Category: Arts & Humanities

In a season full of old and new(er) classics, University Theatre will explore the value of collaborations in its 2008-09 season.

The seven shows will explore settings ranging from a fantasy forest, late-1960s New York City and alien-invaded New Jersey. For artistic and financial reasons, the season is strongly cooperative with other arts organizations, which include new and continuing partnerships with Wisconsin Public Radio and the Madison Repertory Theatre and a strong link to University Opera.

“We are thrilled to work with these companies,” said University Theatre director Tony Simotes. “We know that the public will benefit from the partnerships as well.”

Even viewers familiar with the British filmmaker Matthew Buckinghamâ??s penchant for politically and historically abstruse subjects may be puzzled by the bland color photographs in this exhibition. They depict interior views of a modern, institutional building: stairways with tiled walls and stainless-steel railings; bathrooms with metal partitions and electric hand driers; elevator doors in a painted concrete block wall; a corner near a bank of windows with a nondescript brown sofa.

A clue to what Murray Guy’s photographs mean is provided by photographic copies of an article from a Wisconsin newspaper and of a news photograph of a crowd of agitated-looking young people, both from 1967. They refer to an anti-Vietnam War demonstration at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in which students protested the presence on campus of recruiters for Dow Chemical, the napalm manufacturer. The newspaper report describes how the demonstration turned into a bloody melee when police with nightsticks broke it up.

(Kimberley) Coonts is more involved in the graffiti world than ever. For the past three years, she hosted a graffiti wall for local artists, or “writers” as they are often called, as part of radio station WSUM’s Party in the Park, a festival at James Madison Park.

When Party in the Park moved to Memorial Union this year because of funding, renaming itself as Snake on the Lake, Coonts was dismayed that there would be no room for her wall at the festival. The wall, made from reinforced plywood, had expanded during its years as part of Party in the Park from 45 feet to 80 feet.

Rather than give up, though, Coonts — normally a Madison nightclub promoter — decided to give the wall its own event, Kilroy’s Art in the Park.

SANTA BARBARA — The title of Olivier Messiaen’s “Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus” does not translate easily into English. A common version is “Twenty Gazes Upon the Child Jesus.” But “regards” also implies “aspects” or “contemplations.” One translator, apparently feeling that any suggestion of corporeality would be misleading, simply supplied ellipses for “regards.” After all, Messiaen’s mystical music invites out-of-body experiences.

That was certainly the effect of Christopher Taylor’s spellbinding performance of the work Wednesday night in a new, intimate space at the Music Academy of the West.

Quick, name a 1950s TV show. If you said “Howdy Doody” or “Leave it to Beaver,” time to get your consciousness expanded.

What about “World of Giants,” a pilot about a six-inch-tall spy? Or “East Side, West Side,” a series starring George C. Scott as a social worker in a New York City ghetto?

Look no further than 4070 Vilas Hall, 821 University Ave., on the UW campus. That’s where you can find Cinematheque shows on Thursday and Friday evenings throughout the summer. For the 10th year now, Cinematheque has been plumbing the archives of the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research (WCFTR) to bring free screenings of the finest, wackiest or most ground-breaking cinema in its original form.

Printmaking is among the most resolutely contradictory of the contemporary arts. It ‘s premised on archaic technology (woodblocks 1,300 years old have been recovered in Korea), but is constantly being rethought, re-tooled and expanded.

The finished product is inherently reproducible, but the technique is used to emphasize the hand wrought and unique. Accomplished artists who have gained fame for work in other media return to the form again and again, yet few who are primarily printmakers can achieve prominence.

Poet, playwright and political activist Amiri Baraka will open the third annual Spoken Word and Hip-Hop Educator’s Institute with a special reading Monday night at the Union Theater on the University of Wisconsin campus.

Born Leroi Jones in 1934 in Newark, N.J., Baraka is the author of more than 40 books and was the founder of the Black Arts Movement in Harlem in the 1960s.

When Andy Moore turned 50 last year, he asked his wife and kids to give him a banjo.
On Wednesday, Moore said: “Is there any better definition of a midlife crisis than learning to play the banjo? ”

Moore is actually too busy to have a midlife crisis. While he continues as producer of “Here and Now, ” Wisconsin Public Television ‘s weekly public affairs program, Moore earlier this year launched a weekly music show, the “30 Minute Music Hour, ” a great name that was dreamed up by Pat MacDonald, who also happened to be the show ‘s first guest.

Author: Jordan Ellenberg is an associate professor of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of â??The Grasshopper King,â? a novel.

The ninth annual Madison Early Music Festival is pushing the definition of “early” music a few years later.
By featuring the music of George Frideric Handel, all of whose works date after 1705, the festival straddles the cusp of “modernity.” The musicians are playing Handel’s music, but like all the performances at the weeklong festival, they’re playing it on the baroque instruments for which it was written.

IN COMMUNITY LIFE, a short story by Lorrie Moore, a woman librarian looks around and realises that compared with her boyfriend’s social group, her friends are all a bit wonky. They say sour things in quiet voices and make terrible wardrobe decisions. They are “delicate and territorial, intellectual, and physically unwell” but, writes Moore, “these were the people she liked: the kind you couldn’t really live with”. She might be describing her characters in general, who, even when they do find someone to live with, tend to wince at everything they say and then show them up in public.

From Concerts on the Square to Opera in the Park, free summertime arts opportunities abound in Madison. Now, for the second year, dance is on tap.

More than 220 high school, college and professional dancers, teachers and choreographers from around the world have come to Madison this month for the UW-Madison Dance Program’s Summer Dance Institute. The event, which started June 16, is concluding this week with a series of free public concerts beginning Thursday, June 26, in historic Lathrop Hall.

It’s confirmed: Rapper Kanye West will be in Madison on July 26 for the 2008 Industry Meltdown Midwest Music Summit. But he’s not performing. That’s what Greg Doby, the Summit’s organizer, has to keep telling people as he’s fielded calls from all over the country and Canada since confirming West’s visit last week.

Instead, West will be speaking at a 2 p.m. panel discussion about “The Message in the Music.” It’s part of the Summit’s broader goal to bring urban music leaders together to network and talk about the future of the industry in the Midwest.

Farrah Fawcett just didn’t do it for Sean Flyr. He tried, he really tried. That icon of ’70s gorgeousness did nothing for the teenage Flyr as he stared at that famous poster hoping it would thrill him just a little.

It didn’t. And that’s when he knew.

Flyr, 43, of Madison, is one of 16 people telling just that kind of story on the Cinemax documentary “When I Knew,” which airs at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday. The film features men and women who recall the moment in their lives — as kids, high schoolers or grown adults — when they realized they were gay. It is also airing on Cinemax on Demand throughout the month.

Artist Tom Askman has done many sculptures around the country and has sat and watched people look at public art. What he’s discovered is that most people just walk right by.

Airports often have a lot of public art, commissioned at high prices, and maybe one person out of 500 might notice the artwork, he said.

“There is nothing engaging enough in the art to pull them off their conceptual trap,” said Askman, who in all likelihood will design and install Madison’s next major piece of public art, a high-profile water feature at Frances Plaza, which is part of the State Street Design Project.

….The sculpture is of two bronze cones leaning toward each other with six waterspouts crisscrossing from cone to cone. There will be multicolored LEDs in the middle that will shine up and illuminate the water overhead.

It’s a familiar scene to Bonnie Greene: A boy takes a crumpled dollar bill out of his pocket and hands it to her.

That weekly payment is all some low-income families can afford in exchange for lessons and the loan of a violin. Through Music Makers, a program Greene founded to bring music into the lives of low-income children from several of Madison’s neighborhoods, that’s all that is needed.

….Greene also has received instructional help from longtime friend and peer Janet Jensen, a professor of string pedagogy and associate director of the School of Music at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Twice a week, Jensen brings UW music students to Centro Hispano to provide lessons for Music Makers students. Jensen said the impact of Music Makers is felt on many levels by children and teachers alike.

In “Community Life”, a short story by Lorrie Moore, a woman librarian looks around and realises that compared to her boyfriend’s social group, her friends are all a bit wonky. They say sour things in quiet voices and make terrible wardrobe decisions. They are “delicate and territorial, intellectual, and physically unwell” but, writes Moore, “these were the people she liked: the kind you couldn’t really live with”. She might be describing her characters in general, who, even when they do find someone to live with, tend to wince at everything they say and then show them up in public.

So many people work on big-budget summer movies these days that the closing credits seem to run longer than the actual movie.

But local audience members who go see the new DreamWorks animated action-comedy “Kung Fu Panda” that opens Friday might want to stay in their seats as the names roll by, because they may see two names they recognize.

Matt Wang and Ben Lishka are Madison natives who both worked on “Panda” for DreamWorks Animation.

By all accounts, she’s gorgeous, intelligent, able to attract money and â?? just in case the need arises â?? she can also charm snakes.

She is the water spirit Mami Wata, a fabled mermaid-like deity whose roots date back to the 15th century and who remains a revered figure throughout much of Africa. In English, her name translates to Mother Water.

The exhibition was developed by curator Henry John Drewal, an art history and Afro-American studies professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Even a rising young star on the Food Network met her culinary match when she tried to grill an octopus.

“It was tough as a tire,” said Mary Nolan, a 2004 University of Wisconsin-Madison journalism graduate, and host of the new series, “Chic & Easy,” which airs locally at 8:30 a.m. on Sundays on the Food Network, which Charter subscribers can find on Ch. 38.

Plenty of chefs have their own kitchen disaster stories, but fortunately for Nolan, she’s had a string of exciting successes lately.

Sarah Ripp, 33, can barely believe she was cast as an extra in “Public Enemies.” Ripp, an undergraduate adviser and outreach coordinator at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, spent a glorious day in May in the company of Billy Crudup and Christian Bale. Actually, most of it was spent getting ready for a few moments charged by the star power.

Catherine Kautsky, a well-known pianist who teaches at the University of Wisconsin School of Music, is leaving the UW after six years to return to Lawrence University in Appleton.

Kautsky, a specialist in French music, has also been known for creating outreach programs that saw her students perform in schools, prisons, retirement centers and hospitals. She also served as chair of the piano department.

Of the four young American writers who emerged in the mid-1980s (the others being McInerney, Easton Ellis and Janowitz), Lorrie Moore certainly had the strongest gift and the least narcissism. Yet in her short stories, that gift is rather upstaged and overruled by a literary personality which makes a fetish of its quirkiness.

Stepping off the elevator in the Wisconsin State Capitol, one almost feels out of place among the buildingâ??s current occupants, who are all dressed in 1930s attire with hair so slick it reflects the light. In the next room over, actor Billy Crudup, playing FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover, is asking a committee for more appropriations for his â??G-men,â? clearly restraining the emotion that threatens to overtake him at any second. Suddenly, the meeting is over, and Crudup and his men, angry at the decision, storm out of the room.

Dear Editor: As your thought-provoking piece about the Chazen Museum’s “Ringmaster” display points out, even P.T. Barnum couldn’t convince today’s public that using animals in circuses is still acceptable.

The days of boxing up animals and carting them from city to city, beating them until they perform silly tricks, and tearing apart animal families and friends in the name of “entertainment” are coming to an end.

The Chazen Museum should keep the models and historic displays, because soon, it will be the only reminder of the cruel and unethical use of animals in circuses.

Spring Gallery Night, Madison’s semi-annual celebration of the visual arts organized by the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, returns this Friday, May 2, from 5 to 9 p.m., with a record-breaking 58 venues participating.

Art and craft lovers can enjoy an evening filled with grand openings, benefits, free dance lessons, discounts on purchases and new works of art on display across the city. The evening offers a unique opportunity to meet artists and view their latest works.

On Sunday two giants of the Madison arts scene come together. The University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music will stage a concert at the Overture Center for the Arts. The unusual event celebrates composer Ralph Vaughan Williams.

“The School of Music is very excited about our upcoming opportunity to perform in Madison ‘s world-class new facilities, ” says Prof. John Schaffer, the school ‘s director. “It is rare that our students have the opportunity to perform in such a venue where they get to experience first hand the power of music-making in such spaces. “

Confronted with a potential battle scene fraught with danger, Ashley Dockry and Bonnie Gleicher devised a startling strategy.

“Let’s use our sex appeal,” Dockry said to Gleicher. The duo sensually strutted their way toward the enemy position, exaggerating poses and movements like fashion models on a runway.

When shots rang out, the mood changed instantly. They dove for cover, quickly plotted an attack, then jumped out and ran forward, firing at the enemy. It was all over in perhaps two minutes.

But no blood was spilled, and there were no guns or enemy warriors. The “shots” were merely shouted “bang-bangs.” It was all part of Prof. Tony Simotes’ theater class at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where students are learning to act as motion capture performers for video games.

Acting artistic director Trevin Gay announced a new slate of plays that includes only two shows from Corley’s original list: the Lerner and Lowe musical “My Fair Lady” and “The Greeks,” stories adapted from Euripides and Homer, to be produced in collaboration with the UW-Madison department of theatre and drama.

Intense.

Lots of words describe the UW Dance Program’s spring concert — long, complex, diverse — but intense might be the best word for Thursday night’s performance at Lathrop Hall.

The two-hour concert entitled “Spring: A New Season, a Renewed Reason to Dance,” was marked by eight pieces, seven of them premieres. It surpassed expectations in the quality of its entire package, including choreography, dancing, music and lighting and other stage effects.

Oscar-winning producer Walter Mirisch will not be attending events in his honor scheduled for this weekend at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Mirisch, a 1942 UW-Madison graduate, canceled because of illness. A reception planned for Friday afternoon has been canceled, but a free screening of Mirisch’s Oscar-winning film “In the Heat of the Night” will be shown as planned at 7:30 p.m. at UW Cinematheque.

“Public Enemies” stars Depp as Dillinger, whose crime spree ended when he was shot to death in Chicago by FBI agents on July 22, 1934. It is directed and produced by UW-Madison graduate Michael Mann, and co-stars Bale as FBI agent Melvin Purvis and recent Oscar-winner Cotillard as Depp’s love interest.

The circus is perhaps one of the more underrepresented motifs in art, at least contemporarily. Perhaps this is because of the fear of clowns most people claim to have or just that the circus itself has declined in popularity in recent decades. Yet whatever the case, the new two-part exhibit â??Circus at the Chazenâ? at the Chazen Museum of Art should erase both those realities simultaneously.

The party is history.

The future calls.

Last year, as it marked its 80th birthday with concerts and gala events, the UW dance program’s resurgence was palpable.

Now, the nation’s oldest university dance school is intent on a course that faculty hope will keep lifting it to past heights.

The program has gone through a long period of transition. We are starting to get onto solid ground again,” said Professor Li Chiao-Ping. “I am excited about the sense of renewed vitality.”

“Stella! Stellllllla!”

It’s hard not to smile. Tennessee Williams’ iconic “A Streetcar Named Desire” no longer shocks as it once did, although the impact is still stronger on stage than in the censored 1951 film that made a star of Marlon Brando. University Theatre’s excellent new production revives the outrage.

â??Incredibly hot liquid, molten, soupy stuffâ? is more likely to evoke images of volcanic eruptions or other geologically destructive forces than the colorful, delicate artwork that Audrey Handler is actually describing here.

It’s spring, and the circus is coming to town — in the form of two new art shows that will open Saturday at the University of Wisconsin’s Chazen Museum of Art, 800 University Ave.

The shows are “Ringmaster: Judy Onofrio and the Art of the Circus” in the large Brittingham Galleries VI and VII and “Harry A. Atwell: Circus Photographer” in the smaller Mayer Gallery. Both exhibitions will be on view through June 29. Admission is free and open to the public.

The Chazen will also host a special weekend of circus celebrations, featuring performers, music and food, on May 9 and 10.

Ladies and gentlemen: Step right up! And see the ah-MAZ-ing transformation of a quiet campus art museum into a big top so small you won’t believe your eyes!