Dancing the Poem

Admission is free.

Join us for a choreographed collaboration between poetry and dance—two languages of aesthetic revelation. The Get Lit Players—teen poets from Los Angeles—and USC dancers led by USC dance director Margo Apostolos will enact and dance both traditional and spoken-word poems. Poems by contemporary poets, including Joy Harjo, Robert Pinsky and others, will be read aloud by California poet laureate Carol Muske-Dukes, then interpreted by the Get Lit Players and danced in a variety of styles, including jazz, tap, modern and hip hop. The event will demonstrate the creative relationship between dance and language. A great poem may dance on the page; this event will translate that choreography of our imaginations into reality. The performance will be followed by a discussion.

Margo Apostolos is the director of dance and an associate professor in the USC School of Theatre. She has authored and presented numerous articles on her research and design in robot choreography. A recipient of the prestigious NASA/ASEE Summer Faculty fellowship, Apostolos worked for NASA at Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Caltech as a research scientist in the area of space telerobotics.

Carol Muske-Dukes is a USC professor of English and creative writing, founding director of USC’s PhD program in creative writing and literature and creator of the Magic Poetry Bus—her project as California poet laureate. She is the author of seven books of poems (including Sparrow, a National Book Award finalist), four novels and two collections of essays. She has received numerous awards, including the Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship in Poetry and the Library of Congress Award.

The Get Lit Players is an award-winning teen poetry troupe composed of high-school students from throughout Los Angeles. The troupe travels the nation inspiring thousands of their peers to read through their explosive live performances. Their work has been featured on HBO and in the Los Angeles Times and has been embraced by two poet laureates, Russell Simmons, the California Arts Council, and educators and students throughout the nation.

Organized by Margo Apostolos (Dance) and Carol Muske-Dukes (English).

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

Location: Ronald Tutor Campus Center (TCC) - Grand Ballroom, Section A

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Daria Yudacufski