Hancher

Fierce follows four teenage girls finding identity and purpose in the world as they write their college essays in a high school writers’ workshop featuring an ensemble of University of Iowa singers, musicians, and dancers with production support from the Performing Arts Production Unit and Hancher Auditorium.

Presented at The Englert Theatre
Oumou Sangaré is an icon whose powerful music and fierce feminism have inspired artists from Alicia Keys to Aya Nakamura to Beyoncé. Her most recent record, Timbuktu, blends the sounds of traditional West African instruments with those instruments most associated with the blues.

Martha Graham radically expanded the dance vocabulary, and her work has captivated audiences worldwide while influencing generations of artists. The program will open with Graham's Panorama, performed by more than 20 student dancers from the University of Iowa Dance Department. 

Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion composed Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part, a journey across the soul's landscape through distinctly contemporary songs. The concert will open with Go Placidly With Haste, a new work composed by Jason Treuting performed with Iowa Percussion from the UI School of Music. 

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo—the world's foremost all-male ballet comic ballet company—offers both homage and parody performed en travesti. The program will include works from across the company's 50 years.

The Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group's body of work draws from the spiritual and earth-bound traditions of Africa and its diaspora. Wilson's most recent work, POWER, considers how the Black Shaker communities in the early 1800s might have lived and worshipped.

Elias String Quartet are "simply astounding, in the freshness, intensity, assurance, and seeming spontaneity of their playing." Hancher will welcome back one of our favorite ensembles to introduce a new chamber music experience at Hancher. 

The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (London, U.K.) is uncompromising in its pursuit of excellence and inclusive in its appeal to music lovers of all stripes. Embracing a broad repertoire has allowed the orchestra to build a diverse live and online audience of more than 60 million people.

Yaite Ramos Rodriguez, the singer, flautist, and percussionist—who performs as La Dame Blanche—blends the Cuban music of her childhood with the sounds of hip-hop, dancehall, and cumbia, and plenty more.

World Café says Luz Elena Mandoza Ramos, lead vocalist and producer of Y La Bamba, "[Her] inimitable songwriting is propelled by an earth-shaking voice and incisive lyrics that speak towards the duality of hurt and healing."