MONTEREY — It’s tough to seize the wonder and energy of the ocean utilizing phrases alone. That’s why this weekend’s Monterey Ocean Arts Competition is enlisting each artists and scientists to have fun and study in regards to the magnificence and energy of the ocean.
SpectorDance hosts its second annual Monterey Ocean Arts Competition Saturday from 1-4 p.m. on the Monterey Museum of Artwork. The occasion will characteristic performances and visible artwork displays from over 180 native youth artists. Competition-goers also can find out about science and make their very own artwork with native scientific organizations. Talks from scientists and free admission to the Monterey Museum of Artwork will spherical out the afternoon.
Fran Spector Atkins, who based the competition, started utilizing dance to deal with social points about 25 years in the past. In 2010, she fashioned a collaboration with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Analysis Institute to choreograph performances about ocean science. In these items, which have been first introduced on the Smithsonian in 2013, performers danced to music blended with sound bites from ocean scientists.
After the success of that challenge, Spector Atkins hoped to deliver extra individuals to the intersection of artwork and ocean science. “I needed to take the concepts that we have been working with and produce them to our group,” Spector Atkins mentioned. “So we began the Monterey Ocean Arts Competition.”
The primary Monterey Ocean Arts Competition introduced round 80 artists and greater than 250 attendees to Spector’s dance studio in Marina. After a two-year pandemic pause, the competition returns this weekend in a brand new location: the Monterey Museum of Artwork. The museum is providing a group free day on Saturday in order that festivalgoers also can stroll by means of the museum, Spector Atkins mentioned.
This 12 months’s competition is about to be even greater than the primary, that includes greater than 180 artists between 10 and 25 years outdated. These embody visible artists from CSU Monterey Bay, a mariachi band and dance group from the Greenfield Cultural Arts Heart, musicians from the Dennis Murphy College of Music and extra. Most of the visible and performing artists are additionally college students at space excessive colleges and center colleges.
Along with ocean-centric performances and visible arts, the competition may also characteristic science tables and artwork actions led by native scientific organizations, together with Elkhorn Slough, the Pacific Grove Pure Historical past Museum and Camp Sea Lab.
Competition attendees may also have the ability to hear talks from scientists and science communicators, together with Monterey Bay Aquarium Government Director Julie Packard, Harvard analysis professor Dr. John Holdren and George Matsumoto, a analysis specialist on the Monterey Bay Aquarium Analysis Institute.
Spector Atkins mentioned she hopes there will likely be many extra Monterey Ocean Arts Festivals.
“We see this as an annual occasion,” she mentioned. “The momentum and the idea and the curiosity are all there.”