By Brian M. Rafferty
Jeffrey Rosenstock is giddy. Perhaps he should be. After all, he hasn’t gotten much sleep the last few weeks.
As executive director of Queens Theater in the Park, Rosenstock has been poring over every detail of the AT&T Latino Cultural Festival set to kick off next Wednesday, July 24.
“I have a passion for it,” he said Monday. “Latin theater, music and dance. It gets under my skin.”
With more than 20 artists and groups coming to an 18-day festival that runs through Aug. 11, this is one of the busiest times of the year for Rosenstock.
“We have five groups in our theater festival and four in our dance festival, and most of them come from this country,” he said. “We have to coordinate airlines, travel, transportation, hotel, immigration, visas and so much more for every artist involved in the festival. But it’s all worth it. There is no doubt that the borough population is rallying for it.”
The sixth annual Latino festival at the Queens Theatre in the Park will feature music, dance, theater, film and children/family events with some of the top names in Latin American performing arts.
“The director of our Latino programming makes the choices,” Rosenstock said of Claudia Norman, artistic director of Latino programming at Queens Theatre in the Park. “She is out there in Central and South America finding groups that the mainstream may not have heard of, but that the Latin American population knows well. She tries to say to the Latino populations that there are aspects of Latino culture that are the same even though they come from different countries.”
The talent lined up for this year’s festival is influenced by every country between Tijuana and Cape Horn, as well as one act from Spain. Performances will be in Spanish, Portuguese and English, depending on the artist.
“We want to show that we are the home to Latino culture in Queens,” Rosenstock said. “As far as we are concerned, this is the Lincoln Center of Queens, and when Latino artists come here they’re not relegated to performing in a basement or in a small space. They come in and feel a sense of assimilation. They feel welcome. We feel that we give ownership of our facility to the borough’s Latino population.”
For the first time in the theater’s history, United States and Mexican artists have collaborated to present a dance project that truly merges American and Latino cultures.
“The project, which resulted in the creation of the dance piece “La Presa,” was developed in Mexico bringing together renowned US choreographer Stephen Petronio, Mexican-American composer Carlo Cicolau and the Mexican dance company A-quo Danza Contemporanea,” said Claudia Norman, artistic director of Latino programming at Queens Theater in the Park. “‘La Presa’ will celebrate its world premiere at the AT&T Latino Cultural Festival 2002 when it is performed as part of A-quo Danza Contemporanea’s repertoire.”
The festival kicks off Wednesday with a gala reception and Ballet Folclorico de Chile at 8 p.m.
