(Note different events, times and locations)

The Hostos Center for the Arts & Culture offers the following workshops and classes as part of BomPlenazo 2006, the Center’s fourth biennial of Afro-Puerto Rican culture. These offerings will give the community an opportunity to observe master artists as they practice their crafts and try their hand at the creative process themselves.

BomPlenazo 2006 will be held at the Hostos Center from October 4 to October 8, 2006. It will feature these workshops and classes as well as four major concerts, a crafts fair, encounters with the greatest living exponents of the bomba and plena traditions, and a vente-tú or block party/jam at Rincón Criollo’s new “Casita de Chema” on Brooke Avenue and 157th Street in the Bronx.

BomPlenazo 2006 will focus on the bomba and plena traditions as they are practiced in and around the city of Ponce, Puerto Rico.

5:30PM
Máscaras de Vejigante
Vejigante Masks

Master craftsman Benny Ayala will lead a hands-on workshop in the mask-making traditions of Ponce (papier maché).

7:30PM
CONCERT
Ballet Folklórico Bambalué,
Los Pleneros de la 21 and
“Cocolai” Rivera
at the Main Theater

Ponce’s premier bomba company headed by Isabel Albizu, New York City’s legendary bomba and plena ensemble headed by National Heritage Fellow Juan Gutiérrez with guest Ismael “Cocolai” Rivera, legendary plenero from Mayagüez and son of Mon Rivera, one of the greatest pleneros of all time.