Category: Arts & Humanities

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!

MADISON, Wis. — Movie fans turned out in force this past weekend to view a smorgasbord of independent films and world cinema at the 10th annual Wisconsin Film Festival in downtown Madison.

In its 10th year, the festival, which ran from April 3-6, continued to build on its excellent tradition and offered another strong lineup of diverse film offerings. More than 200 films were screened during the festival.

When director Stuart Gordon went to college here back in the mid-1960s, the Orpheum Theatre was as much a classroom for him as any room on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.

And the unrest he saw in the streets was reflected in the rule-breaking films he saw up on the flickering screen, from “Bonnie and Clyde” to “The Wild Bunch” to “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

“There was a revolution going on out in the streets, and there was a revolution going on right here on this screen,” Gordon told an Orpheum audience Saturday night at the 10th annual Wisconsin Film Festival. He and his buddies would often head straight to a friend’s apartment next door after a screening and stay up all night talking about the movie they had just seen.

The streets may be calmer now — really crowded, given the nice weather over the weekend, but calmer — but the challenging films and the post-show discussions continued as the film festival wrapped up its first decade.

The exquisitely rendered independent dramas and powerfully honest documentaries are all well and good, but what do Wisconsin Film Festival audiences really want to see up on the big screen?

Simple. They want more car chases and more Canadians.

At least, that’s the lesson that festival director Meg Hamel could take away from Friday’s screening of the tongue-in-cheek action comedy “Bon Cop, Bad Cop,” which drew a sold-out crowd of some 1,500 to pack the Orpheum Theatre. Hamel told the crowd that it was the largest for the festival in years.

They are among the UW-Madison’s very best.

They may not get the rah-rah cheers, but for decades they’ve competed, too, winning prizes and honors along the way. The Wisconsin Union’s 80th annual Student Art Show opens this evening.

It’s not the best-known UW tradition, but the juried exhibition is older than the Field House, older even than Bucky Badger. This year the excellence of more than 40 student artists will be celebrated.

If a director left the Wisconsin Film Festival a dollar richer than when he arrived, he probably found the bill lying in the street.

The festival, celebrating its 10th year beginning today, has never been about filmmakers trying to secure big distribution deals or move that next rung up the career ladder. It’s been about audiences, programmers and filmmakers who appreciate challenging and eclectic movies coming together in the dark for a few days.

But in spite of that spirit, or maybe because of it, the Wisconsin Film Festival has hosted some films and filmmakers who went on to achieve some real notoriety beyond the festival.

It’s a busy week at the UW, and will be from now on, now that the second semester is winding up toward its end.

BACK TO EUROPE: Last week, the destination was Vienna. This week, it’s Paris.

On Saturday at 8 p.m. in Mills Hall, various UW faculty members from music and literature will present another concert in the European Capitals series: “La Belle Paris.”

SOUTH KINGSTOWN, R.I. — A traveling exhibit that will visit the University of Wisconsin-Madison this fall chronicles how the Nazis persecuted tens of thousands of gay men.

The exhibit from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum uses photographs, pictures and artwork to document the horrors. It’s now at the University of Rhode Island.

UW-Madison freshman Adam Levin is familiar with the difficulties of educating people about hip-hop, especially on a predominantly white college campus.

Using the term “hip-hop theater” is particularly confusing to audiences who are unfamiliar with the elements of the genre.

“People think we’re rapping Shakespeare,” he said.

Stuart Gordon likes to get a rise out of people.

And if it involves blood and guts, so much the better.

“Shocking people, I think, is something that I enjoy, ” says Gordon, 60, director of the horror thriller “Stuck ” being screened Saturday night at the 10th annual Wisconsin Film Festival. “I like to do things that get people ‘s blood running and their hearts beating. “

Li Chiao-Ping’s choreography has unassuming, understated grace, with moves that waft of simplicity but actually require a dancer to draw on a deep well of confident, athletic technique.

Her message, often expressed verbally in tandem with moves that mirror the emotion of the moment, can be sharp. But it’s also punctuated with frequent, poignant humor.

“Dancing Between the Lines,” a two-hour collection of seven works presented Thursday night at the Overture Center’s Promenade Hall, offered much to ponder in body and soul.