October 18, 2005 Dineh Tah Navajo Dancers to Perform Nov. 16

The American Folklife Center’s annual concert series, “Homegrown 2005: The Music of America,” continues on Wednesday, Nov. 16, at noon in the Coolidge Auditorium, ground floor, Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First Street S.E., Washington, D.C. Featured will be a performance by the Dineh Tah Navajo Dancers.

The Homegrown series presents the very best of traditional music and dance from a variety of folk cultures thriving in the United States. Cosponsored by the Kennedy Center Millenium Stage and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian, the concert is free and open to the public. No tickets are required.

Made up of young dancers throughout the Four Corners region of the Southwest (Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico), the group seeks to promote the understanding of Navajo traditions. Their performance highlights such customs as the Corn Grinding Act, Basket Dance, Bow and Arrow Dance and Social Song and Dance.

The American Folklife Center was created by Congress in 1976 and placed at the Library of Congress to “preserve and present American folklife” through programs of research, documentation, archival preservation, reference service, live performance, exhibition, public programs and training. The center includes the Archive of Folk Culture, which was established in the Library in 1928 and is now one of the largest collections of ethnographic material from the United States and around the world. For more information visit the center’s Web site at www.loc.gov/folklife/.

Part of the Kennedy Center’s Performing Arts for Everyone initiative, the Millennium Stage helps fulfill the center’s mission to make performing arts widely accessible. These free performances are offered 365 days a year at 6 p.m., and tickets are not required. Daily broadcasts of Millennium Stage concerts are available on the Internet. For a schedule and information on how to access the broadcasts, visit the Kennedy Center Web site at http://kennedy-center.org.

Established by Congress in 1989, the National Museum of the American Indian is an institution of living cultures dedicated to the life, languages, literature, history and arts of the Native peoples of the Western Hemisphere. It opened to the public in September 2005. For more information visit the museum's Web site at www.americanindian.si.edu.