Don’t miss Visions and Voices’s annual arts extravaganza! We will kick off the year with this dynamic multimedia event—the most popular of the Visions and Voices season—featuring music, dance, performance art and spoken word. Presented during Welcome Week, the event will include an introduction by Provost C. L. Max Nikias, exhilarating dance performances by hip hop dance crew SickStep and Bollywood dance company Karmagraphy, the enchanting musical stylings of multimedia artist/musician Ariana Delawari, moving and evocative performances by internationally acclaimed solo performers Jude Narita and Tim Miller and a presentation by Tara McPherson, associate professor of critical studies and gender studies in the USC School of Cinematic Arts. Following the event, join us for a reception featuring live music by the Derik Nelson Band. Attendees will receive free Visions and Voices T-shirts and bags featuring a brand-new design!

About the artists:

Ariana Delawari is a multimedia artist—a musician, actress, photographer and filmmaker. As a musician, she has played shows with such artists as Bat for Lashes and Ben Lee and, most recently, she worked with filmmaker/artist David Lynch on her debut album, Lion of Panjshir. Delawari has been traveling to Afghanistan since 2002, when her parents moved there to be part of the reconstruction of the country. A USC alum, she made her first trip to Kabul after graduating from the USC School of Cinema-Television. Her debut album, due out this summer, was partially recorded in Afghanistan with three Afghan elder master musicians (or Ustads) and was finished in Los Angeles with several guest musicians. Lynch produced a few tracks on the album and will be releasing it on his new label, David Lynch Records. Delawari is also co-directing a documentary about her travels and her family’s involvement in Afghanistan with Emily Stofle Lynch. 

Karmagraphy fuses Bollywood and Western dance styles. The choreographic duo of Karmagraphy, Sapna Rohra and Kavita Rao, and guest choreographer Shivani Thakkar have all been immersed in Indian culture and dance since they were young, while simultaneously training in hip hop, jazz, tap, ballet and many other styles. Karmagraphy hopes to inspire a fusion of Bollywood and Western cultures in the entertainment industry.  

Tim Miller is an internationally acclaimed performance artist and writer. His work explores the artistic, spiritual and political topography of his identity as a gay man. Hailed for his humor and passion, Miller has performed all over North America, Australia and Europe in such prestigious venues as Yale Repertory Theatre, the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis) and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He is the author of the books Shirts & Skin, Body Blows and 1001 Beds, which won the 2007 Lambda Literary Award for Best Book in Drama/Theatre. His solo theater works have been published in the play collections O Solo Homo and Sharing the Delirium. Miller has taught performance at UCLA, NYU, the School of Theology at Claremont and universities all over the United States. He is a co-founder of two of the most influential performance spaces in the United States: Performance Space 122 on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica.

Jude Narita has written award-winning one-woman plays about Asian and Asian American women for twenty years, celebrating our differences, while illuminating the universal humanity of us all. Her plays explore the lives of different Asian and Asian American women on a journey of emotions, memories and dreams—culminating in the final embracing of one’s own heritage. Specifically, she has produced work looking at racism and the mysteries of love; the effects of the Japanese American internment camps during World War II on three generations of Japanese American women; and the humanization of Vietnamese women during and after the American war in Vietnam. Narita has taught free acting/writing workshops to encourage other Asian actresses to create their own original material, both here and in Singapore. She has also taught workshops on truth telling in theatre, breaking down stereotypes and exposing racism in art.

Derik Nelson Band is an upbeat pop-music group inspired by an eclectic mix of jazz, funk and rock. Formed in December of 2008 at the University of Southern California, the band features Jack Kovacs (guitar), Bert Gay (bass), Ben Rose (drums), Brian Hargrove (keyboards) and Derik Nelson (voice, piano, guitar). After receiving widespread acclaim from the USC community and beyond for performances on campus and in the greater Los Angeles area (including a sold-out headlined show at the Troubadour in Hollywood), the band will focus next on the studio, where they will record their first album.

Before MTV and million-dollar recording contracts, there was rhymin’ in the park. Before professional hip hop choreographers and hip hop dance classes, there was breakin’ on the sidewalk. SickStep is a hip hop dance crew that focuses as much on where hip hop has been as on where it is going. SickStep dancers have performed in music videos for Justin Timberlake, Jennifer Lopez, Dream and the A-Teens, to name a few, and have toured with such artists as Aaron Carter, Vina Morales and American Idol’s Jasmine Trias. In addition, the crew’s members have been featured in numerous commercials and have performed on such television shows as So You Think You Can Dance, Dance 360 and Mad TV and films including Groove, Austin Powers in Goldmember and Jamie Kennedy’s Kickin’ It Old Skool. Most recently, SickStep was one of the 15 finalists on NBC’s America’s Got Talent.

Ariana Delawari Photo Credit: Lauren Dukoff

For further information on this event:
visionsandvoices@usc.edu