Dance Performance at Tampa Museum of Art Featuring UT Faculty and Students

This Thursday, Sept. 30, at 5 p.m., four dance students from The University of Tampa will be performing live at the “Skyway 20/21: A Contemporary Collaboration” exhibit at the Tampa Museum of Art. The exhibit features “Blueprint/Redbloom,” a collaborative piece between Amanda Sieradzki, part-time dance faculty, and Jaime Aelavanthara, assistant professor of art and design with a specialty in photography. The performance will be accompanied by an original composition by Michael Standard, part-time music faculty, and his group, Homegrown New Music Ensemble. The event is open to the public, but the museum admissions fee must be paid upon entry. Visit tampamuseum.org/visit to check the admissions fee.

4 Dance students Dance students Rachel Bonacquisti ’24, Emily Curry ’22, Angelina Graves ’21 and Nicole Kanya ’22 will be performing at the exhibit.

“I just think it’s so important that the work is seen in the area in which it’s made,” said Aelavanthara, “which is why I think showing work at the Tampa Museum of Art is such a special and rewarding experience.”

“Blueprint/Redbloom” includes two, large-scale cyanotypes and a dance film. The “Blueprint” part of the title is a nod to the cyanotype, a photographic printing process that produces a cyan-blue print when exposed to light. “Redbloom” refers to the Red Tide and algal blooms. A model, dance major Amanda Lipton ’22, was used to block and shape the light, leaving abstract impressions on the print. These impressions symbolize man-made impressions on the Earth’s landscape, urging viewers to think of what they will leave behind.

To activate the images on the cyanotypes, a dance component was added. This has been displayed at the exhibit using a film of a solo dancer next to the prints. For the event, live dancers will replace the film.

Dance students Rachel Bonacquisti ’24, Emily Curry ’22, Angelina Graves ’21 and Nicole Kanya ’22 will be performing at the exhibit. The cyanotypes will appear as projections on the dancers, with their movements derived from the positioning of the body on the prints. This will create a nesting doll-like illusion to reflect the impressions we leave on the environment and each other.

“Skyway 20/21: A Contemporary Collaboration” celebrates artists and the work they create in the Tampa Bay area. Launched as a triennial exhibition in 2017, this survey show is the second presentation of “Skyway” and is mounted collaboratively by the Tampa Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art and the Contemporary Art Museum at the University of South Florida. It is on display at the Tampa Museum of Art until Oct. 10.

Aelavanthara and Sieradzki are two of 49 artists and collectives selected by curators from over 300 submissions. Additional UT faculty who are included in the “Skyway” exhibit are Ryan McCullough, assistant professor of art and design; Janelle Young, part-time faculty in art and design; Selina Roman, part-time faculty in art and design; and Gregg Perkins, associate professor of film, animation and new media.

“The ‘Skyway’ collaboration has truly been just a magical experience, the way that it interconnects all of these museums across two counties that are really precious to me,” Sieradzki said, as she grew up in Pinellas and Hillsborough. “Something that I felt was really important was the idea of collaboration, not just between all of these museums, but between art forms. What better way to share that than by merging dance and photography together?”