From the press release:
KRANNERT CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS ANNOUNCES THE 2017-18 YOUTH SERIES
Urbana, IL—For decades, Krannert Center has welcomed thousands of the region’s young people each season for a series of inventive and inspiring daytime programs, carefully curated to awaken minds while also addressing Common Core and Illinois learning standards. This season, the Krannert Center Youth Series will celebrate its 35th anniversary with a vibrant global mix of artists. The $5 ticket prices and ticket subsidies are available through support from Krannert Center’s Campaign for Young Audiences and Youth Series endowed funding. Educators including public, private, and home school teachers may apply for financial assistance when placing their ticket order. Visit KrannertCenter.com, call 217.244.3009, or email youth@krannertcenter.com to learn more.
Krannert Center Youth Series 2017-18 Season Preview & Educator Appreciation Event
May 3 from 4pm to 6pm | Krannert Center Lobby
Area teachers, school administrators, PTA members, and youth advocates are invited to enjoy complimentary refreshments, get a preview of the 2017-18 Youth Series season, and place orders for the upcoming school year. Be sure to stop by the information tables to learn more about public engagement and outreach programming from our partners at Krannert Art Museum, the University of Illinois School of Music, the Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra Youth Concerts, Lyric Theatre @ Illinois, Dance at Illinois, Illinois Theatre, Global Arts Performance Initiatives, Sinfonia da Camera, DoCha Music Festival, and Spurlock Museum. Enter to win tickets to Krannert Center and take advantage of a 10% discount at Promenade—the exceptionally eclectic, artfully affordable store at Krannert Center. RSVPs are requested by April 28.
2017-18 YOUTH SERIES PERFORMANCES
National Acrobats and Martial Artists of Tianjin, the People’s Republic of China: China Soul
Recommended for grades PreK-12
Oct 25 at 10am and 12:30pm | Foellinger Great Hall • $5
Glittering costumes, breathtaking tricks, and magnificent feats of athletic daring splendidly create a tour de force when this magnetic, award-winning troupe takes to international stages. First formed in 1957, but with a legacy stretching back thousands of years, the Tianjin Acrobats and Martial Artists bring joy to audiences through their delightful gymnastics, towering human pyramids, precise Kung Fu maneuvers and more in the debut tour of China Soul.
Festival of South African Dance featuring Real Actions Pantsula Dance Company
Recommended for grades 2-12
Nov 2 at 10am | Foellinger Great Hall | $5
South Africa is home to a rich mix of cultural traditions that reflect the vibrant diversity, complex history, and inventive creativity of its nearly 56 million citizens. Pantsula dance style was born of street culture in South Africa’s black townships, influenced by Sotho dances and American jazz and hip-hop, and inspired by everyday events. Real Actions Pantsula, founded in 1992 by Sello Modiga in Orange Farm Township near Johannesburg, features a diverse young troupe dedicated to education and social justice alongside their phenomenal skills as performers.
Guy Mendilow Ensemble: Around the World in Song
Recommended for grades K-3
Nov 7-8 at 10am and 12:30pm | Studio Theatre | $5
Everyone becomes part of the act in this musical trip around the globe. Through colorful songs, stories, and games, the Guy Mendilow Ensemble takes students on an exhilarating, interactive adventure. Around the World in Song features joyous numbers filled with colorful characters from the band’s homelands of Israel, Argentina, and the United States. Along the way, audiences are introduced to instruments like the munnharpa (jaw harp) and Peruvian cajon (box drum), and special techniques like overtone singing.
Guy Mendilow Ensemble: Tales from the Forgotten Kingdom
Recommended for grades 4-6
Nov 9 at 10am and 12:30pm | Studio Theatre | $5
Embark on a musical trek to kingdoms long forgotten and bustling towns now vanished. Follow the stories of vagabond queens, pauper poets, and lovers lost to the sea. These wild rides and fantastic yarns spring from songs and stories of the Judeo-Spanish Ladino tradition that were carried by Sephardic Jews as they moved from Spain and settled along the Mediterranean’s northern coast to Greece and Turkey. Multi-instrumentalist, singer, and skilled arranger Guy Mendilow and his four musical collaborators leap into this world in Tales from the Forgotten Kingdom. Mendilow and company bring tales to life, intertwining voices, percussion, and soulful playing to render these songs in all their color, drama, and heart.
Imago Theatre: La Belle, Lost in the World of the Automaton
Recommended for grades 3-8
Feb 6 at 10am, Feb 7 at 10am and 12:30pm | Colwell Playhouse | $5
Imago founders Carol Triffle and Jerry Mouawad are physical comedians, theatrical animators, modern-day magicians, and adventurous alchemists. For over 35 years, their Portland-based theatre company has been creating a vast repertoire of boundary-blurring productions that defy categorization. Their newest incarnation, La Belle, is set aboard a 1920s steamship where the refined Lady Rose encounters the ship’s coal stoker, Sam, after taking refuge in the engine room during a storm. Rose discovers a curious collection of trunks and treasures and soon realizes that Sam has constructed the 1740 French fairy tale La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast) in the world of the automata (fanciful figurines brought to life by the ingenuity of clockwork mechanics). As they retell the story together, love blossoms in the midst of a whimsical, non-stop, gear-driven, kinetic world featuring over 100 astonishingly detailed automata, puppets, and non-digital dazzling effects.
Paige Hernandez: Havana Hop
Recommended for grades PreK-2
Feb 28 at 10am and 12:30pm | Tryon Festival Theatre | $5
If you were invited to dance for the President, you’d want it be the best dance ever, right? That’s just what young Yelia thinks too! Come along as she visits her grandmother in Cuba, infusing her hip-hop style from back home with a little salsa flavor! The audience gets to dance along in this dynamic participation play where just one actress—master teaching artist, dancer, actress, playwright, and director Paige Hernandez—creates three generations of lively women. Journey with Yelia as she discovers the fun of her multicultural heritage.
Paige Hernandez: Liner Notes
Recommended for grades 6-12
Mar 1-2 at 10am | Tryon Festival Theatre | $5
Collide with music’s past and present through jazz standards, hip-hop samples, and actual liner notes—recording inserts that allow artists to share personal statements of artistic expression with their fans. Paige Hernandez and collaborators Baye Harrell, Akua Allrich, and Kris Funn’s Corner Store Jazz Quintet fuse live music, poetry, theatre, and a multimedia design into an electrifying performance that brings together generations of music lovers in celebration. Sing along, dance, and live tweet while this exceptional troupe uncovers the stories behind some of music’s biggest hits. As Hernandez describes this community gathering, “The love from a Liner Notes audience is enough to move mountains.”
TAO: Drum Heart
Recommended for grades 4-12
Mar 27 at 10am | Colwell Playhouse | $5
The performers who take the stage for TAO are highly trained athletes and highly expressive artists. TAO’s modern, high-energy performances showcasing the ancient art of Japanese drumming have transfixed audiences worldwide. Combining ultra-physical, large-scale drumming with contemporary costumes, dynamic choreography, and innovative visuals, the performers of TAO: Drum Heart create an unforgettable production. Established in Japan’s Aichi region in 1995, TAO’s creative production center is now on Kyushu Island, site of the legendary Aso Kuju National Park.
Please note: Drums are loud. We will make efforts to control the decibel levels during this performance and will have earplugs available for any patron who requests them.
Cahoots, NI: Shh! We Have a Plan
Recommended for grades PreK-3
Apr 26-27 at 10am and 12:30pm | Colwell Playhouse | $5
This magical and memorable troupe from Belfast, Northern Ireland, first delighted KCYS audiences in 2016 with the coming-of-age tale of three little birds in its production of Egg. Its latest show to hatch is the delightful Shh! We Have a Plan, based on the Chris Haughton book of the same name. Youngsters will be entranced by the journey of three intrepid and rather madcap characters who each have the perfect plan to capture a beautiful bird perched high in a tree. Where will it all end? Follow along on Cahoots NI’s enchanting adventure—filled with music, pantomime, and puppetry—to see if perhaps freedom and kindness win out over getting what you want!
Campaign for Young Audiences Sponsors:
- Phyllis and Kyle Robeson, Lead Sponsors
- JSM
- Susan and Michael Haney
- Gertrude Brokaw McCloy Endowment
- Dr. Donna Murray Tiedge and Robert Tiedge
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
- WCIA 3
- Youth Series Programming Sponsors:
- Dorothy Buzzard
- Karen Grano
- Brenda and Stephen Pacey
- Jill and James Quisenberry
- Anne and David Sharpe
- Prudence and Bernard Spodek
- The Susan Sargeant McDonald Endowed Fund for Youth Programming (Suzi was the founder/ developer of the Krannert Center Youth Series)
- Nancy and Edward Tepper
- UpClose Marketing & Printing