In a Hofstra University dance studio, a mixed group of professional and student dancers ? all too young to have lived through the events they were symbolically recreating ? recently rehearsed a work inspired by the turmoil and tragedy of the Vietnam War era.
The university that John Muir attended finally has an environmental studies major. The UW Board of Regents approved two new majors for UW-Madison on Friday: environmental studies and environmental sciences. UW-Madison has a strong history in the field of environmental studies.
A staff photographer at UW-Madison for six years and a former Associated Press photographer in Kazakhstan, former Madison resident Michael Forster Rothbart won a Fulbright scholarship to live for a year in Ukraine just outside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.
It won?t come as a surprise to anyone who knows Christopher Taylor that the internationally acclaimed pianist and UW-Madison professor of music is now inventing a musical instrument.
Speakers from Al Jazeera, National Public Radio and The New York Times will debate the role of a partisan press in a democracy at UW-Madison?s second annual journalism ethics conference.
….This is also an important time to be supportive of libraries in Wisconsin. According to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, Gov. Scott Walker?s proposed budget for 2011-13 includes a 10 percent cut each year in state funding for public libraries, cuts of 11.6 percent in the first year and 6.6 percent in the second year in school library funding, as well as a provision that would eliminate a requirement that local funding for public libraries be maintained, at minimum, at the average of the prior three years.
To kick off National Library Week, the UW-Madison Libraries are again hosting the Edible Book Festival on Tuesday, April 12, from 4 to 6:30 p.m. in Room 460 at Memorial Library, 728 State St.
Peggy Weaver loves the variety of movies that make up the Wisconsin Film Festival each year.
“It?s fabulous. I love seeing movies from other countries and cultures. I love the spirit of Madison when it?s in town,” she said. “I like seeing the lines going down the block and around the corner. There?s a lot of excitement in the air.” This year, for the 13th annual festival, there were 209 films in nine theaters.
Thanks to the University Of Wisconsin and its Office Of Multicultural Arts Initiatives, last year?s installment of the annual Line Breaks has been etched into The A.V. Club?s skulls ever since.
The new Li Chiao-Ping Dance program Take 2: Multimedia Dance Performances and Screen Dance opens strongly with Li?s tribute to her mother, “RE: Joyce.” This is Li at her best, deftly blending dance, theater and moving images.
The first day of shooting a feature film, Justin Daering was saying Wednesday, is not when a young director freaks out. That happens the day before. “I was sitting there,” Daering said, recalling a day in Madison in the summer of 2009, “and thinking that tomorrow, supposedly, 40 people are going to show up and we?re going to start filming.”
What had he got himself into?
Quoted: Jeff Smith, professor of communication arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
It was a bibliophile?s delight, with nary a Kindle in sight. For those of us who love to hold on to a real book, turning each page of a ?page-turner? to find out what happens next, the big Friends of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries used book sale at the UW-Madison Memorial Library was heaven on earth.
Now, we?re not saying modern technology is a bad thing. It?s a lot easier carrying an electronic book collection on a reader than a backpack full of tomes, or listening to your tunes through an iPod instead of a bulky CD player.
Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. spoke in Mills Hall of the Humanities Building on the UW-Madison campus March 24 about the issues aired in his PBS documentary, “African American Lives.” The series shows how African Americans are using genealogy and genetic science to understand their history. Gates spoke about African-American genealogy and about the common myths that Black people believe when it comes to their lineage.
For film lovers in Madison, the beginning of spring is a time not only to enjoy warmer temperatures but also to pour over the extensive Wisconsin Film Festival guide and finalize viewing plans. The 13th annual Wisconsin Film Festival begins Wednesday, and as with past years, it offers a dizzying amount of films in a variety of categories, such as narrative, documentary, experimental, short films, animation and world cinema.
While trying to decide which films to see out of the 209 playing over five days can seem like a somewhat daunting task, many find that browsing through the possibilities and going out on a limb to see movies they may not otherwise watch is half the fun of the experience and can lead to unexpected surprises.
Meg Hamel has always had a novel philosophy for the Wisconsin Film Festival; make it a festival, featuring films, located in Wisconsin. That sounds obvious. But at other film festivals like Sundance, South By Southwest and Tribeca, showing movies is just one part of the experience. Those fests also include a wealth of festival parties, music performances, screenwriting competitions, celebrity sightings, filmmaking classes, swag giveaways and other side events. Not so at the Wisconsin Film Festival, which runs Wednesday, March 30, through Sunday, April 3.
A play by “The Social Network” screenwriter Aaron Sorkin anchors Forward Theater Co.?s 2011-12 season, opening in November in the Overture Center Playhouse. “The Farnsworth Invention,” about the man who invented the television and the executive who stole it from him, ran on Broadway from December 2007 through early March 2008. Forward is able to present “Farnsworth,” a drama with a cast of 16 who play 70 roles, because of a partnership with the University Theatre at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Students from the graduate acting program will fill out the cast.
?They Marched Into Sunlight,? David Maraniss?s history about a Vietnam War ambush in 1967 and the simultaneous Dow Chemical riots in Madison, has been translated many times. But for the first time on Saturday, the stories of the soldiers and those they left behind were told in the language of dance.
The Wisconsin Film Festival runs March 30-April 3 and will feature 209 films shown in eight UW-Madison campus and Downtown locations.
Meet two of the most famous guys from Madison you may have never heard of. Eddie Guerriero is a rare book dealer. Mitchell Deprey is a social worker-turned-insurance salesman. But 20 years ago – and again today, thanks to a documentary film that premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and shows next weekend both in Madison and at New York?s Museum of Modern Art – the duo unwittingly created an underground audio sensation. What they recorded with their microphone launched a creative explosion and, in the words of one fan, can “burn the hair off your ears.” The pair are UW-Madison alumni.
It?s sad that the performance presented by the UW-Madison dance department and Jin-Wen Yu Dance was a one-night-only event. “March Into Sunlight” deserves to be experienced by more people.
Mike Lawler from the Wisconsin Story Project and Troy Reeves from UW-Madison Oral History Program presented Thursday on their collaborative effort to document stories from the 1970 Sterling Hall bombing tragedy.
“In Madison, once again, we live in interesting times.” Thus begins David Maraniss? keynote, “Into Sunlight: The Connections of War and Peace from Vietnam to Afghanistan, from Lyndon Johnson to Barack Obama, from a Book to a Dance.” Scheduled for 6 p.m. Friday at Wisconsin Union Theater, the Pulitzer laureate?s address provides context for this weekend?s Sunlight Project & Symposium.
Movie fans, get lots of sleep this weekend. Because the 13th annual Wisconsin Film Festival starts next Wednesday, March 30, and with over 160 screenings of 209 different films in nine theaters, including the Orpheum, Wisconsin Union Theater and Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, you?re going to need to be rested and ready.
The Friends of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries are hosting a used book sale Wednesday-Saturday, March 23-26, 2011.
UW-Madison?s Babcock Dairy is bringing back its Wisconsin Film Festival ice cream flavor: In The Dark. The limited-edition festival-themed flavor is chocolate ice cream with brownie pieces, pecans, chocolate chips, and a fudge ripple, and is available now at the Memorial Union Scoop Shop and Babcock Dairy.
Quoted: James Dennis, an emeritus professor of art history at UW-Madison, who has written the book, “Robert Koehler?s ?The Strike?: The Improbable Story of an Iconic 1886 Painting of Labor Protest,
Steenbock?s on Orchard, the high-end Food Fight restaurant inside the new $210 million Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery building on the UW-Madison campus, is nearly as world class as the facility itself.
Meg Hamel is director of the Wisconsin Film Festival, which runs in Madison March 30 through April 3. She began her involvement as a volunteer with the first year of the festival 13 years ago.
Author David Maraniss is fascinated by connections. Maraniss?s critically acclaimed history, ?They Marched Into Sunlight,? juxtaposes the stories of soldiers marching into an ambush in Vietnam with anti-war protests at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, all taking place over two days in October 1967.
It is these connections between people, places and time that provide the basis for two new dance works, together called ?March Into Sunlight,? premiering Saturday, March 26, at 8 p.m. in the Wisconsin Union Theater. The program is part of the Sunlight Project and Symposium, a three-day event focusing on war, peace and protest.
Here?s what you might have done for free Thursday night. You might have walked into the University of Wisconsin-Madison?s Mills Concert Hall and heard famed pianist Paul Badura-Skoda play with the UW Chamber Orchestra.
Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. will speak on the UW-Madison campus later this month about the issues aired in his PBS documentary, “African American Lives.” Gates? visit is in honor of Nellie Y. McKay, a UW-Madison professor and pioneer in the field of Afro-American studies.
Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. will speak on the UW-Madison campus later this month about the issues aired in his PBS documentary, “African American Lives.” The series shows how African Americans are using genealogy and genetic science to understand their history.
A lot of people don?t understand what ironworkers do, said Mike Grimslid, business manager for Ironworkers Local 383, so he?s glad a UW-Madison class took an interest and put out a short film called ?The Art of Ironworking.?
Having recently read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks I was looking for more “science for laypeople” books. Deborah Blum won a Pulitzer Prize for science journalism and is a professor at the University of Wisconsin. One of her former students recommended The Poisoner?s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York, and I?d also heard from several mystery readers that it was a really fun book, if you don?t mind a little chemistry with your drama.
Add support for the arts to the list of items getting slashed under Gov. Walker?s proposed budget. The budget unveiled Tuesday calls for a 68 percent cut in state funding for the Wisconsin Arts Board while rolling the agency into the Department of Tourism.
Walker also wants to eliminate the Percent for Arts Program, which provides $500,000 annually for public art in new state buildings. Among the projects funded by the Percent for Arts program is the “Nails Tails” sculpture in front of Camp Randall Stadium.
Laura Schwendinger, a UW-Madison music professor, is already a well known composer in contemporary art music circles, the recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters fellowship given to mid-career composers of exceptional gifts, and the first composer to win a fellowship from the American Academy in Berlin. But this current project has taken Schwendinger in a new direction: a collaboration with her cousin Leni Schwendinger, a renowned New York-based lighting designer whose large-scale architectural installations include Seattle?s opera house and Manhattan?s Port Authority Bus Terminal. The team has paired up for ?Orchestra Underground: Playing it UNsafe,? a project of the American Composers Orchestra (ACO), which is dedicated to the development of new works for orchestra.
After witnessing the lynching of his two friends, James Cameron heard a mob of at least 5,000 people cry for his blood to be shed next.
A rope was put around his neck, and he was hung from the same tree as his two friends, but a voice from the crowd cried out to let him go, making him the only documented lynching survivor in history.
Patrick Sims, an associate professor of drama and theater at the University of Wisconsin- Madison, wrote and performed a one-man play, ?10 Perfect: A Lynching Survivor?s Story,? that incorporated fiction to tell Cameron?s story Friday night in the Lory Student Center. Black Definition put on the event in honor of Black History Month.
Was the entire hubbub over Scott Walker?s controversial budget repair bill just a clever ruse, enabling some lecherous vandal to sneak out onto the ice of Lake Mendota and destroy the Statue Of Liberty head sculpture?
MADISON, Wis. — Lady Liberty, the plastic foam and wood structure placed annually on the ice on Lake Mendota, was damaged by vandals over the weekend.
Happy quasquicentennial, UW Marching Band!UW-Madison is celebrating 125 years since the earliest rendition of the UW Marching Band. It was called the Wisconsin Regimental Band when it was first authorized in fall of 1885.
In Madison West High School?s Hip Hop Studies class, most of the students enrolled in this course have never before taken a school class in music, even though they live and breathe the stuff. The brand new course, which began in January and is a semester-long music elective, is designed ?to get kids thinking about the most popular form of music since they?ve been born,? said West High school vocal music teacher Anthony Cao, who came up with the idea last year while on sabbatical and pursuing a master?s degree in music education at UW-Madison.
The forbidden island of Cuba opens to visitors, of a sort, with the Wisconsin Union Theater?s presentation of the travel adventure film ?Cuba: A Road Journey from Havana to Santiago.?
Dali, Chihuly and Degas? It?s possible to see all three in one weekend in the Tampa Bay area ? and still have time to savor the beach. The new Salvador Dali Museum, which opened in St. Petersburg in January, is the latest in a string of splashy arts venues on Florida?s west coast. The $33 million Tampa Museum of Art ? soon to host a Degas show ? opened in February 2010. And the Chihuly Collection, a permanent gallery devoted to the vibrant glassworks of artist Dale Chihuly, who attended UW-Madison, was unveiled across the bay in St. Petersburg in July.
?Level 7,? a science fiction book by Mordecai Roshwald about a post-apocalyptic dystopia published by the University of Wisconsin Press in 1959, has gotten a new life in the present thanks to the Amazon Kindle.
?Level 7,? a science fiction book by Mordecai Roshwald about a post-apocalyptic dystopia published by the University of Wisconsin Press in 1959, has gotten a new life in the present thanks to the Amazon Kindle. Krista Coulson, electronic publishing manager for the UW Press, says ?Level 7? was one of the first backlist titles the press published in e-book format, thanks to requests from Kindle users looking for the story.
Dance corps often look perfectly symmetrical ? each dancer about the same height, legs perfectly aligned, every movement precise.
Chris Walker?s dancers for ?The People Who Came,? a new piece based on students? immigration stories, couldn?t be more different.
They?re tall and short, with a variety of skin tones and levels of experience. Some performers are break dancers. Some are classically trained dance majors. Still others are members of First Wave, a pioneering hip-hop/spoken word program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The Big Ten Network will air a new television show produced by UW-Madison to showcase the success of the Chinese Champions Program.
A seven-course dinner inspired by the papacy in Avignon, in medieval France, will be held Feb. 3, at 6 p.m. at Steenbock?s on Orchard, 330 N. Orchard St., in the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery. The dinner will be prepared by chef Michael Pruett, and each course will be paired with a wine from the Rhone region. The featured speaker on the dual papacy will be William Courtenay, a medieval history professor emeritus at UW-Madison.
Quoted: Diane Sheehan, a UW-Madison professor and textile art expert.
A seven-course dinner inspired by the papacy in Avignon, in medieval France, will be held Feb. 3, at 6 p.m. at Steenbock?s on Orchard, 330 N. Orchard St., in the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery. The dinner will be prepared by chef Michael Pruett, and each course will be paired with a wine from the Rhone region. The featured speaker on the dual papacy will be William Courtenay, a medieval history professor emeritus at UW-Madison.
The group that is going to be in charge of ownership and operation of Madison?s performing arts center has changed its name. The 201 State Foundation is now the Overture Center Foundation. The group made the name change at its board of directors meeting Tuesday night.
(Among the new board members is Richard Davis, renowned musician and UW-Madison professor of bass in the School of Music.)
Hongtao Zhou requires temperatures below freezing through at least the end of this month. An MFA candidate at UW-Madison, he is accustomed to profound chill. He studied furniture design and wood science in Harbin, the northeast Chinese megalopolis renowned for its spectacular ice festival and brutal winters, with January high and low temperatures averaging nine degrees and -12°.
CHINESE CHAMPIONS: A 30-minute program, “Beijing Badgers,” will feature a group of Olympic-caliber Chinese students, athletes and coaches who lived and studied at UW-Madison this fall. It will air on the Big Ten Network at noon Tuesday.
The nearly 1,000 paintings clinging to sliding metal racks create an unexpected collage of subjects and colors in an unassuming storage room on the UW-Madison campus. Then you?re told to look up and notice the giant canvas rolled and suspended from the ceiling ? an acrylic painting that stretches to 17 feet when framed. “You use everything available,” said Russell Panczenko, director of the Chazen Museum of Art, as he leads a private tour of this Secret Place ? the museum?s 4,500 square feet of on-site art storage. Chazen?s storage areas contain millions of dollars of artistic works not on display.
Once the addition to the Chazen Museum of Art is complete, the third floor in both buildings ? connected by a bridge ? will be dedicated to the museum?s permanent collection. The first floor will have two galleries for temporary exhibitions; and the gallery on the second floor will be dedicated to changing exhibitions ? about six a year ? of works on paper, said Russell Panczenko, the museum?s director. One of the new galleries will be dedicated to “21st Century International,” which will capture the way the art world has changed.
The two most common remarks made by those seeking help at UW-Madison?s Writing Center are “I?m a bad writer” and “I hate to write.””
And sometimes they say both,” says Melissa Tedrowe, the center?s associate director. When it comes to developing strategies to make students better writers, Tedrowe notes there?s “a lot of passing the buck.”
A University of Wisconsin-Madison program is bringing live chamber music to hospital patients, families and staff.
Edgewood College plans to build a three-story Visual and Theatre Arts Center, finally providing a proper home for the arts on a campus where a hallway serves as the art gallery and the theater is hidden in a dorm basement.
Being almost maniacal fans of ?80s films, The A.V. Club has often thought how cool it must have been to be a student at UW-Madison in 1986 while the wonderful cult comedy Back To School was being filmed. Just imagine being at a house party when Rodney Dangerfield and Sam Kinison walked in, or hanging out by a hotel pool with Robert Downey Jr. and ultimate ?80s villain, William Zabka. Madison alum and filmmaker Alex Melli was there, and he was kind enough to e-mail us some cool stories about the month when Back To School took over UW 25 years ago, about which he wrote, ?Overall, I think it did plant/nurture the filmmaking seed in myself.?
A couple of years ago, Mayor Dave Cieslewicz invited the heads of the United Way of Dane County and the Madison Community Foundation to meet with him to discuss a question he was pondering. Was Madison bumping against its ceiling for charitable giving? Given the array of needs for social services, education and a diverse arts community, were we nearing capacity? Or, more directly, were givers tapped out?
….The question is timely again as the need to raise more private money to operate the Overture Center for the Arts has been added to the civic to-do list. So, can contributions keep up?
(Among those quoted: Former UW Foundation president Sandy Wilcox)
