The Department of Dance’s annual concert, Latin Xpressions, explores the diversity of the Latin experience through new choreography. An eclectic array of guest artists will cross cultural divides and create works encompassing ballet, modern, flamenco, and experimental dance. Carlos Pons Guerra, born in Gran Canaria, Spain, and now the artistic director of the UK-based DeNada Dance Theatre, is gaining a world-wide reputation for blending dance vocabularies to create a distinct dance style that is accessible, humorous, and poignant. Joel Valentin-Martínez, a Mexican-American dancer and choreographer who was a longtime member of Garth Fagan Dance, is currently director of the dance program at Northwestern University. His piece will fuse contemporary and flamenco vocabulary inspired by Miles Davis’s “Spanish Key.” Rosie Herrera, a Cuban-American choreographer and artistic director of Rosie Herrera Dance Theatre in Miami, will create a theatrical and iconoclastic piece for our student performers. Under the direction of faculty member Jillian Hopper, BFA dance majors will create short interludes set to selections of popular and classical music from Latin America coordinated by faculty member Christian Matijas-Mecca.