CLC dance,theater students to preview Chinese tour show

Six College of Lake County theater and dance students who are traveling to China later this month will present excerpts from American theater, musicals and dance at 2 p.m. on Sunday, May 17, in the Studio Theatre at the James Lumber Center for the Performing Arts on the CLC Grayslake campus. The event is free and open to the public.

The students will travel to China for a 13-day tour to perform as part of faculty/student presentations about American culture through dance and theater at American Culture Centers at three Chinese universities.

Student performers are Alana S. Johnson, Bracha Klein, Colin Kovarik, Sara Schoenberger, Jazmine Tamayo and Savannah Thomas. The faculty presenters are Craig Rich (theater) and Lamaiya Lancaster (dance). Political science professor Timothy Murphy is attending as grant manager, as is Dr. Li-Hua Yu, sociology professor emeritus and former director of the CLC Center for International Education, who led many CLC trips to her native China in recent years.

At the showcase event and in China, theater students will perform excerpts from "The Glass Menagerie" by Tennessee Williams; "Death of a Salesman" by Arthur Miller; "Real Women Have Curves" by Josefina Lopez; and "Working," adapted from the book by Studs Terkel. Dance students will perform pieces that demonstrate cultural dance forms from the 1920s until today. Dance and theater students will perform selections from the musicals "Annie Get Your Gun," "Anything Goes," "West Side Story," "Chicago" and "Beautiful: The Carole King Musical." In addition, students will demonstrate the rehearsal process and an original work they created.

The faculty/student presentations are titled "The American Dream: Then and Now," "Dance Forms in American Culture," "Evolution of the American Musical" and "Creating New Work for Dance and Theatre."

The CLC delegation will present and perform on May 26 at Shanghai University of Sciences and Technology on May 29 at Xi'an International University and on June 2 at Henan Normal University. The group will also visit cultural and historical landmarks in the three cities, as well as tour the Great Wall and Forbidden City in Beijing.

The trip to China is sponsored by a U.S. Department of State American Cultural Centers grant. The college has sent other grant-funded groups of faculty and staff to present at the American Culture Centers in the past, including art faculty in 2014 and a student choir in 2013.

"This whole process has been about giving our students the opportunity to experience, firsthand, the fascinating history, culture and people of China," theater department co-chair Craig Rich said. "Our theater and dance students are so talented and dedicated; I can't imagine a better way to reward their hard work than with this amazing opportunity."

Dance student Alana S. Johnson, who performed in Taiwan in 2012 at a World Dance Alliance conference, said she was very excited about the trip.

"It's such a great opportunity to get to tour four parts of China doing something I'm so passionate about. To be able to go to China and share American culture through the performing arts is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I can't wait," she said.

Colin Kovarik, who has never traveled outside the U.S. before, said he is looking forward to the trip "because of what a mind-expanding experience it stands to be."

"I am very excited to present American Culture through theater as well as showing America's unique contributions to theater both in our playwrights, like Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, and our forms, most obviously, musical theater," Kovarik said. "I most look forward to hearing the perspective of the students there, hearing what their reactions are to things I've grown up with, such as the cultural ideal of the American dream."

CLC's relationship with Xi'an International University (XAIU) began in 2007 when the college established a semester-abroad program with funding from the U.S. Department of Education. Since then, five groups of CLC students have spent a semester at the university; the next group will study there in fall 2015. In 2012, CLC won a State Department grant that established an American Culture Center at XAIU. CLC was one of 19 higher education institutions chosen to establish a cultural center, and was the only community college selected for the honor.

"This China grant project illustrates another example of the incredible and unique opportunities in international education that CLC offers to students in this region," Timothy Murphy said.

CLC's Center for International Education facilitates global engagement and advances international education among students, faculty and staff through the support of international educational exchange, programs and services. The college won the Innovation in International Education Andrew Heiskell Award from the Institute of International Education, which honors the most outstanding initiatives being conducted in international higher education by member universities and colleges.