Master Class with Olivier Tarpaga

KST Presents

KST’s Alloy Studios
5530 Penn Ave

Award-winning musician, dancer and choreographer, Olivier Tarpaga teaches a Master Class at KST’s Alloy Studios.

Tarpaga is the artistic director of Nomad Express International MultiArts Festival in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. He is also the founder and artistic director of the internationally-acclaimed Dafra Drum and Dafra Kura Band and co-founder of Baker & Tarpaga Dance Project. He danced with David Rousseve/Reality from 2006 – 2009. In 2008, Tarpaga was commissioned by Zig Zag Ballet to choreograph Visage at the Rich Forum Stanford Center for the Arts in Connecticut. He is a recipient of numerous grants including the National Dance Project touring support,  Suitcase Fund of New York Live Arts, Chime Mentorship Fellowship with David Rousseve as his mentor, the Durfee Foundation ARC, the Ohio Arts Council and the Flourish Foundation.

He is currently a senior lecturer at the Department of Dance of the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and a lecturer at the Department of Dance of Princeton University. Between 2005 and 2014 he was faculty at the Department of Dance and the School of Music of The Ohio State University, the Department of Drama and Dance at Kenyon College, OH and the Department of Dance at Denison University, OH, the University of Iowa and the World Arts and Cultures department at UCLA. Tarpaga has also taught as a guest artist at Brown University, Alvin Ailey, Western Australia Performing Arts Center in Perth, Malaysia National Academy of the Arts (ASWARA), Tokyo Olympic Center, Hong Kong Institute of Education, The Goodman Arts Centre in Singapore, The Russian Cultural Center in Tanzania, The National Theatre in Kampala, Uganda, Maitising Festival in Botswana, Aboki Ngoma festival in Yaoudé, Cameroon, Action Danse Festival in Casablanca and the French Institut in Rabat, Dakar, Senegal and Madagascar.

Tarpaga has performed and taught dance in more than 50 countries throughout Africa, Europe, the Americas, Asia and Australia.

The presentation of When Birds Refused to Fly is made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Benter Foundation, and contributors to KST’s World Stage Fund.

Hosted in conjunction with…
When Birds Refused to Fly, September 27 & 28 at 8:00pm at Kelly Strayhorn Theater
Welcome Dinner & Artist Talk with Olivier Tarpaga, September 25, 7:00pm at Kelly Strayhorn Theater