Food, music and performances of different cultures around the world will be showcased Saturday at the third annual Herberger Theater Festival of the Arts.
The event will present a hands-on approach to multicultural immersion. Visitors will not only be able to listen to music but can also play a selection of instruments — including a concertina, bongo drums and shekere — provided by the Musical Instrument Museum.
Performances every 20 minutes on three stages will reflect the event’s theme of “Diversity in the Centennial” to celebrate Arizona’s 100th birthday. The event will include vendor booths, local artists, food trucks, wine tasting and film shorts that have been shot in Arizona.
Spice It Up, a food truck with exotic global dishes, will serve plates including Thai coconut ginger chicken curry, jerk chicken lettuce wraps with pineapple salsa and pork vindaloo with rice.
The afternoon will also be full of performances that evoke varying cultures. Paul McDermand, a local percussionist, will be performing a repertoire from numerous countries during his hourlong set. Steel drums and marimba will give the audience a “steady dose” of calypso and island music, and Guatemalan and Mexican influenced beats will bring a “south of the border” feel, he said.
“The music itself is so worldly,” McDermand said. “It’s more than just pop music. It has more than just European influences, and it’ll appeal to a really broad audience.”
Ballet Folklorico Quetzalli-AZ will represent traditional Mexican culture through folkloric dance and brightly colored costumes. The dances originate from different regions of Mexico. Performers wearing full skirts and headpieces exhibit traditional Mexican attire.
Returning for their second year will be The Opal Collective, a belly-dance group led by artistic director Ava Fleming.
Fleming, a raqs sharqi dance instructor at Arizona State University who plans to start a class on the Downtown campus, said her group will be adding a twist to the traditional Egyptian dancing style.
“Traditionally, we do belly dance, but we are also doing dubstep fusion to take traditional belly dance and make it more entertaining,” she said. “We go from totally modern fusion stuff into traditional Middle Eastern culture, so even within our own performance, it’s totally diverse.”
The festival started in 2010 as a part of the theater’s grand reopening. The Herberger had been closed for two summers for renovation and wanted to reopen with a bang, said Laurene Austin, director of development and marketing at the Herberger Theater Center.
The company had such a great turnout that it decided to make the festival its signature event, she said.
“We decided to do this event to celebrate the arts and downtown and bring together the different forms of art under one roof,” Austin said.
The festival will be held at the Herberger Theater in downtown Phoenix on Saturday from noon to 5 p.m. Admission is $5 for adults and free for children 12 and under. Festival attendees will receive a free-parking voucher if they park at the Arizona Center parking garage.
More information, a performance schedule and a list of participants are available on the event’s website.
Contact the reporter at clkelley@asu.edu
