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How do you hold an international dance festival without artists traveling in from dozens of countries? That’s less of a riddle than it might seem when the event is based on the Peninsula.
The Peninsula International Dance Festival features 21 companies and 250 dancers, all based in the Bay Area, representing cultures on five continents, with everything from taiko and flamenco to hip-hop and Appalachian dancing.
“Here on the Peninsula, the makeup of culture is incredible. It’s multigenerational, it’s multicultural. All of our performers are local. All of our organizations, they live here. Almost all of them tour internationally. They have awards. They are scholars, they are professors, they are choreographers. They are the top in their field,” said Gregory Amato, artistic director for Peninsula Ballet Theatre, part of the umbrella organization Peninsula Lively Arts, which presents the festival. Amato and Chloe Watson, Peninsula Ballet Theatre’s company manager, program the festival.
“Living here in the Bay Area, we have such a resource — we have such a mosaic of cultures and dance right here. People don’t know that you have Tahitian dance, you have dance from Congo, you have dance from the Philippines, you have all of these incredible artists here, and they’re all 10 miles away from each other,” he said.
Though many of these companies may participate in local festivals and other events, Amato points out that this is a rare chance to see them all together.
Entertaining, teaching and sharing
The weekend-long festival accommodates as many groups as possible by presenting completely different programs on Saturday and Sunday. Audiences get a new experience each day, with the opportunity to take in performances by companies such as Charya Burt Cambodian Dance; Perú Expressions; Chitresh Das Dance performing dances from India and International Performing Arts of America performing dances from China, all on Saturday, July 19, and groups such as Ballet Nlolo Kongo representing Congo; Kantuta Ballet Folklórico de Bolivia; Calpulli Tonalehqueh performing dances of native Mexico; ARAX Dance representing Armenian dance; and hip-hop artist Stuck Sanders representing the U.S. on Sunday, July 20.
“A great thing about this festival is that we have all these different cultures (represented), but the collective energy of wanting to be a part of our community is so great. You have (over 200) people who all have the same goal in mind, which is not just to entertain, but to teach and to share,” Amato said.
As part of the event, audiences also have an opportunity to learn more about the countries represented, with tables set up for each organization in the lobby.
“We try to give the audience an experience. They can learn as much as they want. They can see costumes from all the different countries, and we have the music playing, and we have some ambassadors out there from the board just talking and greeting people,” Amato said.
Now in its fourth year, the festival came about at a time when arts groups and performance spaces were still trying to find a way through the COVID-19 pandemic, Amato said.Â
Amato drew inspiration for the festival from his travels as a dancer, performing in over 50 countries, and from the longstanding San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival, created in 1978. That event’s co-founder, Carlos Carvajal, a previous artistic director at Peninsula Ballet Theatre, gave support to Amato’s vision for the new festival.
“We’re standing on the shoulders of people who came before me, and that’s Carlos Carvajal, who had this vision for the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival,” Amato said.
Rebirth of 1,000-year-old tradition
For dancer Charya Burt, the art of those who came before her goes back in time by a full millennium. Her career has focused on reviving and preserving classical Cambodian dance, which “uses hand gestures combined with footwork and full body positions and movements to convey meaning,” according to a description of her work.Â
“It is a sacred art form and through the movements and performance, the dance is like a messenger… a kind of a messenger that links between the divine world and the human world,” Burt said.
Burt was born in Cambodia and moved to the United States about 30 years ago. She is based in the North Bay.
Cambodian classical dance is a thousand years old, Burt said, but it came close to being destroyed during the genocide by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. Among the many people targeted by the oppressive regime were those who worked in the arts, such as dancers. Some artists went into hiding, but the regime killed many.
“The tradition was almost lost. And after the civil war, I witnessed my master teacher, along with a handful of survivors who came back from the countryside, they started to rebuild their art form. And this was the time that I called the rebirth of the art. This is after the genocide, which is 1979, and then (in the) early 1980s, that’s when I began to dance,” Burt said. “For me to witness this cultural rebirth was to really give me (a sense of the) weight of my own obligation — to study hard and to become the cultural transmitter of the young generation, to learn from my master teachers so that I can carry their torch forward.”
Burt received a Hewlett50 grant in 2021 to produce a new full-length work called “The Rebirth of Apsara: Beyond Genocide.” Burt returned to Cambodia to work with dance masters there to tell the story of the art form’s rebirth. The piece brings together classical dance with an original musical score by renowned Cambodian-American composer Chinary Ung. “The Rebirth of Apsara” premiered in 2024 and Burt now tours with the piece.Â
For the Peninsula International Dance Festival, she will be performing “Heavenly Garden,” a solo restaging of a piece that premiered at the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival in 2016. Her performance takes place on July 19.
Burt choreographed the original work, which she described as “depicting a journey of a princess moving through a heaven-like garden on Earth. The movement and choreography symbolize creating a garden.”
“It’s a shorter piece, it’s more of a classical piece, but still using a different approach as well. I integrate live singing and spoken word, and within that, ideas of how I see my art,” she said.
An aspect of her work aims to both preserve an ancient art form and keep it moving forward by integrating new ideas. Striking that balance helps keep the art form vital.
“Part of my vision is to be able to preserve both authentically, the tradition of Cambodian classical dance, but also to allow the art room to grow. ‘Heavenly Garden’ is that attempt to carry on the tradition, while also letting the tradition be the symbol of growth and relevance to today’s world,” she said.
Stepping into the future on the shoulders of the past
After each show, festival audiences have a chance to see the participating groups in a more interactive setting.
“All the performers go out in front of the theater, and they have, for lack of a better term, a drum circle. So you have 100 performers out there with drums and musical instruments and in costume and interacting with the audience,” Amato said.
He notes that the performance begins with a blessing from a representative from the Association of Ramaytush Ohlone, acknowledging that the theater is on Indian ground. It highlights the importance of remembering the people who have come before all of us.Â
“What we do is sacred. We tell all the dancers, before the show, ‘we are standing on the shoulders of our teachers, of our parents, of our societies, of our culture, and they have hoisted us up on their shoulders to present who we are.’ It is very spiritual, but it also requires a sense of being humble (realizing) that it’s not just us. I mean, every step that any of these people ever learned, they learn from a master, they learn from their teacher, they learn from stories, from their parents,” Amato said.
The Peninsula International Dance Festival takes place July 19-20, 2 p.m., at San Mateo Performing Arts Center, 600 N. Delaware St., San Mateo; $40-$70; peninsulalivelyarts.org.
