This Van Gogh has two ears. Two big, floppy ears. He’s not an artist, but a dog, a 4-year-old, 75-pound mix of Labrador retriever and Chesapeake Bay retriever.
Van Gogh is also the constant companion of James Bohnen, the former teacher and actor who is directing the University Theatre’s current production of Anton Chekhov’s classic play “Three Sisters.”
The room was almost silent, completely absent of all sounds typical of a university classroom setting. There were no backpack zippers. No dropping lecture trays. No papers shuffling. Instead the instructorâ??s sole voice at the front of the room was heard over the heavy exhaling of her 10 students dressed in leotards, tights and tank tops.
As choreographer Alwin Nikolais traveled through life, debris and ideas stuck to him like a dancing bear drenched in honey. He would pick off the best fragments and shape them into what he called total dance theater. He would roar musically, creating his own funky, jazzy electronic music scores.
….The Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company will present a multimedia dance concert of Nikolais’ works at 8 p.m. Friday in the Wisconsin Union Theater.
….It is also a celebration of the pioneering UW-Madison dance program’s 80th anniversary. The UW’s connection to Nikolais has several important threads.
WASHINGTON (AP) – Cracking down on college students, the music industry is sending thousands more complaints to top universities this school year than it did last year as it targets music illegally downloaded over campus computer networks.
A few schools, including Ohio and Purdue universities, already have received more than 1,000 complaints accusing individual students since last fall — significant increases over the past school year. For students who are caught, punishments vary from e-mail warnings to semester-long suspensions from classes.
What is hip-hop theater?
The medium, which encompasses elements of spoken word, music and dance, is so new that even those who practice it have a hard time defining it. This spring, University of Wisconsin-Madison students will join with some of the top performers in the evolving art form to do just that.
“It’s so fresh and dynamic that the architects are just kind of figuring out what it is,” says Willie Ney, director of the UW Multicultural Arts Initiative.
A state Senate committee is expected to approve legislation today in an effort to further attract the lucrative film production industry to Wisconsin later this year.
Whatâ??s hip-hop to you? If itâ??s just police incidents outside Club Majestic and songs with vile lyrics set to pounding bass beats, youâ??ll be surprised to learn that the UW Arts Instituteâ??s artist in residence this spring is Marc Bamuthi Joseph, a leader in the field of hip-hop theater.
In three decades, hip-hopâ??s grown way beyond its origins as the sound of rebellious black youth. Among its diverse legions are, yes, macho thugs touting guns and drugs, but also social
activists and multi-genre artists bearing transformative messages.
Following Mondayâ??s resignation of the University of Wisconsin assistant marching band director recently cleared of sexual harassment allegations, students and faculty said they are already looking to move on.
Q: What exactly is hip- hop?
A: Hip-hop got its start in the South Bronx during the mid-1970s, says Craig Werner, a UW-Madison professor of Afro-American Studies and noted popular music historian.
A professor at the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha will have her play on racism come to life this spring in conjunction with a campus program.
If you’re looking to take lessons or participate in an art project, the Memorial Union’s Craftshop has launched a free program this semester that should appeal to a large number of people.
Name: Tony Simotes
Age: 55
Occupation: University Theatre director, professional actor, UW-Madison associate professor who teaches acting and stage fighting
\ Originally, I wanted to be a drummer. When I was kid, I would bang on coffee cans with pencils in our grocery store, driving my parents crazy. My prayers were answered at age nine and I joined the school band. From there it was a short leap to concert band, high school marching band and rock and roll. At 16 I landed a job with a rock and roll tour — “Shindig 67!” as a side drummer and played backup to Del Shannon and others. Next came speech class where I was cast in a high school play and realized what I wanted to do. I loved the process and loved being in the theater.
After fundraising and gathering support since the late 1990s, Chazen Museum supporters received their first glimpse Thursday night of a 62,000-square foot expansion project.
Architect Rodolfo Machado likes what he sees of the University of Wisconsin’s Chazen Museum of Art.
What he sees in his architectural dreams will determine the shape of the museum’s new expansion.
That structure will double the size of the state’s second-largest art museum. And it may turn what was considered a crown jewel building on the UW-Madison campus into something far more magnificent.
Another Saturday night and I ain’t got nobody/ I’ve got some money ’cause I just got paid/ Now, how I wish I had someone to talk to/ I’m in an awful way …
It came to him unbidden, that song from his college days. Only now it meant something completely different. There was a man on a stretcher before him, draped in a poncho. Blood dripped off the end of the stretcher, the only sign of life from a lifeless body. It was 1967, but Howard Sherpe had already decided that the war in Vietnam was pointless, that the dead man before him had died for nothing.
….At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, scholar Craig Werner and Vietnam vet Doug Bradley have found that music is a highway into veterans’ memories of the war.
A star burst of yellow glass cones hanging from an oak tree makes an unlikely forest chandelier. Red reeds rise from the cactus garden. And where the macaws fly low, the pink crags are piled like a massive tower of rock candy.
Dale Chihuly’s work has transformed the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, adding spheres of multicolored glass to ponds where lily pads once floated alone and kaleidoscopic columns to patches of green. The reach of the world’s premier glassblower extends far beyond the cycads and palms of Coral Gables, though, to the Louvre and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to Jerusalem and to Seoul.
Jad Adams follows Deborah Blum as she ventures into the world of Victorian mediums and psychics. A review of Ghost Hunters.
Buoyed by a warm audience reception, Li Chiao-Ping seemed happy to be home.
The UW-Madison dance professor, who last performed here in May before taking a leave of absence to teach at Mills College in Oakland, Calif., was all smiles as she took her bows Thursday night.
One of America’s most acclaimed architectural firms – Machado and Silvetti Associates of Boston – has been chosen by the state of Wisconsin to design the expansion to the Chazen Museum of Art at 800 University Ave.
The award-winning firm, which has designed many museums, will work on the 62,000-square-foot project in association with Milwaukee-based Continuum Architects and Planners.
Bad news, Madison film fans. The UW Cinematheque has passed on the chance to show the original cut of French director Jacques Rivette’s “Out 1,” just because it’s over 12 hours long.
You laugh, but when the free on-campus film series showed Bela Tarr’s “Satantango,” which clocks in at a brisk 8 hours, 45 people showed up to see it. Perhaps more impressively, all but eight of them were still there when it was over.
Rodney gets respect for his role as a wisecracking millionaire businessman who attends college (UW- Madison, standing in for fictional Grand Lakes University) to help his struggling son.
UW-Madison�s on-campus gallery, The Chazen Museum of Art, announced Monday the team of architects chosen by the state who will design a 62,000 square foot expansion plan, funded by a $20 million gift from the Chazen family in May 2005.
….From an upcoming Chazen Museum exhibit on Pompeii to the HBO series “Rome” to enrollment in Greek language classes at the UW, one thing is clear: The classics are hot these days.
(Several UW-Madison professors and a student are quoted in this article.)
Novelist Philip Roth is still going strong, with last year’s “Everyman” and 2005’s “The Plot Against America” hitting many best-of lists. The Classic Book and Movie Club is offering an opportunity to revisit one of his classics, “Goodbye, Columbus,” both on the page and on the screen.
At 1:30 p.m. Sunday, there will be a free showing of the 1969 adaptation of the film, starring Richard Benjamin and Ali MacGraw, at the Wisconsin Historical Society headquarters, 816 State St. After the film, UW English professor Thomas Schaub will talk about the book and the film.
Former Overture Center director Michael Goldberg has been named the first executive director of the Coronado Performing Arts Center in Rockford, Ill.
The year was 1992. Officials the University of Wisconsin’s Elvehjem Museum of Art, now called the Chazen Museum of Art, had been asked by curators in Japan if they could borrow some of the UW museum’s 2,000 woodblock prints by the Japanese artist Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858) for a show of his art work in his native Japan.
In turn, Elvehjem officials asked the Japanese what it would take to raise their already world-class collection of Hiroshige prints to an even higher level.
So began a kind of artistic detective story that reached its climax this fall.
Here is how you know the new independent film currently shooting in Madison is going to be good.
The hero, who attended UW-Madison and has gone on to become famous – though disillusioned – as a journalist, comes back to Madison looking for some of the idealism and hope that once fueled him, and what’s the first thing he does?
He goes to the Plaza. How many UW-Madison alumni have found their way back to the Plaza over the years? The answer is certainly in the thousands.
(Some of the “Madison” scenes will be filmed on campus.)
Quoted: Andrew Taylor, director of the Bolz Center for Arts Administration at the UW-Madison School of Business.
It was Dale Chihuly, the superstar glass artist, who made famous the concept of nestling stunning glassworks among the living masterpieces of a botanical garden.But it took Grant Zukowski to make it happen in Madison.
Quoted: Willie Ney, director of the UW Multicultural Arts Initiative.
Meg Hamel: Film Festival director loses the “in terim” label
As interim director of the Wisconsin Film Festival, Meg Hamel helped fill 26,000 seats and show 177 films on 10 screens in 2006.
At the ninth annual festival in April, it will all come down to Hamel, who is now the event’s permanent director.
This year’s annual Musician of the Year, the fifth to be awarded by this column, goes to the University of Wisconsin’s Pro Arte String Quartet.
It’s probably long overdue, but that’s how these things go, especially in the world of journalism, where current events often overshadow quieter long-term efforts. What isn’t in doubt is the quality of the playing and programming that this venerable ensemble brings to its concerts.
….Honorable Mention for this year’s Musician of the Year honor goes to UW-Madison music students….
Think of them as the museum equivalent of “The Nutcracker,”Ã? a holiday attraction meant to please children and adults, novices and specialists.
The first thing you notice about the 60 Russian lacquer boxes is their size and their color. These tiny containers, which are just a few inches in dimension, seem incongruously small for a land as large as Russia, which spans 11 time zones. And the bright colors — rich reds, greens and golds — seem out of place for a country often associated with drabness and wintery white or gray.
But there they are, sitting in the small second-floor Mayer Gallery of the University of Wisconsin’s Chazen Museum of Art, 800 University Ave., through Jan. 14.
Michael Goldberg has resigned from the Overture Center for the Arts, the $205 million complex in downtown Madison that is the state’s largest arts presenter.
Goldberg, who has been the center’s interim director, announced his resignation Tuesday night in a letter to the Madison Cultural Arts District board, which oversees the operations of the center.
LOS ANGELES (Kyodo) 2006 saw the completion of two projects that challenge perceptions about Japanese soldiers and World War II.
With the June publication of cultural anthropologist Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney’s book “Kamikaze Diaries: Reflections of Japanese Student Soldiers” and the premiere of Clint Eastwood’s film “Letters from Iwo Jima,” the image of Japanese soldiers created in the milieu of World War II propaganda will receive a long-overdue makeover.
Recent works focusing on the personal writings of the Japanese who died for their country provide Americans a chance to learn, perhaps for the first time, who these soldiers actually were.
Ohnuki-Tierney, a Japanese native and a professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, came across the letters of Japanese “tokkotai” (special attack corps) pilots — men assigned to suicide missions — while doing research for a book about the use of symbolism and nationalism in Japanese military history.
From its opening trumpet fanfare to its closing solo soprano voice, Zoltan Kodaly’s “Te Deum” is a riveting, highly dramatic and sometimes showy composition that pulls no musical punches.
It also proved a brilliant showcase for this weekend’s performances by the University of Wisconsin Choral Union and Chamber Orchestra, one that earned cheers and a standing ovation from its Sunday audience.
The university announced plans to earmark an additional $500,000 annually for UW-Madison arts and humanities programs Thursday.
ââ?¬Å?The Arts and Humanities Initiative will strengthen our already rich menu of offerings and provide a foundation for future excellence,ââ?¬Â UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley said in a university statement. ââ?¬Å?Itââ?¬â?¢s a way to underscore our continuing commitment to arts and humanities education and to our students.ââ?¬Â
In an effort to support the arts and humanities programs at the University of Wisconsin, university officials Thursday announced a new, annual $500,000 funding initiative.
“Does art imitate nature, as Aristotle said? Or does nature imitate art, as Oscar Wilde said?
The answer, at least according to a new show of Japanese, British and American color woodcuts that opens this weekend at the University of Wisconsin’s Chazen Museum of Art, is that art imitates other art.
In this day and age, when your Web site crashes due to heavy traffic, you know you’re doing something right.
Such was the case with University of Wisconsin-Madison senior Danny Tenenbaum, who is planning the first Madison Pop Festival on Friday and Saturday at the Memorial Union.
Fourteen acts will play across three stages, and best of all, the entire event is free to the public and open to all ages. (Organizers suggest donating $20 to a favorite charity.)
….Those who want to see “The Madison Kid” filmed in Madison have mobilized one last push to see if they can get state government to change the date of implementation of the tax incentives to Jan. 1, 2007. As part of that effort, Hellmuth has written an op-ed piece that will be offered to numerous papers in the state.
In his piece, Hellmuth makes both a logical and passionate case for moving the date so “The Madison Kid” can be filmed here. He stresses the economic benefits, as well as the karmic importance of having it shot in Madison.
It may work. But I have an idea that will work even better. It’s this: Promise them all a role in the movie! Everyone wants to be in the movies, especially legislators….
If you think retailers are fighting it out for buyers this holiday season, consider the box-office battle for live theater audiences in the Madison area.
Over at the University Of Wisconsin School of Music, and at Edgewood College too, the fall semester is busily finishing up and winding down to the holidays just exactly as you would expect: with lots of singing and brass playing.
Combining books and CDs with tickets to a live performance makes a great holiday gift based on companionship.
Holidays are a good time to establish new ties and reaffirm old ties, to feel less isolated from others, from the culture around us, and from ourselves and our own interests.
Those who want to develop a film industry in Wisconsin are back for the sequel and are working to bump up the effective date of a package of tax incentives intended to lure movie, television and commercial projects here.
Sen. Ted Kanavas (R-Brookfield) said he’s preparing two bills that aim to put the tax credits in effect earlier than the current start date of Jan. 1, 2008.
WHOEVER SAID there is no business but show business was onto something.
Stanley Kutler, the esteemed U.S. historian who lives in Madison, was sipping tea on the far west side Monday afternoon and thinking about something his late, great colleague in the UW history department, George Mosse, used to say about being a professor.
“We don’t teach,” Mosse said. “We perform.”
Taking the next step in the UW-Madison Campus Master Plan, the Chazen Museum of Art held its campaign kick-off Friday evening for its forthcoming expansion.
The Chazen, 800 University Ave., will take over the space currently occupied by the Alfred Walter Peterson Building, 750 University Ave.
This is in response to Jacob Stockinger’s Oct. 12 column in Rhythm. In it, he described the Madison Symphony Orchestra concert that featured bassist Edgar Meyer. He shared his thoughts and predictions about the pieces that were to be performed and his expectations for the audience.
Congratulations to everyone involved in the 2006 Wisconsin CowParade!
The corporate sponsors gave so many talented artists the opportunity to create wonderful creatures that the entire community has enjoyed over the past few months. The attendees and bidders at Friday’s auction provided tremendous support for the American Family Children’s Hospital and other area nonprofits groups.
“Oh my gosh, yes, Monroe Street has changed,” Hank Reese acknowledges. “But is it really such a bad thing?”
It is 10:55 on a recent midweek morning, and the 81-year-old Reese, dapper as ever in a powder blue shirt and beige cardigan sweater, is standing in the same spot where he has spent much of the last 59 years – behind the cashier counter at Mickies Dairy Bar, the most popular diner this city has ever known.
He is also giving me his own no-holds-barred perspective on the vast transformation that continues to take place in the neighborhood southwest of Camp Randall Stadium.
They are small and colorful, detailed and exotic.
What’s more, these lacquered boxes made of papier-mache tell stories and fairy tales, if you know how to read them and have a background in Russian folklore and literature.
“Russian Lacquer Boxes: A Narrative Tradition from the Frederick Seibold Collection” will go on view Friday at the University of Wisconsin’s Chazen Museum of Art, 800 University Ave. The exhibit will run in the Mayer Gallery through Jan. 14.
Arsenio Cicero came to Madison from Havana seven years ago, and his life has not been the same.
“I had two lives, one before in Cuba and one studying here,” he said.
You could think of filmmaker Saul Landau as the University of Wisconsin’s answer to Noam Chomsky, the controversial East Coast public intellectual and social activist who was recently praised, to the outrage of both Republicans and Democrats, at the United Nations by the populist and left-wing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
The 70-year-old Landau, who has just donated his life’s work to the UW, will be honored this week at the University of Wisconsin’s seventh annual Cinefest, a free film celebration of Latino culture, which will run from Thursday through Sunday.
It isn�t everyday a University of Wisconsin student organization celebrates its 10th anniversary at a popular downtown venue in front of more than 1,000 devoted fans.
CowParade Wisconsin raised more than $363,500 for a new University of Wisconsin hospital at an auction Friday, turning profits from the temporary, colorful cow display into a permanent part of campus.
The real center of Ghost Hunters is not, as its subtitle suggests, William James, the American pioneer in psychology and researcher in the paranormal, but Leonora Piper, a Boston housewife and mother and paranormal phenomenon. Her astounding capacities as a medium captured the attention, and often the approbation, of not only James but a crowd of 19th-century scientists.
When Elizabeth Zimmermann came to the U.S. from England in 1937 with her German-born, brewmaster husband, she passed the time on the ship from Southhampton to New York by knitting en route.
It was just the beginning of a revolutionary journey.
Wisconsin’s CowParade auction raised $363,500 from the 44 cows sold in a four-hour silent and live auction at the Alliant Center on Friday.
MADISON, Wis. — Election news has proliferated just about every public arena in recent months and now it has made its way to a local stage.A group of students moved election coverage into a format that is both new and old in a project called “A Living Newspaper,” WISC-TV reported.It was something created during the Great Depression by the Federal Theater Project to bring awareness to controversal issues by having actors write and present monologues and vignettes from news coverage. Now, a group of Universiyt of Wisconsin theater students are hoping to use their acting craft in the same way — to inform.
Habib Koite returned to Madison on Sunday and this time the musician from Mali brought along a few friends.
Together they rocked a capacity crowd at the Wisconsin Union Theater like it’s never been rocked before.
