San Francisco, CA, January 23, 2015 --The San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival will launch its celebration of the 100th anniversary of the opening of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (PPIE) with special performances at San Francisco City Hall on February 20, 2015. The free noontime event will feature music and dance of Indonesia performed by the Bay Area's own Gamelan Sekar Jaya, contemporary work by fifth-generation San Franciscan Margaret Jenkins and the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, and visiting Swedish dancers led by Leif and Margareta Virtanen of Norberg, Sweden. The performance kicks of a weekend of Bay Area events celebrating the centennial of the PPIE, and commences a year of free world dance and music performances in the rotunda presented by the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival and Dancers' Group, in partnership with San Francisco Grants for the Arts and San Francisco City Hall. For more information about the February 20 performance and the 2015 San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival, visit www.sfethnicdancefestival.org.
The 2015 San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival commemorates the centennial of the Exposition with a season of performances and events from February to December. At its center, the annual, month-long Festival performance series in June will return to the Palace of Fine Arts, which is the only grand structure remaining from the historic 1915 World's Fair."The Panama-Pacific International Exposition was the first major world's fair on the West Coast of the United States," said San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival Executive Director Julie Mushet, noting that more than 18 million people attended the fair, which featured over 80,000 exhibits from 42 foreign countries. "The 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition left a lasting imprint on the San Francisco Bay Area, especially in regards to world dance and music. A vast breadth of world cultures could be experienced as never before, but often, they were not presented respectfully. Today, 100 years later, our Festival strives to shine a spotlight on that legacy, but with a commitment to the respect that all cultures deserve."Videos