CFA Student Profiles: Evelyn Israel ‘10

by

What follows is the third in a series of profiles of Wesleyan students by Alexandra Provo, ‘10, the CFA’s Arts Administration Intern. These students all have one thing in common: they became deeply engaged with one or more artists presented by the CFA. Sparked by the artist’s workshop, performance or exhibition on campus, they began a lasting relationship that affected the trajectory of their academic exploration. We hope you will send us your comments about these and future interviews.

Last week I sat down with Evelyn Israel ‘10, a dance major who spent two summers at the Summer Institute put on by Urban Bush Women, a dance company devoted to bringing “the untold and under-told histories and stories of disenfranchised people through dance” from “a woman-centered perspective, as members of the African Diaspora community” who have performed twice before at Wesleyan’s CFA.

How did you first hear about Urban Bush Women?

When they came to campus our sophomore year and performed with Compagnie Jant-Bi (in spring 2008).

What happened after the performance? How did you become involved with the group?

The biggest thing that actually got me involved wasn’t the performance but was a workshop that Jawole gave the morning before I saw the performance. We really got to see her process [when she had] us think about our parents or our mothers and our grandmothers and made up some movements to go with that–I really appreciated that. The biggest thing was actually at the very end of the workshop she talked about how that summer they were having a summer institute for ten days that was about movement and about discussing democracy. I was in a sociology class at the time called “What is Democracy?” and I was obsessed with thinking about what democracy means for our everyday lives– not just in terms of voting–and I thought “movement, democracy, race–all together in one–this is exactly what I’m interested in.”

What was that summer institute like? What kinds of things did you do?

I was so excited when I found out about it and then by the time it got to the summer I [started worrying, thinking] “they’re a real company that dances for real, and this is going to be so physically challenging…” and then I got there and it was absolutely everything I could have imagined. The way that it worked was that in the morning we had three movement classes, either yoga or pilates, and then our next class was a community dance class, where each day we did a different African-based movement style (so hip-hop one day, New Orleans Second Line one day, and West African dance one day), and then the other class we had was an Urban Bush Women repertory class, based on moves they do. The morning really woke me up and was really strength-building, and that was really powerful for me. In the afternoons we discussed more, we had some presentations about what some things meant and we read some quotes and responded to them. In the afternoons we did more choreography…[for example], we would take three words that we were thinking about, from material we had read or something else, and make up a movement per word. Toward the end, in the last four days, the classes in the morning were shortened because we started creating more for the performance for the ninth day.

After this summer institute, how did you maintain contact with the company?

Actually, one of the things I did during the performance was me and four of the current or former company members had this little section that we had created together, so I had a really strong relationship with them…not as much with Jawole, but I had kind of really put myself out there the whole time…I guess part of that was really important to me to go back again the next summer.

How do you feel your contact with the group has informed your own practice as a choreographer and dancer?

The first Summer Institute is really something that has greatly informed my practice. Right now I’m working on a senior project involving thinking about racism, about the ways that whiteness plays out in particular, and how movement can be used to explore that. My belief in that as a strategy entirely came out of the first Summer Institute. One of the exercises that we did [in my senior project] in which one group talks and the other responds in movement comes directly out of the first Institute.

How do you see the work that you’ve been doing now, which has come out of this interaction, developing in the future?

Another thing that really came out of the first Institute I went to has entirely to do with this is the idea of working with my own community and fighting racism through working with white people as opposed to going into schools that have fewer resources. That’s also a really great thing to do, but I think there’s also a lot of work to be done in terms of raising awareness in white communities and communities with more money, which is the kind of community I come from. So that’s where this project comes out of, of wanting to work with white people and around issues that have to do with the white side of racism and white privilege. I am definitely interested in trying to continue that as a practice.

In a sentence or so, could you share the most valuable lesson you’ve taken away from working with Urban Bush Women?

Working with my own community is one, constantly reminding myself to tap into humility…those are two really big ones. Also to honor and respect the kind of work [the company] does. I’ve been reading a little bit about the company and Jawole for my senior project and through that I’ve deepened my respect for their work and how long they’ve been doing it.

Airlifted from Sweden

by

What’s it like to be airlifted from your university in Sweden to join the faculty at Wesleyan for a semester?  Erik Westberg was delighted to tell us.  He is the professor of choral conducting and choral singing at the Pitea College of Music, Lulea University of Technology in Sweden and is visiting this semester conducting Wesleyan’s Concert Choir and teaching choral conducting.

He’s here on a grant from STINT, the Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education, which supports a visiting professor program with the idea, as Westberg says, “to bring ideas from here back to Sweden.” Historically, the program has selected history and literature professors–Erik is the first music professor to be chosen. A list of professors is sent to American universities, who then have the opportunity to choose a professor for a residency. As Westberg puts it, Angel Gil-Ordóñez, director of the Wesleyan Orchestra, and Krishna Winston, Dean of the Arts and Humanities, saw his name and “decided why don’t we bring this Swedish guy here?”

Westberg says, this year’s choir “had auditions… In the beginning I was a little bit worried about what was going to happen if no one showed up…because [the group] is my instrument. But it turned out that some 40 students applied and we chose 22 of them for the choir.”

When asked about his impressions of Wesleyan so far, he noted with appreciation “that students come from different cultures, from different countries… different backgrounds” and commented on the broad range of their interests. “Maybe one difference between my student chamber choir in Pitea is that a lot of the students are going to be music majors, maybe teachers in voice, or piano teachers,” he said, noting that Wesleyan students who participate in the choir come from a variety of departments. Invoking the Swedish word “smörgåsbord” to describe the freedom to explore academically at Wesleyan, that ability “to find your own way,” as Westberg puts it, is something he is keen to talk about back at home.

In addition to taking away an appreciation for the liberal arts college experience, quite a different scene from his home university with 700 students in the music program and where he is in charge of four concert choirs, Westberg has been a valuable and instructive presence for the Wesleyan community.  Hansel Tan ‘10, Westberg’s teaching assistant, says “the music we’ve made together with Westberg as a choir has been unlike anything else I’ve heard on campus: in an extremely good way. His genteel nature rubs off easily, and deep inside everybody wants to be a Swede!” Looking to integrate his own expertise within the Wesleyan context, in October the choir performed an evening of Swedish choral music combined with a tribute to John Cage and his work at Wesleyan. This Wednesday, Westberg’s Pitea Chamber Choir of Sweden will join the Wesleyan Concert Choir to put on a collaborative concert, Jul, Jul! A Winter Concert of Choral Music. Westberg says about a third of the repertoire will be a joint effort of both choirs. The Wesleyan choir will perform selections by Swedish and Norwegian composers, the Swedish Choir will perform the Lucia procession, and part of the concert will include a sing-along with the audience. Westberg sees the concert as an opportunity to exchange ideas and hopes his Swedish students will get to know the students here.

We are indeed fortunate to have Westberg in residence: not only has his experience been informative for his own career, but his presence has given our students new skills and perspectives, as well as exposure to new and challenging music. We hope you’ll join us for this evening of musical and cultural exchange.

The Wesleyan Concert Choir and The Pitea Chamber Choir (Pitea, Sweden): Jul, Jul! A Winter Concert of Choral Music
Wednesday, December 9, 7pm
Memorial Chapel
Free admission

And, a special performance by The Pitea Chamber Choir:
Thursday, December 10, 7 pm
South Congregational Church
9 Pleasant Street (across from the South Green)
Free admission

Dance and the Environment in Threshold Sites: The Ultimate Meal

by

It’s been a while since I’ve had the opportunity to write about Feet to the Fire, our campus-wide exploration of climate change from science to art. The initiative made possible the creation of four new works by members of Wesleyan’s arts faculty. If you haven’t been to the Feet to the Fire website recently, then you probably haven’t seen the podcasts we produced about two of them: Ron Kuivila’s The Weather, at Six and Alvin Lucier’s Glacier.

The video about Hari Krishnan’s work Liquid Shakti is still in production, but this Friday night in the Schoenberg Dance Studio, we’ll have the opportunity to see the fourth and final commissioned work performed live! Threshold Sites, choreographed by Nicole Stanton in collaboration with Wesleyan students and faculty, was originally scheduled to premiere last May, but because of the tragic events at the end of the semester, the performances were postponed.

Associate Professor of Dance, and Chair of the Dance Department, Nicole Stanton created the work over the course of last spring working with students in her Repertory and Performance course. In conjunction with the Feet to the Fire theme, Stanton invited three professors to co-create a curriculum with her that used research methodologies from social science, evolutionary biology, experiential anatomy, and dance to examine some of the relations between body/self, home/community, and environment/ecosystem, through the lens of food. The resulting multi-media performance weaves dance, song, spoken word…and a meal.

Gina Ulysse in Anthropology provided students with an understanding of theories emanating from the field of cultural studies as they relate to somatic, community, and ecological awareness. Michael Singer from Biology familiarized students with how an ecologist uses practices of scientific observation in the field, taking students out into nature to see how he sees. Andrea Olson, a visiting scholar from Middlebury College in Biology and Dance, conducted an intensive workshop that focused on the development of awareness and respect for the human body and for the environment and charted the relationships between the two. Stanton then synthesized the information into movement expressions and choreographed the work.

“This was a different choreographic experience for me,” she said in an interview I had with her yesterday. “Usually I take an emergent form or context that develops in the studio and the research springs from that investigation. Because of the Feet to the Fire commission, I took a topical approach for the first time.” Friday night’s performance includes a multi-generation cast–three of the original cast members (others graduated), two students who are new to the work, two faculty members (Stanton and Katja Kolcio, Associate Professor of Dance) and four guest artists (Kolcio’s parents and in-laws who are all professional performers!). The work features group segments, a solo by Stanton, and music from around the world, including Ukrainian, German, American, and Senegalese folk traditions. The performance is followed by a communal feast to be shared with the audience.

Threshold Sites: The Ultimate Meal
Schonberg Dance Studio, 247 Pine Street
Friday, December 4, 2009 at 8pm
Seating is limited; to reserve your seat, contact Michele Olerud in the Dance Department, molerud@wesleyan.edu, or call 860-685-3488

Pamela Tatge
Director, Center for the Arts

CFA Student Profiles: Mark McCloughan ‘10

by

What follows is the second in a series of profiles of Wesleyan students by Alexandra Provo, ‘10, the CFA’s Arts Administration Intern. These students all have one thing in common: they became deeply engaged with one or more artists presented by the CFA. Sparked by the artist’s workshop, performance or exhibition on campus, they began a lasting relationship that affected the trajectory of their academic exploration. We hope you will send us your comments about these and future interviews.

Last week, after the Eiko and Koma opening reception, I sat down with Mark McCloughan ’10, a senior double majoring in Theater and SISP (the Science in Society Program) who has been working with Eiko and Koma as an assistant and archivist since last spring, to find out more about the character of his relationship with the artists and how it developed.

How did you first hear about Eiko and Koma?

I didn’t really know who they were—at all—and then I saw Eiko’s class [Japan and the Atomic Bomb] on WesMaps when we were freshman, and I just remember thinking it sounded so weird and cool. I was attracted to the inter-disciplinarity. I was really lucky to get one of the four spots for freshmen the first year—I didn’t realize how big of a deal it was until the first class when there were something like 75 people who weren’t registered trying to get in. Over the course of the class I started realizing [Eiko] was a working artist, but it still didn’t really hit me until maybe last spring when I started working for them and looking at their archives, seeing the work they’ve done over almost forty years.

Are there specific aspects of the course that you feel affected you the most?

I always find it sort of difficult to talk about the movement and the course because it’s so encompassing of many things…first of all I think the courses [Delicious Movements and Japan and the Atomic Bomb] are important because both are truly inter-disciplinary. For me that was a big realization—that the arts can be really rigorous and very productive, not in a purely aesthetic sense but also productive of real knowledge.

Definitely, I agree. So you were in the courses; how did your relationship develop further?

Last spring they were beginning to speak with Sam Miller ’75 and conceptualize [the Retrospective Project], and it just so happened that they were trying to pull together their archives, a lot of which are at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. They had all these photos and stuff there that no one had really organized, so Eiko asked me if I was going to be home—because I’m from Minneapolis—over spring break.  I was, so I spent three or four days there. Organizationally it was crazy but also it was amazing to begin to get a sense of their whole career. All these photos of pieces; pieces I had never seen or really heard about…to get a sense of the chronological progression [of their work] was really illuminating for me as someone who is really into the movement, because you can begin to see where some of the exercises come from, or you can see them exploring some of the stuff Eiko helps us explore in class. That led to an internship there last summer.

How do you feel your contact with them has informed your own practice as an artist?

It’s been pretty hugely influential, I would say. The big thing that I love about Delicious Movements is that nothing is right and nothing is wrong. I think it taught me how to just do and not worry…it’s been very freeing.

Can you tell me some of the things you’ve been doing? Some of your projects here or elsewhere?

Me and Miles Tokunow ‘10 were in the class together as freshmen and both got into the movement—I remember we moved a lot together in class—and then the next fall we did a piece together called Falling, that was on Foss Hill [yeah, I remember I saw that, it was cool]. I’m also one of the founders of No Face Theater. We work collaboratively, so without a director—everyone has an equal voice, which is…it’s horrible and also wonderful. But going back to Eiko and Koma, they work in that way, they negotiate the piece together…it’s neither one of their visions; it’s something that happens because they’re working together and there’s all this tension and disagreement and negotiation.

Actually, Miles and I are working on another dance for the spring. So that partnership has been ongoing. I’m really excited about that one.

Could you say, in a sentence or so, a lesson or insight that you’ve taken away from working with Eiko and Koma?

There are so many…I’d say that I’ve learned to be in the present moment in my body, which has been really helpful for me as a performer. I feel like since I’ve met Eiko and worked with her and Koma my focus in performing has changed. Now I’m really interested in the body…not just as a vehicle for representing a character but the body as a thing.

How much has this been a factor in your Wesleyan experience?

It’s pretty much changed my life. Working with Eiko, I feel much more sure that what I want to do is going to be what I really want to do, it’s going to be mine…that sounds so possessive.  It’s given me a confidence to figure out a path that’s what I really want.

Discovering The Skriker and The Eiko and Koma Retrospective Project

by

I’ve just wandered over to the CFA Theater where the Theater Department is preparing to open THE SKRIKER, by Caryl Churchill. Some of you may remember the department’s call to campus and community members for donations of items from attics & garages: the setting for the play is entirely created from found materials. Old toys, garbage bags, wood remnants, furniture and “stuff” of all kinds fill over half of the seating area. The audience sits on the stage–facing out: are we being asked to reflect back on ourselves and our trash? Robert Bresnick, the play’s director, describes the work as a cautionary tale–a confrontation of our relationship to the environment. As Bresnick said, “The piece remembers a time we took solace in nature…‘nobody loves me but the sun is still shining.’ But in the world of this play, the sun burns and there is no refuge.’” The story centers around two women: one pregnant and one who has committed infanticide. They are haunted by the Skriker, an earth spirit whom Churchill refers to as “ancient and damaged.” They are joined onstage by a shape-shifting bunch of earth spirits, extraordinary puppets by Leslie Weinberg (many of you will remember her puppets from Don Quixote and her masks from Oedipus Rex.) Sound design is by California-based Marco Schindelmann and Michael Raco-Rands and lighting is by Professor John Carr (who also co-designed the set with Weinberg.)

And downstairs from my office, the Zilkha Gallery has become a laboratory for the Eiko and Koma Retrospective. The experiment? How do you create a visual installation about the artistic legacy of performing artists whose work is time-based and often site-specific? As Eiko puts it, “What does it mean for living, active performing artists to have a retrospective? Is putting our heads into a creative closet a creative thing, or a nostalgic thing?” Working with a team of student assistants, many of whom have studied with Eiko at some point over the last four years, Eiko and Koma are creating mini-environments that allow audiences to contemplate their artistic values and inspiration. These are presented alongside video installations and a visual timeline of photographs that date back to when they first met in Japan. It’s amazing to see their faces and bodies when they were in their twenties just beginning to develop their movement vocabulary. You may remember their first performance at Wesleyan in the Zilkha Gallery in the summer of 2002 when they presented Offering, their 9/11 a work about mourning; in 2006, they brought Cambodian Stories, their masterwork performed alongside young people from the Reyum Art Center in Phnom Phen; in the summer of 2007, Quartet and Grain. What you may not know, is that Eiko and Koma have sent both of their sons to Wesleyan! Yuta graduated in ’07, and Shin graduates in ’10.

The Retrospective opens this Thursday, November 19 from 5-7pm, with a performance at 5:30pm followed by a reception. Eiko and Koma will be working on the installation over the course of the next month, so feel free to come by and see how the exhibit evolves.  The Retrospective will have future iterations at Danspace Project in New York, the Walker Arts Center and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.

The Skriker, by Caryl Churchill will be performed at the CFA Theater, November 18-22

Eiko & Koma: Time is not Even, Space is not Empty will be at the Zilkha Gallery, November 19-December 20

Rhodessa and Noah

by

There are some people whose stage presence literally reaches out into the audience and grabs you, shakes you up and makes you listen. Rhodessa Jones is one of those people. She just arrived in Middletown today and will be here for several days hosted by the Outside the Box Theater Series, a series developed by the CFA and Theater Department. The idea to bring Rhodessa came from Sonia Manjon, Vice President of Diversity and Strategic Partnerships at Wesleyan, and Ron Jenkins, Professor of Theater, who is teaching a service-learning course that takes theater students to develop works with incarcerated women at the York Correctional Institution. Sonia and our President Michael Roth have both worked with Rhodessa when they were at the California College of the Arts, and Michael’s history with her dates back to his years at the Getty Research Institute.

Rhodessa has received numerous awards for her work, The Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women, a performance workshop that is designed to achieve personal and social transformation with incarcerated women. While she is on campus this week, she’ll be working with Ron’s students, as well as visiting theater classes and giving a workshop for teachers at the Green Street Arts Center. I hope you’ll take the opportunity to see this extraordinary artist live this Thursday night at Crowell. She’ll be performing excerpts from The Medea Project as well as segments from other highly acclaimed works including Big Butt Girls, Hard-Headed Women and The Love Project. (And p.s.: Rhodessa’s brother is trailblazing choreographer Bill T. Jones, who had a major residency at the CFA in the Fall of 2006).

I met with Noah Baerman in my office last week just as he was leaving for New York for the final rehearsal for his concert this Friday, Know Thyself. Some of you may know Noah through the many roles he plays in life: composer, jazz piano player, writer, professor, husband (to Kate TenEyck, the CFA’s Art Studios Technician) and father to three foster daughters. On any given week you can find Noah directing the Wesleyan Jazz Ensemble, traveling to New York for a gig at the Jazz Gallery, donating his services by playing for a local benefit, or attending parent/teacher conferences at Middletown High School. As the story goes: “I was in the kitchen just having pledged to myself after a year of being exhausted by all sorts of family happenings, that I would take a year off to just center myself again, when I got the call from Chamber Music America.” The Noah Baerman Trio had received one of only sixteen awards given out across the country to commission jazz ensembles to create a new work. What is unique about the grant is that it not only supports the composer’s time, but it also pays for their musicians to spend time on the development of the work.

“I tend to be a really visceral musician and come at my music from an emotional rather than an intellectual or conceptual place,” Noah said as his eyes got wider and his hands began to fly. “The work that I’ll be premiering next week is about the quest for self-knowledge…all of the facets of the exploration that goes into a journey of self-discovery. I hope that it is highly universal, but also know that it is deeply personal. Making the work forced me to organize my thoughts and make peace with certain parts of my past. It’s the most musically ambitious work I’ve ever created and I’m so fortunate that I can debut it at Wesleyan where I feel the support of my community and the trust of my ensemble.”

Like Ellington and Mingus did before him, Noah writes for the individual members of his ensemble in mind. “There was this great moment last week when we were coming to an explosive moment in the piece where Wayne Escoffery (who plays sax) has to take off. I heard him play this section and I thought to myself ‘yes, yes, that’s why you are playing this piece.’” Noah’s ensemble also includes vibrophonist Chris Dingman, class of 2002 and former student of Jay Hoggard.

The moment he knew he wanted to be a musician? Watching Stevie Wonder play Superstition on Sesame Street when he was five: “It was my introduction to soulful music….All these years later, I’m still on a quest to create jazz works that have that kind of emotional directness.”

Performance/Talk by Rhodessa Jones, Thursday, November 12 at 8pm, Crowell Concert Hall

World Premiere of Know Thyself by Noah Baerman, Friday, November 13, 8pm, Crowell Concert Hall

Pamela Tatge
Director, Center for the Arts

A CFA Intern Returns

by

Amy Crawford ’05 was a government major who sang…actually, she didn’t realize she could sing until senior year. She was a keyboardist in the Jazz Orchestra, and music faculty member Jay Hoggard invited her to take the mic. She returns to Wesleyan this Saturday to perform an evening of her original music at Crowell Concert Hall.

We at the CFA are particularly excited about the concert because Amy was the first Center for the Arts “Arts Administration Intern.” Not only that, she stayed on after graduation to serve as the project coordinator for the town-wide event, Middletown Dances! In her first two years after graduating, she put together a life for herself that included arts administration jobs during the day and gigs as a jazz singer by night. Then she took the job of Education Coordinator for the Grammy award-winning, Brooklyn Youth Chorus Academy. The chorus received an invitation to perform with Elton John, and that’s when everything changed: “I found myself preparing the children to sing this music that I had listened to when I was in high school…it was melodic and powerful. We ended up at a rehearsal on a Sony soundstage and I felt the energy of Elton and his band combined with the voices of these children, and I realized this was an energy I wanted to be a part of.” So after the sold-out concert at Madison Square Garden, she set about writing her own songs. Her influences are the Beatles, Dido, Janis Joplin, Amy Winehouse, Stevie Wonder and Jon Brion. And today, after spending some time at the Berklee School of Music, she has officially made the transition from jazz singer to a more contemporary popular sound. I can tell you she has a beautiful, clear voice. Her sound is upbeat and polished with a vintage sheen.

In addition to working with her own band, most recently she has been touring the country with the band, DeLeon, playing keyboards, singing and co-writing songs with them. The band has opened for Ozomatli, Mike Gordon and Os Mutantes.

She talked about what was most important about her time at Wesleyan: “I discovered how much I cared about the arts… The enormous flexibility of the school… I was extremely indecisive during my time there, but I had the ability to explore what I wanted to explore. The idea that I was a government major but I was still able to do a senior recital was amazing. I can’t wait to be back on campus!”

And I can’t wait to see her.

Amy Crawford
Saturday November 7 at 8pm in 
Crowell Concert Hall

Pamela Tatge
Director, Center for the Arts

Connections Across Borders

by

Rachel Boggia majored in neuroscience at Cornell and went onto receive her MFA in Dance from Ohio State. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor in the dance department. Perfect profile for Wesleyan, right? This weekend, we have the opportunity to see her work as a choreographer and as a dancer, alongside her colleague, Artist-in-Residence Iddi Saaka, in an evening of solos and duets entitled, Connection. Some of you may remember that last year Rachel’s faculty dance performance had to be canceled because of a last-minute injury (by last-minute, I mean it happened when she was warming up an hour before her first performance!) So some of us have great anticipation at seeing the work of someone who has been such an energizing presence in the arts here since she arrived in the Fall of 2008.

Saaka, a Ghanaian who heads the department’s West African dance program, will perform a solo he choreographed. Entitled Belonging, the piece addresses the restricted flow of movement across borders. When I spoke with him earlier today, he talked about how many Africans want to leave their homeland to see the world, but so few visas are granted. The work asks the question— how does that kind of hindrance play out in your psyche? He will also perform Looking for Evidence, a duet choreographed and danced with Liam Clancy, Saaka’s former classmate from UCLA’s World Arts and Culture graduate school. The work explores human commonalities despite issues of race. Saaka comments, “On the surface we are the same: we are both male dancers, we look the same, we went to the same school, we are friends, but how are we different? And how are these differences danced?”

Boggia will also be collaborating with former classmates from graduate school at Ohio State. (She said they’ve known each other for over eight years and have kept in very close touch.) Choreographer Vanessa Justice has created a work entitled Visitor, a meditation on personal identity. In an interview, she said that the metaphor of taking off clothing is used. “The character is shedding the layers that society has imposed on her…Since I am performing in my own culture, the work is less about cultural identity and more about personal identity.” The next solo is by choreographer Marlon Barrios Solano who, like Justice, is now based in New York. It is an improvised work inspired by the films of Maya Deren (an American avant-garde filmmaker and theorist of the 40s and 50s).

The final work on the program is Jovain Sweet, choreographed by Boggia and danced by Boggia and Saaka, inspired by the break-up of a relationship. The dancers will wear elaborate headdresses that will conceal their identities allowing the dancers to assume a number of symbolic meanings.

It promises to be a widely varied and engaging concert.

Fall Faculty Dance Concert
Friday & Saturday, October 30 & 31 at 8pm

Patricelli ’92 Theater
Wesleyan University

Pamela Tatge
Director, Center for the Arts

Great Musicians; Good People

by

Rani Arbo and Scott Kessel ’88 and their beautiful son, Quinn, are regulars at the CFA. I remember when they sat in my office years ago talking about whether or not to live in Middletown or Northampton. I was so thrilled when they picked right! They are world-class musicians whose artistry is equaled by the generosity of their spirit. They were founding faculty members at the Green Street Arts Center, performing at Macdonough School when the Center was still only a dream. They did a fantastic outdoor concert for us in the summer of 2003; Scott, a Wesleyan studio art major, is not only a musician, but a fine artist. His work graces Kidcity among other Middletown locations and he designed the community mandala that was built in Olin Library when the Tibetan monks were here….the list goes on. In between all of their work in Middletown they manage to give 60-70 concerts per year with their band, Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem at venues across the country. Hailed by The Boston Herald as “one of America’s most inventive string bands,” The Vintage Guitar Review has said their work “explodes with energy and relaxed good humor…” We are so fortunate to have them in our midst and are delighted to present them (minus Quinn…but I get the feeling he could be onstage soon) with band-mates Anand Nayak ’97 and Andrew Kinsey this weekend. They will be performing selections from their first-ever family CD, Ranky Tanky, at Crowell Concert Hall at 2pm on Saturday, October 24.

Rani told me that this was a natural progression for the band. They are all parents now, and were interested in taking their original sound and turning it to younger audiences. Also, it will allow them to do more in the communities where they tour by providing a family concert option. “Ranky Tanky is very upbeat and fun,” she said. “It has a solid set of roots in older music: the sounds of the 30s to the 70s. It’s the kind of music that parents and grandparents will relate to. Kids seem to really love it. I had a pack of neighborhood kids in my car last week and they were all singing along.”

So call some friends, bring your kids and grandkids and come be charmed by this wonderful band…I can guarantee their warmth and energy will uplift you.

P.S. please take a look at their website…the writing is fantastic, the images are engaging (how can you resist the one of them jumping in the air by the side of the Connecticut River?). It’s a fine example of how artists should put themselves out there on the world wide web: http://www.raniarbo.com

CFA Student Profiles: Asa Horvitz ’10

by

What follows is the first in a series of profiles of Wesleyan students by Alexandra Provo, ’10, the CFA’s Arts Administration Intern. These students all have one thing in common: they became deeply engaged with one or more artists presented by the CFA. Sparked by the artist’s workshop, performance or exhibition on campus, they began a lasting relationship that affected the trajectory of their academic exploration. We hope you will send us your comments about these and future interviews.

Last week I sat down with Asa Horvitz ’10, a music major with a passion for performance. Though he was involved in physical theater prior to coming to Wesleyan, he marks his encounter with international artist Ang Gey Pin as a turning point in his artistic life and a true catalyst of his expression.

Gey Pin, originally from Singapore and of Hokkien Chinese descent, attended the University of Hawaii and studied in California in the 80s in the Objective Drama program at UC Irvine. There, she worked with Jerzy Grotowski, an influential Polish theatre director. She went on to work with him in Italy from 1994-95 and 1998-2006 and was the lead performer in One breath left (1998-2002) and Dies Irae: My Preposterous Theatrum Interioris Show (2003-2006).

Theater Faculty member Claudia Tatinge Nascimento suggested Gey Pin to the CFA’s Outside the Box Committee. Nascimento had included Gey Pin’s research methods in a recent book. Gey Pin was invited to teach a quarter-long course and present public performances in the fall of 2006.

Grotowski is actually what drew Asa to Gey Pin’s course. He saw a poster advertising the class and recognized Grotowski’s name, which his high school theater teacher had mentioned as a strong influence. For Asa, the class “already held this aura for me…I had this sense about the work of this group of people.”

Though he was initially put on the waiting list, he was eventually admitted to the course. There, he and roughly 16 other students unlocked blocks in their bodies through intense physical training. According to Asa, it was “very linked to play, very much like a game but with specific images associated.” There was also a singing element to the class and students each developed a short individual project, which Asa compares to an etude.

Though the course lasted only one quarter, Asa developed a strong relationship with Gey Pin. He attributes this partly to the eagerness of first year students and their willingness to throw themselves into projects wholeheartedly. He also accounts for his intense involvement in terms of loss: in high school he had worked with a theater company for five to six hours per day for credit, and without that full time commitment “I was honestly freaking out,” he says. “I approached [the course] with desperation.”

He reported a curious response to seeing Gey Pin’s public performance later in the semester. “It made no sense to me, I didn’t really like it…afterwards I couldn’t stop shaking and I had sort of an embarrassing public meltdown underneath World Music Hall. I’m tempted to say that something in her mode of presence, her extreme embodiment, spoke to my body directly…I had a vivid sensation of being reminded of something that I already knew but had forgotten. It was a reminder of the needs of my body and that the freedom I had experienced as a kid could be something to work and rediscover as an adult living in a de-physicalized society. It was a serious wake up call.”

After returning home for winter break and digesting what had happened, he wrote her a letter asking to work with her again. She replied that she was going to be in Poland that summer, and why didn’t he come? “So I went to Poland, not knowing what I was getting into.”

Well, what he got into was two weeks of intense study with Gey Pin (sometimes working from 7 am to 1 am!) and exposure to other performance groups. According to Asa, what’s been valuable for him is that “she is empathetic but also has really high standards.” He notes that it was transformative for him to have “someone who is a professional treating me seriously, holding me to professional standards. To have that kind of pressure put on you, the growth is just exponential.”

Back at Wesleyan, Asa’s growth as an artist is certainly evident. After his summer in Poland, he returned to Wesleyan in the fall of 2007 and formed a theater company, called No Face Theater, with Mark McCloughan ’10 and Gedney Barclay ’09. They are still working–their most recent performance was last spring.

Rather than seeing his experience with Gey Pin as an opportunity to engage in theater outside of his academic life, Asa noted that he views the two as “a network of things that inform each other.” His understanding of his own artistic production and that of others “has been tempered by my critical education…I couldn’t do without either.”

The relationship continues to thrive. Asa spent this past summer with Gey Pin and her partner in Tuscany and Umbria, and next year will be apprenticing with Theatre Zar (a Polish performance group he met through Gey Pin). “When artists take you seriously you realize if you want to make it happen you can,” says Asa.

— Alexandra Provo, ’10