CFA Courtyard

This Weekend: Puppetry, Funk, Grateful Dead music, and more!

by

CFA Arts Administration Intern Monica M. Tinyo ’13 surveys this week’s offerings at the Center for the Arts.

What are you doing this weekend? Are you rocking out to the music of the Grateful Dead? Watching an outdoor puppet show? Maybe you are listening to an orchestra of laptops, or expanding your idea of art. If you aren’t, you should be. This weekend holds a ton of exciting performances, exhibitions, and lectures that are as diverse in subject as they are in medium.

On Friday at 1:30pm, get your dance fix with a free studio showing by the Philadelphia-based choreographer Moncell Durden, President and Founder of Dance Educators of Funk and Hip Hop.

Time Stands Still: Notation in Musical Practice Festival-Conference, April 5 & 6

If music is more your thing, there are a number of senior and graduate recitals, like Henry Robertson’s tribute to the Grateful Dead, “Transitive Nightfall of Diamonds” (Thursday at 9pm). You could also explore musical notation with international experts at the Time Stands Still festival-conference this weekend (starting Friday at 1:30pm). Along with symposium sessions and roundtables, there will be two concerts (Friday and Saturday at 8pm), including the U.S. premiere of London’s Vocal Constructivists, alongside Wesleyan students in the Toneburst Laptop & Electronic Arts Ensemble.

A little overwhelmed? Take a break and have some quiet contemplation with artwork at the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery. There you can see the brilliant art studio thesis work (Noon to 5pm). The students featured are so talented, you won’t believe that not one of them has yet lived a quarter of a century. You can also see artists taking action in a collection of protest posters at the Davison Art Center (Noon to 4pm).

Last but definitely not least is the outdoor puppet show (Thursday through Saturday at 9pm), with handmade puppets and complimentary tea. You really don’t want to miss Frog’s journey to prevent Tokyo’s destruction by enlisting the help of a lowly collections officer, Katagiri!

Instead of your normal weekend routine, come to an event at the Center for the Arts. I promise it will be more fun, valuable and out of the ordinary than anything you were planning!

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

by
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

“Summer at the CFA” to include New England Premiere of “Big City” by Brian Brooks Moving Company (July 12 & 13)

by

Tickets for Brian Brooks Moving Company, David Liebman Quartet, and Steve Scionti’s Hear What’s In The Heart: A Shoemaker’s Tale are now on sale online! Click here to buy your tickets.

EVENING PERFORMANCES


FREE NOONTIME TALKS AND PERFORMANCES


Tell Us About It!

by

From now through January 17, share your thoughts about the spring events at the Center for the Arts in one (or both!) of the following ways:

1) Like us on Facebook and write something about our spring events on our Wall.
2) Follow us on Twitter and compose a tweet about our spring events (be sure to mention @WesCFA).

Everyone who writes about our spring events on Facebook or Twitter will be entered to win some excellent prizes, including the following:

—three tickets to see UConn Women’s Basketball play St. John’s (Saturday, February 18, 7pm, Gampel Pavilion, Storrs) courtesy of WNPR
—gift cards to Javapalooza Cafe courtesy of the Hartford and New Haven Advocates
—movie vouchers courtesy of Destinta Theatres
—arts books courtesy of Wesleyan University Press
—earbud headphones courtesy of Wesleyan Information Technology Services
—vintage posters courtesy of the Davison Art Center
—picture frame Center for the Arts magnets

Colombian Groove Band: Free Concert in CFA Courtyard Tonight

by
CFA Courtyard Stage 6/30/11
CFA Courtyard Stage 6/30/11

We couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful day for the annual outdoor summer concert at the Center for the Arts!  We hope that you will come early, bring a picnic and groove with Pablo Mayor’s Folklore Urbano.  The concert begins at 7pm in the CFA Courtyard.

Pablo Mayor is a composer, arranger, pianist, from Cali, Colombia, whose star has risen since he moved to New York in 1999.  While a professor of jazz at the Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia, he began his personal investigation of the native music of Colombia, and has combined this knowledge with his extensive knowledge of jazz harmonies and arranging. The Folklore Urbano Orchestra has produced three CD’s and taken the band to both national and international venues.

What you’ll hear tonight is modern Colombian music redefined in fresh, lively, provocative ways. Part groove band, part dance orchestra, the powerhouse ensemble of eight musicians seamlessly fuses the danceable swing of traditional Colombian rhythms with the lush subtleties of contemporary jazz harmonies and unique arrangements.  You’ll feel the beat of a rhythm section deeply grounded in traditional Colombian music.  Like a feisty chef, Pablo Mayor then adds explosive horns and great vocals to produce a tasty, sultry, addictive blend.

Please join us!

Pablo Mayor’s Folklore Urbano
Thursday, June 30, 2011 at 7pm
CFA Courtyard
Wesleyan University
FREE!
Free parking available in T, E, and G lots

Pamela Tatge
Director, Center for the Arts