Events: Presenting Series

A veteran of New York and national politics, Luis Miranda embodies the relentless spirit of progress of American immigrants. In Relentless, he shares a fascinating narrative of his life and career-from his early days as a radically minded Puerto Rican activist to his decades of political advice and problem-solving. Miranda recounts the thrill of the ascendency of Hamilton, created by his son Lin-Manuel, and he details the suffering after the devastation of Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria. Amid the triumphs and challenges, Miranda examines what his experience reveals about our ever-changing politics, demographics, and society. 

Kinetic Light, an innovative disability arts ensemble, is globally acclaimed for its immersive, accessible approach. Led by disabled artists, the ensemble creates, designs, and performs work that is a thrilling blend of movement, light and sound. Their creations speak to and emerge from disability aesthetics and culture. This connection to the rich traditions and contemporary conversations of disabled artists in all artistic fields makes Kinetic Light's work a powerful, intersectional creative force. 

DESCENT explores the pleasures of wheeled movement and reckless abandon. It is performed on a custom-designed architectural ramp installation with hills, curves, and peaks. Combining dance, architecture, design, and technology, this work challenges cultural assumptions of what disability, dance and beauty can be. Inspired by the sensual writings and art of French sculptor Auguste Rodin, DESCENT gives the mythological characters of Venus and Andromeda new life as interracial lovers. Voted as 2018's most moving performance by the readers of Dance Magazine, DESCENT is "An ingenious set of ramps [that] serves as a canvas for projections of stars and seas, and as a surface for wheelchair motion with the gliding grace of ice dance," according to The New Yorker. Click HERE for artist's website. LU Students attend for FREE, click for more info. 

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Béla Fleck & Abigail Washburn, "the king and queen of the banjo" (Paste Magazine), have a musical partnership like no othere. Béla Fleck is a 15-time Grammy Award winner who has taken the instrument across multiple genres, and Abigail Washburn a singer-songwriter and clawhammer banjo player who re-radicalized it by combining it with Far East culture and sounds. The two met at a square dance, began collaborating musically, and eventually fell in love. Over the years, they played together most visibly in the Sparrow Quartet alongside Ben Sollee and Casey Driessen and informally at a pickin' party here, a benefit there, or occasionally popping up in each other's solo shows. Fans of tradition-tweaking acoustic fare eagerly anticipated that Béla & Abigail would begin making music together as a duo. Whether at home, on stage, or on record, their deep bond, combined with the way their distinct musical personalities and banjo styles interact, makes theirs a picking partnership unlike any other on the planet. Click HERE and HERE for artists' websites. LU Students attend for FREE, click for more info. 

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Clint Smith is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the Hillman Prize for Book Journalism, the Stowe Prize, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and selected by The New York Times as one of the 10 Best Books of 2021. He is also the author of two books of poetry, The New York Times bestselling collection Above Ground as well as Counting Descent. Both poetry collections were winners of the Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and both were finalists for NAACP Image Awards. He is a staff writer at The Atlantic. Click HERE for artist's website.