UCF Celebrates the Arts 2016 – a free festival of music, performances and visual displays – combines an abundance of arts and talent that would weigh down an actual marquee.
The festival, which is all open to the public, will reprise its second season April 8-16 at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Orlando with an extended program of student and faculty presentations and collaborations.
Two more days of events have been added to this year’s festival, which will feature offerings from more than 1,000 university students and 100 faculty members and include some collaborative programs with outside partners.
The festival will showcase the talents of the university’s artists and practitioners in theatre, dance, orchestra, choirs, big band, chamber music, cabaret, concert bands, opera, visual arts, studio art, gaming, animation, photography and film. There’s even a concert that organizers think may be the first of its kind: a presentation geared exclusively for expectant parents. (An ambulance will be on hand if needed to respond to any pregnant women who may go into labor!)
Collaborative music performances by UCF students will be under the direction of visiting composers Hans Zimmer (The Lion King, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Dark Knight, and more than 150 other films), and Patrick Doyle (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Sense and Sensibility, Bridget Jones’s Diary, and more than 45 other films, including several movie adaptations of Shakespeare works).
“The festival allows us to show the breadth and depth of UCF arts in one location,” said Jeff Moore, director of the UCF School of Performing Arts and artistic director of the festival. “Last year someone said to me: ‘We know UCF is big, but an event like this brings it home.’ This demonstrates the quality of programs we have at UCF.”
The festival also will provide an opportunity for high school arts students to attend workshops led by UCF faculty and perform at the new Dr. Phillips Center’s state-of-the-art venue in downtown Orlando.
The schedule for UCF Celebrates the Arts is still evolving, but the event will kick off April 8 with a dance concert to showcase about 80 student dancers. Six students were selected in competition to create the choreography of this 10th annual presentation.
Afterward, here are some of the highlighted events:
Events will be scheduled all nine days of UCF Celebrates the Arts, and the calendar is still building. All events will be free, but tickets will be required to enter the building.
“We had such positive response last year,” Moore said. “This platform gives us a chance to share with the community all those things we create and are happening at the university.”
This is part of a series of stories about the April 8-16 events at UCF Celebrates the Arts 2016. The festival will feature studio art, music, theatre, dance, gaming, animation, photography and film at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, 445 S. Magnolia Ave., Orlando.