Ballet 5:8 Artistic Director Julianna Slager's 2015 premiere Mi Familia.

Drawn from the choreographer's own personal experiences growing up in a multi-racial family, Mi Familia celebrates the beauty of family and relationships that can be experienced by all people, transcending racial and cultural differences. The work has a fun-filled flavor, utilizing traditional Mexican Classical music and Mexican Folklorico movements to create a lively, relatable picture that is sure to have us all dancing along in our seats.

Background

Though they may be "hot button" issues in today's time and culture, problems like racism and various forms of slavery have plagued humanity all throughout time. Some of these problems come out of intentional malice toward certain kinds of people, but for many of us, unkind actions and attitudes towards others who seem different from us are born out of an innocent sense of fear. It can seem natural for us to want to keep our distance from others who are unfamiliar - we fear that we won't be able to relate to people whose appearance, language, and social habits, even food or music is different from that which we are familiar with. The question is, are these fears valid?

While there are very many ways in which people can be genuinely different from each other, Artistic Director Julianna Rubio Slager wanted to create a work that showcases and celebrates the "sameness" that we all share, even with our differences. If you look beyond appearance, language, social habits, food, music, everything - you will always be left with people. Each culture may have different attributes, but we are people all the same, and at our core we live life alongside others in the context of families and various relationships. Highs and lows, joys and sorrows are all shared with the others we live life with, and differences aside, these life experiences can give us something familiar that we can see and celebrate in the lives of others, no matter how different those others may seem to us.

Premiere: September, 2015
Choreography: Julianna Slager
Costumes: Lorianne Robertson