Our Stories, Our Art
The Naugatuck Valley Community College Dance Department will perform their annual spring concert, Our Stories, Our Art, on Saturday, April 30, at 8 pm in the college’s Mainstage Theater, 750 Chase Parkway. The performance is free. Suggested donation is $10 with proceeds benefitting the Terpsichorean Dance Ensemble activities.
This year, the College will celebrate not only the students’ biographical creations, but also the creations of artist, author, teacher and adjunct professor of art, Florin Ion Firimitã. Since January, students from NVCC’s Choreographic Principles/Ensemble class have worked with producer/director Elena Rusnak, professor of dance, to bring Reunion, one of Firimitã’s mixed media works, to life and to choreograph their own stories through artwork or photography.
In addition to the performance, Firimitã’s art students from NVCC and Pomperaug High School will exhibit their work outside of the theater.
Born and raised in Romania during the Cold War and orphaned at the age of 16, Firimita survived an oppressive police state, participated in the anti-Communist revolution of December 1989 and then moved to the United States in 1990, bringing with him several thousand pages of journal entries. The compilation of his memories, The Salt Diaries, has become an artistic laboratory, a source for the artist’s mixed media artwork, photography, and fiction, including his novel Reliquary.
In 2010, musician Martin Meyer began piecing together Fragments from The Salt Diaries, a concept music album based on the journal. In the past years, his artwork has become widely collected and requested in numerous exhibits in the U.S., including Carole Peck’s Good News Café in Woodbury, Europe and Australia.
For more information email erusnak@nvcc.commnet.edu.