:

Thursday, March 28, 6 p.m.
220 Eggers Hall
Screening: “Mirror Dance” (2005) is the story of Cuban-born identical twins who become estranged through politics when one moves to the United States and the other remains behind. Though separated for almost 40 years, both continue to share a passion for dance.

Thursday, April 4, 6 p.m.
Maxwell Auditorium
Keynote Lecture I: “Afro-Atlantic Aesthetics, Migrations and Musical World-Visions”
Ángel Quintero-Rivera, professor of sociology and anthropology at the University of Puerto Rico
Keynote Lecture II: “Indicios, or, the Politics of Place”
Milagros de la Torre, conceptual photographer

Friday, April 5, 10 a.m.
304-C Bowne Hall
Mini-Seminar: Ángel Quintero-Rivera and Milagros de la Torre
R.S.V.P. at aorr@syr.edu

Friday, April 5, at 2:30 p.m.
Brazilian Dance Workshop: The Dance Migration (Toronto)
Venue: BeVard Studio at the OnCenter (800 South State St., Syracuse)

Friday, April 5, at 7:30 p.m.
Brazilian Dance Performance: The Dance Migration with Samba Laranja (the SU Brazilian Ensemble)
Venue: BeVard Studio at the OnCenter

Quintero-Rivera is a researcher at the Center of Social Research at the University of Puerto Rico, where he studies worker history, social class and the sociology of culture. He is the author of “Salsa, Sabor y Control” (Siglo, 1998), regarded as the standard reference text for the sociology of salsa music. He also has written “Cuerpo y cultura” (Verveurt, 2009), which examines issues of dance and race in the migrating “Mulatto musics” of the Caribbean.

De la Torre has been working in conceptual photography since 1991, following studies at the University of Lima (Peru) and London College of Communication (U.K.). Much of her art stems from a rigorous research process, along with critical argumentation of the photographic apparatus and a delicate personal background. As a result, her images invariably project what is described as an “eerie beauty and visual seduction that contrasts with the acute subject matter.” Her work has been exhibited broadly and is part of museum collections around the world.

The Dance Migration is Toronto’s leading Brazilian dance company. Company director Adrianna Yanuziello brings the culture of dance from Brazil to her home city of Toronto with exhilarating performances in Samba, Afro Brazilian dance, Capoeira and more. They will be joined onstage by Samba Laranja, an SU Brazilian ensemble that combines voice and percussion to perform several styles of Brazilian music.

The Ray Smith Symposium Series was established in 1989 as the result of a bequest from the estate of SU alumnus Ray W. Smith ’21 to support symposia on topics in the humanities in The College of Arts and Sciences. The symposium is named for the Auburn, N.Y., native who, after graduating from SU in 1921, was a highly respected teacher and administrator.