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ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
SCOTTSDALE PROGRESS | WWW.SCOTTSDALE.ORG | MAY 1, 2022
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Debra Ann Byrd brings experience to Taliesen BY BRIDGETTE M. REDMAN Progress Contributor
Dancing With The Universe | Native Style will bring an informative and lively show to the Center for the Performing Arts on Saturday, May 7. (Special to the Progress)
Native American dance comes to arts center BY ALEX GALLAGHER Progress Staff Writer
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errick Suwaima Davis believes all people are born with a known purpose, with his being to use dance as a form of education and expression. Raised on Hopi reservation land in Northern Arizona, he began participating in powwows at age 3 and fell in love with his tribe’s native dances. As he grew older, he grew aware that there was a world outside of the reservation that had become engulfed in consumerism and had forgotten about the resources that our planet provided. Now, Suwaima hopes to bring audiences back to earth with his latest dance performance, titled “Dancing With The Universe | Native Style,” Saturday, May 7, to the Scotts-
dale Center for the Performing Arts. “When we first started over 15 years ago, there was no clear way for me to show my own culture but have other tribes show their songs, dances and how they managed their resources,” he said. “It’s all based on the fundamental principle of how to make a good life for their community. “In each culture, you’ll see that common thread of people desiring a good life. ‘Dancing With The Universe | Native Style’ is about looking back in awe at what nature has made and encouraging people to embrace that more in their daily lives.” He likens it to a time “where there was no running water or electricity and people harvested the wild foods that may have been available during certain times of the
see UNIVERSE page 26
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ebra Ann Byrd felt reborn when she joined the Southwest Shakespeare Company as its artistic director. “I’m a Christian girl, a Bible girl and I was living in the Valley with the mountains surrounding me,” Byrd said. “I was feeling so much closer to God, and I found myself being refreshed and rejuvenated and more alive. I lost 60 pounds. The environment was very good to me. It causes me to relax, to calm down, to breathe deeper and to smile more from the inside.” Byrd brings a wealth of Shakespeare experience to the Valley. The founder of Harlem Shakespeare Festival and Take Wing and Soar Productions, Byrd is well known in the classical world. Last year, the Shakespeare Theatre Association honored her with the prestigious Sidney Berger Award thanks to her Shakespearean work. “I fell in love with Shakespeare because I saw a troupe of Black actors performing it at Harlem,” Byrd said. “Their performances were amazing and magical, beautiful. I said to myself, ‘Wow.’ I had been looking for a challenge in my theatrical career and when I saw them - that was the challenge I was looking for.” She studied classical theater at a conservatory. Upon graduation, she was told she’d only find success with modern Black playwrights. Unsatisfied with this, she founded the Harlem Shakespeare Festival. Coming up on its 20-year anniversary, the festival will celebrate with her, despite her current position. Byrd produced an all-female version of “Othello” and, recently, staged “Becoming
Debra Ann Byrd is the artistic director of the Southwest Shakespeare Company.
Othello: A Black Girl’s Journey” at the Lincoln Center. She is writer-in-residence at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, artistin-residence fellow at the Folger Institute and an A’Lelia Bundles Community Scholar at Columbia University. “My mother is an African American from New York,” Byrd said. “My father is from Puerto Rico. My dual culture has influenced how I view the world and how I make theater. “I am an Afro-Latina who is fluent in Black theater, gospel theater, and classical theater with a special emphasis on Shakespeare, all of which has helped shape who I am as a producer, actor and director. “Over the years I have become a Shakespeare woman, producing Shakespeare and the classics for 20 years and I’ve spent
see DEBRA page 26
