Dance

Wesleyan University Creates Madhu Reddy Endowed Fund for Indian Music and Dance

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Pictured (left to right): Wesleyan University Music Artist in Residence David Nelson, Wesleyan University Center for the Arts Director Pamela Tatge, and Madhu Reddy. Photo by Olivia Drake.

Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts announces the creation of the Madhu Reddy Endowed Fund for Indian Music and Dance at Wesleyan University. Mr. Reddy, a real estate agent with William Raveis based in Glastonbury, Connecticut, established the fund with a pledge of $100,000 and presented a check for $50,000 to Pamela Tatge, Director of the Center for the Arts, at a brief ceremony on Friday, December 14. “For over fifty years, Wesleyan’s Music and Dance Departments and the Center for the Arts have been presenting the music and dance of India to the campus and the region. The Reddy Fund will sustain Wesleyan’s annual Navaratri Festival of music and dance, as well as provide much needed support for faculty research and performance,” said Ms. Tatge. “We are all so moved by Madhu’s generosity and passion for the arts of India, and look forward to working with him to grow the Fund in the coming years.”

Wesleyan’s program in Indian music and dance was founded by T. Viswanathan, who earned his Ph.D. at Wesleyan in 1975 and then began teaching South Indian music together with his brother T. Ranganathan. Their sister was the renowned dancer Balasaraswati, who also taught at Wesleyan. Today, Wesleyan’s Indian music and dance faculty includes Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music B. Balasubrahmaniyan, Assistant Professor Dance Hari Krishnan, and Music Artist in Residence David Nelson.

Navaratri, one of India’s major festival celebrations, is a time to see family and friends, enjoy music and dance and seek blessings for new endeavors. The annual Navaratri Festival at Wesleyan celebrates traditional Indian music and dance. The 36th annual Navaratri Festival, which took place in October and November 2012, included a concert by Mr. Balasubrahmaniyan and Mr. Nelson, along with performances by singer T.V. Sankaranarayanan and dancer Rama Vaidyanathan in Crowell Concert Hall. The 37th annual Navaratri Festival will take place in October 2013.

About the Music Department
The Wesleyan University Music Department provides a unique and pioneering environment for advanced exploration committed to the study, performance, and composition of music from a perspective that recognizes and engages the breadth and diversity of the world’s musics and technologies. As an integral part of one of the nation’s leading liberal arts institutions, the department has enjoyed an international reputation for innovation and excellence, attracting students from around the globe since the inception of its visionary program in World Music four decades ago.

A recording studio, a computer and experimental music studio, the Center for the Arts media lab and digital video facility, the World Instrument Collection (which includes the David Tudor Collection of electronic musical instruments and instrumentation) and the Scores and Recordings Collection of Olin Library (which includes the World Music Archives) offer many learning opportunities outside of the classroom.

For more information about the Music Department, please click here.

About the Dance Department
The Dance Department at Wesleyan University is a contemporary program with a global perspective. The curriculum, faculty research and pedagogy all center on the relationships between theory and practice, embodied learning, and the potential dance making has to be a catalyst for social change.  Within that rigorous context, students encounter a diversity of approaches to making, practicing and analyzing dance in an intimate learning atmosphere. The program embraces classical forms from Ballet, Bharata Natyam, Javanese, and Ghanaian, to experimental practices that fuse tradition and experimentation into new, contemporary forms.

For more information about the Dance Department, please click here.

About the Center for the Arts
Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts is an eleven-building complex on the Wesleyan campus that houses the departments of Art and Art History, Dance, Film Studies, Music, and Theater. Opened in 1973, the CFA serves as a cultural center for the region, the state and New England. The Center includes the 400-seat Theater, the 260-seat Hall, the World Music Hall (a non-Western performance space), the 414-seat Crowell Concert Hall and the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery.

The Center for the Arts gratefully acknowledges the support of its many generous funders and collaborators, including the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Middletown Commission on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New England Foundation for the Arts, the State of Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development’s Office of the Arts, as well as media sponsors the Hartford and New Haven Advocates, Shore Publishing, WESU 88.1FM, and WNPR.

For more information about Center for the Arts, please call (860) 685-3355, or click here.

Spring Events include World, U.S. & New England Premieres

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Gallim Dance performs February 8 & 9, 2013 as part of the Performing Arts Series.

This spring at the Center for the Arts we bring you work that is of today: innovative, inquisitive and sure to surprise and engage you. Continuing our exploration of Music & Public Life, we bring you a concert of music from Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello–what you might have heard both in the mansion and in the slaves’ quarters–where audiences will have the chance to experience the first glass harmonica on the Crowell Concert Hall stage. The great activist and trumpeter Hugh Masekela will bring his band to Wesleyan, and our own West African Drumming ensemble will have the chance to open for him. In dance, we bring back Andrea Miller’s Gallim Dance after their performance at the DanceMasters Weekend Showcase in 2011 brought audiences to their feet. Her piece Mama Call investigates her Spanish-Sephardic heritage, and the reprise of Pupil features the spirited music of Balkan Beat Box. In theater, we bring the master innovator Lee Breuer to campus with his newest work Glass Guignol, a compilation of texts from Tennessee Williams’ women, performed by the indomitable Maude Mitchell.

In Zilkha Gallery, Lucy and Jorge Orta’s Food-Water-Life will be on view. This is the first-ever solo show in the U.S. of work by these Paris-based artists, who stage performative events to bring attention to some of the world’s most urgent environmental and social issues. The colorful sculptural works, including a large canoe, and three parachutes, will take advantage of Zilkha’s scale, and a series of food events is being staged to more deeply connect you to the themes of the show.

Spring is also when you have the chance to put your finger on the pulse of the next generation of contemporary artists: an evening of work by seniors in dance, three theater thesis productions, four weeks of thesis exhibitions in Zilkha, and two solid months of music recitals will give audiences an overview of the art that is being generated at Wesleyan.

So please join us! We look forward to welcoming you.

Pamela Tatge
Director, Center for the Arts

World Premiere of Rinde Eckert’s “The Last Days of the Old Wild Boy” (Nov. 15-17)

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Center for the Arts Director Pamela Tatge talks about the commission and research process for Rinde Eckert’s “The Last Days of the Old Wild Boy” (Nov. 15-17).

Rehearsal of Rinde Eckert’s “The Last Days of the Old Wild Boy” in CFA Theater.
Pictured: Alma Sanchez-Eppler ’14 (sitting), Christine Treuhold ’13 (lying down).
Photo by John Carr, Wesleyan University Professor of Theater.

I met Rinde Eckert for the first time in 2008 at a gathering of universities who had been awarded Creative Campus grants from the Association of Performing Arts Presenters.  Rinde had just finished creating a work entitled Eye Piece at his alma mater, the University of Iowa. He worked with theater students and faculty to research the effects of macular degeneration and the experiences of people dealing with eye disease, including those who have lost or are losing their vision.  A Grammy Award-winning musician, writer, composer, librettist, and director, Rinde is one of this country’s most innovative performance artists whose work spans music genres of all kinds, experimental theater and dance.  When he spoke about his work in Iowa, I was struck by his generosity of spirit—how he took students into his production that other faculty members were unable to cast in their productions.  I saw how moved he was by the process of making the work and how it was every bit as meaningful to him as the end product.  I thought, this person can collaborate with anyone in the world, but he chooses to work with university students—this is a unique and special artist, a perfect fit for Wesleyan.

The Center for the Arts is in year three of the four-year Creative Campus Initiative, funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. One of the Initiative’s primary goals is to support generative artists in theater, music and dance (including faculty artists and visiting artists) who work with scholars and materials in both arts and non-arts disciplines to advance the artists’ research and extend the arts into campus curricular and co-curricular life.

Rinde became an ideal candidate for a commission.  We invited him to Wesleyan in November 2010 (he remembered his first trip to Wesleyan was when he was attending graduate school at the Yale School of Music). Rinde Eckert has built a dynamic theatrical logic that he describes as “fiercely interdisciplinary.” When Rinde met with the Theater Department and Center for the Arts staff he discussed the idea of writing a play about “otherness.” In the spring of 2011, Eckert was invited by the Theater Department to create a work over the course of 2012 that would result in a Department production in the fall of 2012, devised by Eckert, faculty and visiting designers, and theater students.

Over the course of the two years, Eckert was in regular conversation with Kari Weil, University Professor of Letters at Wesleyan who has published widely on theories and representations of animal otherness (Thinking Animals: Why Animal Studies Now, 2012). He conducted a module in Weil’s spring 2012 course, Thinking Animals: An Introduction to Animal Studies. In addition, he discussed his ideas extensively with John Kirn, Chair of Wesleyan’s Neuroscience and Behavior Program. He also presented a Music Department Colloquium and met with other faculty members across the campus.

During the summer of 2012, Eckert was awarded a Creative Residency by Wesleyan’s Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP). He spent a week working on the piece in the Bessie Schönberg Dance Studio; discussing his creative process with ICPP students and students at the Center for Creative Youth; working with music collaborator Ned Rothenberg; and meetings with scenic designer and Adjunct Associate Professor Marcela Oteíza to prepare for the fall rehearsal period.

The Last Days of the Old Wild Boy emerged as a work about a man raised by wolves who finds himself toward the end of his life at the top of the food chain. Powerful and erudite, he longs for a return to the wildness of the wolf he was—but how does one recover one’s original, less conditioned or acculturated self?

Marcela became an essential collaborator in the development of the piece.  She devised a visual identity for the work anchored in 144 small wooden benches that measure 10.5” x 18” x 8”.  The benches are unfinished, in their natural state, but at the same time, they are hand-crafted, “man-made.”  The actors arrange them horizontally when they form the camp-fire but as the world of the play becomes more “civilized,” vertical structures emerge.  As the play develops, the actors literally sculpt the set before our eyes.  The effect is tremendous.

In his program note for The Last Days of the Old Wild Boy, Rinde writes: “I’ve been thinking about nature and culture. I’ve been considering wolves. I’ve been interested in our self-descriptions, the line we draw between ourselves and the rest of everything. We are storytellers. We tell stories around the fire, protected by it, warmed by it, and if we get too distracted, burned by it.”

This is a play with big ideas enacted by Rinde Eckert and eight student actors: Sivan Battat ’15, Solomon Billinkoff ’14, Mikhail Firer ’13, Audrey Kiely ’13, Matthew Krakaur ’14, Jiovani Robles ’13, Alma Sanchez-Eppler ’14, and Christine Treuhold ’13.  This is a world premiere, developed by an extraordinary artist with the help of Wesleyan faculty members and undergraduates—don’t miss this, it’s Wesleyan history in the making.

The Last Days of the Old Wild Boy
World Premiere
Written and directed by Rinde Eckert
Performed by Rinde Eckert and Wesleyan students
Thursday, November 15 & Friday, November 16, 2012 at 8pm
Saturday, November 17, 2012 at 2pm & 8pm
CFA Theater
$8 general public; $5 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff, non-Wesleyan students; $4 Wesleyan students

Click here to watch a preview video of “The Last Days of the Old Wild Boy” which features interviews with Rinde Eckert and Alma Sanchez-Eppler ’14.

Monica M. Tinyo ’13 on the Fall Senior Thesis Dance Concert (Oct. 26-27)

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CFA Arts Administration Intern Monica M. Tinyo ’13 talks with Lindsay Kosasa ’13 and Kelsey Siegel ’13 about the Fall Senior Thesis Dance Concert (Oct. 26-27).

Tonight and Saturday, Wesleyan dance majors Lindsay Kosasa ’13 and Kelsey Siegel ’13 present the first installments of their theses at the Fall Senior Thesis Dance Concert. This weekend’s performances are only a part of each student’s thesis project, which will include one choreographed work per semester and an accompanying research paper. I had the opportunity to talk with Kosasa and Siegel about their theses, and will share what I learned from them here.

 

Lindsay Kosasa and Kelsey Siegel

Both Kosasa and Siegel assembled teams of five “movers”—dance majors and non-majors alike—to perform their works. Both consciously chose to describe the performers as “movers” rather than “dancers”, which fits with their conceptual frame of dance. Both Kosasa’s and Siegel’s projects are interdisciplinary and focus on concept more than technique, reflecting their modern dance backgrounds. While Kosasa’s and Siegel’s projects are different in both concept and process, both were inspired by each student’s second major: Kosasa is a Dance and East Asian Studies double-major and Siegel is a Dance and Math double-major.

Kosasa’s piece is an exploration and expression of trauma through dance, and she utilized different intellectual approaches to movement in post-war (post-atomic bomb) performance art, visual art and literature for inspiration. Although Kosasa is not in her piece (standard practice for Wesleyan dance theses), she will be operating a projector during the performance that will illuminate a screen behind the movers. She will produce “textures” and imagery through live manipulation of materials like water, food coloring and cornstarch in a box that will be captured by a camera above. The imagery and textures are used as a way to extract movement qualities from the movers that evoke Kosasa’s interpretation of trauma. This projection is inspired by Kosasa’s experience at Butoh workshops in Japan in the spring of 2012.

Kosasa wanted the dance to form naturally through collaboration rather than be dictated by specificities in her research. She only shared her topic with the movers later in the process because she didn’t want to have the movement be theatrical or determined by individual movers’ unavoidably and understandably narrow notions of trauma.

Siegel, on the other hand, did give her movers direction, explaining enough about her project to guide the movers. However, like Kosasa, she limited her explanation in order to help the dance manifest organically. She directed the movers with open-ended questions: How do you create order in your own life? What is order? How do you move/orient yourself in different planes? And what does it mean to move horizontally or vertically? When performing, the movers are also directed by a grid created by Siegel as a physical manifestation of an x-y plane; the performers move in, out and through the grid throughout the performance.

In her project, Siegel illuminates and simultaneously questions how we organize ourselves in space. She has been researching concepts and formulas related to the grid, focusing on how we draw lines and curves in space. She explains that although there are no “right” directions in modern dance, certain movement styles move across a certain plane. Her research has led her to understand that many artists, especially modern choreographers, use mathematical perspective in constructing pieces without realizing it.  She is also researching chaos theory and how it applies to improvisation in dance. Siegel explains that much of her research is conducted through the actual process of creating the dance in her own examination of the spatial organization of the movers.

Kosasa and Siegel work to manifest an idea through the body in a way that is relatable to a variety of audience members. You don’t need to understand techniques of dance, chaos theory, or post-war performance art to understand the concepts that the artists are grappling with or to enjoy the performance.

Please join us at the Bessie Schönberg Dance Studio, 247 Pine Street this weekend to celebrate the work of Kosasa, Siegel and their movers. Don’t hesitate; tickets are selling fast!

Navaratri Honors its Founder at 36th Annual Festival (Oct. 17-21)

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Center for the Arts Director Pamela Tatge discusses working with T. Viswanathan, and the events of the 36th annual Navaratri Festival at Wesleyan (October 17-21, 2012).  

T. Viswanathan

I had the great fortune of working with T. Viswanathan soon after I arrived at Wesleyan to plan the annual Navaratri Festival. And in the two years I worked with him before he died in 2002, I learned so much.  I learned about the number of contacts Viswa had around the world, and how so many of them were interested in performing at Wesleyan because of our reputation as a place that honors and celebrates Indian music and dance.  I learned about Viswa’s family lineage and about his sister, the astonishing Balasaraswati, a bharata natyam dancer of the highest distinction, and his brother Ranganathan, a spectacular mridangam player.  And I learned about his talented students, from Jon B. Higgins, former Center for the Arts Director, who was one of the most renowned Carnatic singers in the world, to David Nelson, a mridangam player who is an Artist in Residence in the Music Department.

Viswa taught at Wesleyan from 1975 to 2002, and he founded the Navaratri Festival at Wesleyan 36 years ago. A panel of his students will open the festival on Wednesday at 4:15pm in CFA Hall and discuss aspects of his profound legacy to commemorate the tenth anniversary of his passing. Wesleyan Music Department faculty members B. Balasubrahmaniyan and David Nelson will be joined by Josepha Cormack Viswanathan Ph.D. ’92 and Douglas Knight ’70.

The festival continues with a concert of South Indian vocal music on Friday at 8pm by B. Balasubrahmaniyan, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music, joined by David Nelson on mridangam [and violinist L. Ramakrishnan] in Crowell Concert Hall. On Saturday, T.V. Sankaranarayanan, one of the most widely sought after Carnatic vocalists in the world, comes to Wesleyan from India to perform at 7pm in Crowell Concert Hall [along with Vittal Ramamurthy on violin and Thiruvarur Bakthavathsalam on mridangam]. The festival closes on Sunday with a puja (Hindu worship service) at 11am in World Music Hall, and a bharata natyam dance concert by Rama Vaidyanathan in Crowell Concert Hall. Ms. Vaidyanathan was scheduled to perform at last year’s Navaratri Festival, which had to be cut short due to a rare October snow storm.

We invited Hari Krishnan, Assistant Professor of Dance, to write to us about Sunday’s performance by Rama Vaidyanathan.  Here’s what he said:

Rama is a leading Bharatanatyam dancer from her generation in India today. Through sheer hard work and constantly creating new innovative dances, Rama has transformed the traditional solo dance of Bharatanatyam into a vibrant, dynamic and engaging solo dance style—current and relevant for a 21st century global audience. This is why she is much sought after by the most avant-garde theaters/festivals in Europe to the most conservative classical arts-friendly venues in India. Rama’s Bharatanatyam cuts across linguistic, social, political and cultural boundaries.

Rama is also a dear friend and I remember in the summer of 2010 when we were on the teaching faculty for a dance residency in the U.K., the students had insisted that we perform together. Not having prepared any piece, we improvised right there and performed a nouveau-Bharatanatyam duet to the delight of all present.

Being a contemporary dance and Bharatanatyam dance artist myself, I wasn’t too sure if Rama would be game to improvising a duet with me involving close physical touch. I was struck at Rama’s versatility—not only does she collaborate passionately  but she also boldly brings her art into new experimental terrains while still maintaining her identity of that of a classical Bharatanatyam dancer. She is able to bring out the inherent beauty of the Bharatanatyam form with her creativity and genuine love for the dance.

I am delighted Rama is performing at Wesleyan with her team of stellar musicians [vocalist Indu Sivankutty Nair, violinist Vikram Raghukumar, K. Sivakumar on nattuvangam, and Kalapurakkal Arun Kumar on mridangam], offering her dazzling, highly individual brand of Bharatanatyam.  Wesleyan is truly in for a treat of innovation, grace and pure joy—a Bharatanataym 21st century gazelle will be strutting her stuff on the Crowell Concert Hall stage this Sunday afternoon.

36th annual Navaratri Festival
www.wesleyan.edu/navaratri

Colloquium: The Wesleyan Legacy of T. Viswanathan (1927-2002)
Wednesday, October 17, 2012 at 4:15pm

CFA Hall 

FREE!

Henna and Chaat hosted by Shakti
Thursday, October 18, 2012 from 7pm to 8:30pm
Olin Library Lobby
FREE!

B. Balasubrahmaniyan: Vocal Music of South India
Friday, October 19, 2012 at 8pm
Crowell Concert Hall
$12 general public; $10 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff, non-Wesleyan students; $6 Wesleyan students
Pre-concert talk on the music of T. Viswanathan at 7:15pm by Wesleyan Ph.D. Candidate Joseph Getter

T.V. Sankaranarayanan Concert
Saturday, October 20, 2012 at 7pm
Crowell Concert Hall
$15 general public; $12 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff, non-Wesleyan students; $6 Wesleyan students

Saraswati Puja (Hindu Ceremony)
Sunday, October 21, 2012 at 11am
World Music Hall
FREE!

Rama Vaidyanathan: Bharata Natyam Dance
Sunday, October 21, 2012 at 3pm
Crowell Concert Hall
$15 general public; $12 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff, non-Wesleyan students; $6 Wesleyan students

Making the Invisible “visible” (October 6)

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Pamela Tatge, Director of the Center for the Arts, shares the highlights from a discussion earlier this week in South College with the choreographers Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and Nora Chipaumire about their work and the development of the piece “visible”, which will have its New England premiere in the CFA Theater on Saturday, October 6 at 8pm.

When Nora Chipaumire fled Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) in 2000, she was pursuing a law degree. After moving to New York, she discovered dance and the work of Urban Bush Women.  “In Rhodesia, I was not a person. Part of leaving Zimbabwe for the U.S. was about becoming human. I discovered that what I was most interested in was advocacy.  The idea of advocacy exists in both the law and in dance.  In dance, there is an advocacy that is immediate, human—and not on a piece of paper.”  Nora Chipaumire and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar (founder and Artistic Director of Urban Bush Women) spoke at an informal lunch with Wesleyan faculty and students on Monday. Together, they have created visible, which will have its New England premiere on Saturday night in the CFA Theater. Ms. Chipaumire won Wesleyan’s Emerging Choreographer Award (at the annual DanceMasters Weekend) in 2007;  Ms. Zollar has a history with the Center for the Arts, as a member of the Center for Creative Research and having brought her company to Wesleyan twice in the past six years (including DanceMasters Weekend in 2006).

Ms. Chipaumire met Ms. Zollar when she auditioned for Urban Bush Women. Ms. Zollar talked about how striking Ms. Chipaumire was when she walked into the studio: ”I thought to myself, ‘God I hope she can dance.’”  Ms. Chipaumire shared that Ms. Zollar became “a comrade, a teacher, a guide—a sister.”  Ms. Zollar explained that over the years, Ms. Chipaumire has given her as much as she has taught. Ms. Chipaumire became a leading collaborator when Urban Bush Women (an all female company) embarked on making a piece with the all-male Senegalese company Compagnie Jant-B (presented on the Breaking Ground Dance Series at the Center for the Arts in February 2008).  Ms. Zollar and Ms. Chipaumire described all of the challenges of Urban Bush Women’s residency in Senegal, all of the differences—brought up by gender, culture, and education—that needed to be “unpacked.”

Their collaborative work, visible, grew out of some of these challenges, and the question “how do you really talk across cultural boundaries?” The piece was originally entitled visible/invisible, but Ms. Chipaumire explained they wanted drop the “victim” quality of the word “invisible.” “The fact is, we are visible,” said Ms. Chipaumire. “How can we learn to talk about things that are close to the jugular? Because in the space of difference—that’s where life is happening.”

The dancers chosen by the choreographers to perform in visible are almost all immigrants to the United States. Each is virtuosic in their own right, and each was encouraged to perform dances in their “mother tongue.”  For example, Catherine Denecy from Guadaloupe performs movement based on traditional forms from her country; Marguerite Hemmings from Jamaica performs work that is derived from dance halls; and Judith Jacobs from Holland is a true post-modernist. “The piece is a lot like the idea of jazz—each instrument has its own voice, but they come together as one sound,” said Ms. Zollar.  Two percussionists join the dancers onstage to help bring the piece to life.

Earlier in the day on Saturday (at 11am in the Bessie Schönberg Dance Studio), Ms. Zollar will give a free masterclass. She will also give a talk before the performance (at 7:30pm in CFA Hall). Then after the performance, the audience will have the chance to discuss the notion of migration/immigration, led by Associate Professor of Dance Nicole Stanton.  Do join us on Saturday!

“visible”
New England Premiere

Choreography by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and Nora Chipaumire
Saturday, October 6, 2012 at 8pm

CFA Theater
$23; $19 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff, non-Wesleyan students; $6 Wesleyan students

Pre-performance talk at 7:30pm in CFA Hall by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar.

Ms. Zollar will also teach a masterclass on Saturday, October 6 at 11am in the Bessie Schönberg Dance Studio, located at 247 Pine Street. The masterclass is free with the purchase of a ticket to Saturday night’s performance. Registration for the masterclass is required. To purchase tickets and register for the masterclass, please contact the Wesleyan University Box office at boxoffice@wesleyan.edu or 860-685-3355.

Performance Now Opens at Zilkha Gallery

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A blog post by Pamela Tatge.

Wesleyan faculty, students and graduate students have a long history of exploring the intersection of visual art and performance. Professor Ron Kuivila tells me that performance artist Charlotte Moorman performed the legendary Nam June Paik’s TV Bra for Living Sculpture at the first-ever opening at Zilkha in 1973… featuring a different baseball game on each breast!

Christian Jankowski, “Rooftop Routine” (detail), 2007. Photo courtesy of Performa.

Today I’m thrilled that the Zilkha Gallery will host an opening celebration for the debut of a new exhibition:  Performance Now:  The First Decade of the New Century, curated by RoseLee Goldberg and co-produced by Independent Curators International (ICI) and Performa.

You’ll see the work of 19 artists from a vast repository of new performance from around the world since 2000, a period that has witnessed exponential growth in the field. Museums around the world are creating performance departments to increase the presence of performance in institutional offerings and to harness this new energy.

The debut also coincides with the establishment of Wesleyan’s new Institute of Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP), a post-graduate certificate program that is the first of its kind in the United States.  ICPP brings artists, presenters, managers and other arts professionals together with Wesleyan faculty and some of the finest performance curators working today for a nine-month low residency program. Our students develop a responsive curatorial practice that takes the best from the fields of visual and performing arts. Performance Now is an important show to integrate into this year’s ICPP curriculum, while also resonating with community members and many of our undergraduate and graduate arts students interested in exploring contemporary performance practices and their social and historical contexts.

Beginning with the Futurists in the early 20th century, performance art has sustained and expanded its presence in artistic communities but only recently has its history and practice begun to be articulated and discussed. The lack of discussion in the past may very well be related to the difficulty of defining and categorizing performance art, a form that is situated in an ambiguous space between visual and performing arts.

Among the “must sees” in the exhibition are the works of Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla, Omer Fast and Marina Abramović, all of which are presented here as video documentation of live art performances. Allora & Calzadilla’s piece Stop, Repair, Prepare: Variations on Ode to Joy, No. 2 presents a restructuring of the prolific symphony “Ode to Joy” in which the performer plays from a hole cut from the inside of a piano, creating two inoperative octaves, while moving around the exhibition space. The piece facilitates discussion on music and sound as well as a reassessment of “Ode to Joy” historically and politically. Omer Fast’s Talk Show, inspired by the childhood game “telephone,” is a social critique and personal exploration of communication and its universal malfunctions. In Talk Show, a person tells an actor a personal story (that connects to larger political themes) on stage that the actor must then recount to another actor; the audience watches the story change as it is recounted. In Marina Abramović’s Seven Easy Pieces, the artist “re-performs” seven performance pieces that were originally presented in the 1960s and 1970s by six artists (two pieces were Abramović’s) in New York’s Guggenheim Museum. The piece is presented as a multi-screen video installation documenting the seven performances of Seven Easy Pieces.

During the run of the exhibition, we’ll have a number of special events including a film series curated by Wes alum Lana Wilson ’05, a panel of Wes alums currently engaged in performance art, and a lecture by RoseLee Goldberg.  For a complete listing of events, please visit: www.wesleyan.edu/performancenow 

Fall Events include World, New England & Connecticut Premieres, Navaratri Festival

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Rama Vaidyanathan performs on October 21, 2012 as part of the 36th annual Navaratri Festival

Over the course of the next year, a campus-wide steering committee has put together a far-reaching series of global performances, talks and participatory projects, all with the intention of bringing us into an examination of the role of Music & Public Life. We will celebrate and study the sounds, words and spirit of music in public at the local, national and transnational levels, all designed to cross disciplines and to engage the campus and community-at-large. From performances by Middletown’s own Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem to the legendary Hugh Masekela; showcasing student research in the role of music in the current political campaigns; to the creation of MiddletownRemix–there are points of entry for everyone.

In September, we feature dance and theater companies who are exploring the role of the audience as actively engaged in the live creative process of the theatrical event. In ZviDance’s Zoom, patrons use their smartphones to integrate their own photos and text into the work; in Anonymous Ensemble’s Liebe Love Amour!, the audience is engaged in constructing the “performance script.”

October and November bring the return of Jawole Willa Jo Zollar of Urban Bush Women in a stunning work she co-created with Nora Chipaumire (visible) that features an international cast of all-star dancers; as well as the CFA’s commission of a work by the fiercely interdisciplinary writer/director Rinde Eckert (this year’s winner of an inaugural Duke Performing Artist Award). The Last Days of the Old Wild Boy has been developed with students and faculty in Music, Animal Studies and Neuroscience and is supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded Creative Campus Initiative.

It’s a robust fall, rich with work that brings us into new conversations with art and its possibilities. We hope you’ll join us!

Best regards,

Pamela Tatge
Director, Center for the Arts

Brian Brooks Endures at the CFA (July 12 & 13)

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Pamela Tatge, Director of the Center for the Arts, talks to choreographer Brian Brooks about the works that will be performed by his dance company at Wesleyan (July 12 & 13).

Brian Brooks Moving Company performs "Big City" (2012). Photo by David Bazemore.

Center for the Arts staff members and I sat down recently with Brian Brooks, choreographer for Brian Brooks Moving Company, to hear him talk about his upcoming performances in the CFA Theater on Thursday, July 12 and Friday, July 13.

The Brian Brooks Moving Company will perform four pieces at Wesleyan as part of a ten-city tour that will take them straight from Middletown to the American Dance Festival in Durham, North Carolina. We are thrilled to invite Brian back to Wesleyan; he has been a dear friend of the CFA for many years. We gave the Brian Brooks Moving Company their first engagement outside of New York City as a part of the Breaking Ground Dance Series back in November 2002, and since then, Brian has made special trips to Wesleyan in March to teach Master Classes during DanceMasters Weekend.

As Brian explained to us, the four works he will present at Wesleyan are his most recent works – all created in the last three or four years. The collection will give audiences a strong sense of where Brian Brooks as an artist is in 2012. A common theme among the pieces is endurance – of the mind, of the body, of the artist.

The evening will start with I’m Going to Explode (2007), Mr. Brooks’ signature solo piece. Mr. Brooks has performed this piece — which he describes as “an entry point to who [Brian Brooks] might be” — more often than any other piece he has created.

Mr. Brooks describes the next piece, a group piece titled Descent (2011),  as “otherworldly,” “off balance,” “water-like” and “dense.” As the name suggests, the piece deals with a state of perpetual fall. Although the dancers constantly fall, they also support one another. This particular piece is designed, too, to showcase the partnering of the dancers in the piece. The dancers move in pairs and navigate the watery, dreamlike world together.

Next, we’ll be treated to the duet from Motor (2010), which was inspired by Mr. Brooks’ experience as a runner and racer. This work premiered in August 2010 at the Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival in New York City, and is a testament to the endurance and athleticism of dancers.

And finally, after intermission, we’ll see the New England premiere of the company’s newest piece, Big City (2012), a 44 minute work for seven dancers. Mr. Brooks describes this last piece as “overwhelming” and “lavish – but not frivolous.” The scale is large and the audience will watch as hundreds of pieces of metal literally unfold throughout the piece, altering the landscape of the theater and the way the dancers interact with it and within it. But the piece is also cyclical and as we watch the construction of a “big city,” we marvel at our resilience and at our capacity to rebuild against all odds. We hope you’ll join us!

Brian Brooks Moving Company
Thursday, July 12 & Friday, July 13, 2012 at 8pm

CFA Theater

$22 general public; $19 seniors, Wesleyan faculty & staff; $10 students

Updates on “SPILL”, Hari Krishnan, and Brad Roth’s “Shared Ability” Program

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This is just a note to thank you for attending our events and exhibitions this past year.  I hope you have enjoyed and been challenged by the work of our faculty, students and visiting artists! After Reunion/Commencement this weekend, we will be switching gears to prepare for another beautiful summer in Middletown and the CFA’s summer series. I’ll be posting various CFA news items as I hear about what our students and faculty are up to, as well as our alumni and visiting artists.  Feel free to email me with any news you think I should know about at ptatge@wesleyan.edu.

First, I want to let those of you who saw Leigh Fondakowski’s work-in-progress SPILL at Beckham Hall in February know that she and her artistic collaborator for the project, Reeva Wortel, have been awarded two 3-week residencies in New Orleans this fall. Fondakowski and Wortel will live and work at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts and at Louisiana State University to further develop the play. Fondakowski’s hope is to premier the completed work in New Orleans on the third anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in April 2013. We’re so excited to see this important work travel home, completing the circle begun last summer as seven Wesleyan students journeyed with Fondakowski and Wesleyan’s own Barry Chernoff, Director of the College of the Environment, to conduct the interviews and research that became the seeds of this project.

inDANCE rehearse "Quicksand" at Wesleyan on March 1, 2012. Photo by Nam Anh Ta '12.

In faculty news, Hari Krishnan was invited by the Canada Dance Festival to perform Quicksand in Ottawa on June 11, 2012.  Later in the summer, Hari is one of only twenty choreographers from around the world invited to create a solo for Jacobs Pillow’s celebration The Men Dancers: From the Horse’s Mouth, an homage to the Pillow’s 80th Anniversary and pioneering founder Ted Shawn and his company of Men Dancers.

And in local news, in last Sunday’s New Haven Register, I read about a terrific program facilitated by Brad Roth MALS ’97, who runs an organization called Dancing Day, Inc. based in Milford and has taught dance across Connecticut. Now in its third year, the Shared Ability Program, under the auspices of Young Audiences of CT and in partnership with the New Haven Ballet, continues to provide a supportive environment for ballet students and children with disabilities to meet, interact, and share their different experiences and interests. Students learn to accept touch, to communicate through movement, and to express themselves creatively and interactively – skills they’ll develop and draw upon throughout their lives.

For Roth, the “challenge is to create interesting choreography where the attention is not to the disability, but to the choreography. The magic is when restricted movement looks like designed movement or art, rather than the perception of limitation. They’re beautiful little moments that happen regularly – magic little moments where movement turns into dance.”

You can see Brad (and others) talk about the program in this video.

We congratulate Brad and his students on their work so far, and wish them the best of luck in the future.

Be sure to check back soon for more updates!

Until then, I send you my best wishes,

Pamela Tatge
Director, Center for the Arts