Light Dreams II guest artist Andrea Brook and Birmingham Yoga’s Akasha Ellis will lead a Free community yoga class on the plaza at the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Alys Stephens Performing Arts Center at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 7.
The one-hour class will kick off the ASC’s second annual Light Dreams festival, a free celebration of art, music, dance and light. The ASC will present Light Dreams II at 8 p.m. nightly May 8, 9 and 10, outdoors on the ASC’s Engel Plaza, 1200 10th Ave. South. Check out Light Dreams online and see a full schedule and roster of artists and performers at www.uab.edu/lightdreams.
Brook, artistic director of Sonic Butterfly Productions, has performed at the ASC twice before with MASS Ensemble and as part of Cirque Alys Aerial Music. This time Brook will play the Sonic Butterfly, a 26-string, long-string instrument, for the yoga class and for all three nights of the Light Dreams festival. The instrument’s resonating chambers look like butterfly wings, with two full octaves of strings radiating out on each side of the performer up to the top of the ASC, to turn the entire building into a giant musical instrument.
| A free, one-hour yoga class will kick off the ASC’s second annual Light Dreams festival, a free celebration of art, music, dance and light. |
For the yoga class, which will take place under the strings of the Sonic Butterfly, Brook and Ellis will take participants on a “vibrational, rhythmic, physical, energetic and conscious journey of transformation,” according to Brook, who will perform the music on her custom-built instrument. The ascending overtones and healing harmonics of long-string vibrations provide the perfect soundtrack for the yoga practice, she says. Participants should bring their own mats.
While in Birmingham, on May 10 from 1-5 p.m. Brook will teach a yoga workshop, “The Harmony of the Empowered Heart,” at Birmingham Yoga. Registration is $50 before April 26 and $60 after; visit www.BirminghamYoga.com for more details.