Burkina Electric

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More About

• Kenna Sarge
• Leah Nelson
• Kate Nordstrom
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media
• Dance

Brilliant curatorial vision means seeing how disparate artists from far-flung corners of the globe could produce something terrific together, then facilitatating the logistics and cross-cultural information necessary to make it happen. That's exactly what Southern Theater music curator Kate Nordstrom, working with dance curator Laurie van Wieren, accomplished between the musicians of Burkina Electric and Minneapolis-based dancers Leah Nelson and Kenna Sarge. Contemporary-music mavens will certainly recognize the group's composer-drummer-electronicist, Lukas Ligeti (New York). The group also features guitarist Wende K. Blass; electronicist VJ Pyrolator (Germany); singer Maï Lingani (Burkina Faso, Africa); and dance artists Vicky and Zoko Zoko. Area African-American dance artists Nelson and Sarge, dynamos with musicality to burn, join them for performances that will certainly heat up the Southern as electronic dance music becomes infected with sounds and rhythms rarely heard even in much of Africa. These include ancient rhythms of Sahel such as the Mossi people's Quaraba and Quenega, traditional instruments and found sounds recorded in Burkina Faso, and the group's inimitable rhythmic collisions. (Photo by Sam West)
Jan. 14-15, 8 p.m., 2011