The Kreisler Trio will present a concert of works by Mozart, Beethoven, and Hummel–performed on period instruments–on Sunday evening, October 20, at 8 PM in Dalton Theatre of the Light Fine Arts Building on the Kalamazoo College campus. The event is sponsored by the Kalamazoo College Department of Music; admission is free.
The Kreisler Trio was founded in the Royal Conservatory of the Hague and brings together three musicians from around the world: Keyboardist Shin Hwang, a prize-winner of the 1st International Westfield Fortepiano Competition; Violinist Yuki Horiuchi, a graduate of the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music and performer with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra; and cellist Fernando Santiago García, a graduate of the Koninkljk Conservatorium in The Hague and member of the European Union Youth Orchestra and the Gustav Mahler Academy in Bolzano.
For their concert at Kalamazoo College, the Trio has programmed sonatas by Mozart (for solo fortepiano and for violin and fortepiano), and trios by Beethoven and Hummel.
K on the Art Hop
October 4, 2013 / 5-8 p.m.
“What the Dickens: Victorian England in the A.M. Todd Rare Book Room” A.M. Todd Rare Book Room
Upjohn Library Commons — 3rd Floor
England was an incredibly rich and diverse society during the reign of Queen Victoria. Authors of the era included Charles Dickens, the Brownings, Oscar Wilde, and John Ruskin. Artists such as James McNeill Whistler, William Blake, William Morris, and Aubrey Beardsley all were creating works in very different styles. Charles Darwin completed his voyage on the H.M.S. Beagle and began to develop controversial theories on evolution. Phrenology, physiognomy, and séances all were popular. It also was an era of collecting, following the age of exploration. Travelers were covering the globe to bring back to England rare and exotic plants and animals. Examples of these various aspects of the Victorian Era are included in the “What the Dickens: Victorian England in the A.M. Todd Rare Book Room.”
Can′t attend Art Hop? “What the Dickens” exhibit remains on display through Nov. 26 (closed Nov. 4-17), Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, 1-3 p.m. or by appointment. Call Paul Smithson, 269-337-7147.
Welcome back, Orange and Black, on October 18-20. Homecoming registration is open NOW! Please check out the schedule of events to view all of the opportunities to connect. Highlights from the weekend will include: reunion activities for the classes of 1963, 1968, 1973, 1978, 1983, 1988, 1993, 1998, 2003, 2008 (as well as special gatherings for the Class of 2013 and emeriti alumni); a student film festival featuring works created in K’s introductory and advanced documentary film production classes; family friendly activities on the Quad, featuring the Fresh Food Fairy, Cirque Du K, and the College’s three a cappella groups; the Hornet football game vs. the Albion Britons at the new Kalamazoo College Athletic Field Complex; and an opportunity to tell your K story or record a favorite memory at the Story Zoo booth in the library. There is so much to share, and alumni relations staff members are looking forward to seeing you and your family. Kalamazoo area hotels are filling up fast so please do not forget to book your hotel and mention “Kalamazoo College Homecoming” to receive a special rate. If you would like a registration form mailed to you or need assistance with online registration, please contact the Office of Alumni Relations at 269-337-7300 or aluminfo@kzoo.edu. All alumni, faculty, staff, students and K friends are invited.
Kalamazoo College marks the beginning of the 2013-14 academic year with its annual Convocation on the campus Quad, Wednesday, Sept. 11, at 3:00 p.m. Free and open to the public, this colorful ceremony serves as a formal induction into the K community for the incoming Class of 2017 and includes a musical fanfare, faculty processional, welcoming remarks, and an international flag ceremony.
Under sunny skies (or in Anderson Athletic Facility in the event of rain), 457 first-year students, 27 visiting international students, and 22 transfer students from other institutions will recite the “Ritual of Recognition for New Students” and receive their charge from President Eileen B. Wilson-Oyelaran.
Jody Clark ’80, vice president at Hannon Armstrong Sustainable Infrastructure Capital, will deliver the keynote address, which will be live-streamed for the first time. Visit www.kzoo.edu/convocation for live-stream details. A reception for attendees follows on the Upper Quad, behind Stetson Chapel.
New students will receive an extensive orientation through the College’s nationally recognized First-Year Experience, including a reading and talk by Vaddey Ratner, author of In the Shadow of the Banyan, the Summer Common Reading book new students.
The incoming Class of 2017 is one of the largest since the College was established 180 years ago (1833). Fifty-three percent are female, 47 percent male. Approximately 62 percent (284) come from Michigan, 31 percent (141) come from other U.S. states and territories, and seven percent (32) come from 13 other countries (Cambodia, Canada, China, South Korea, Colombia, France, Ghana, India, Jamaica, Myanmar, Nepal, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe).
Also, 187 K students are participating in study abroad this fall at 28 programs throughout Africa (20 students), Austral-Asia (45), Central and South America (26), and Europe (96).
The College’s overall enrollment for the academic year will be approximately 1,440.
Fall quarter classes at K begin Monday Sept. 16. The fall quarter ends Wed. Nov. 27.
The Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership at Kalamazoo College will hold its first conference to question–and complicate–the notion of borders. Called WITH/OUT – ¿BORDERS?, the gathering will use a “(un)conference” structure, says Lisa Brock, academic director of ACSJL. “We welcome proposals for papers, roundtables,think tanks, and workshops.” The deadline for proposals is January 15, 2014. “We are interested in creating conversations on emerging epistemologies, radical geographies, critical solidarities, and transgressive practices that transcend and theorize across disciplinary and academic /activist borders,” says Brock. Topics include (but are not limited to) the following:
The seemingly fixed and immutable character of national-state borders (often writ in blood based on conquest and war) that, in truth, are actually unsettled and contestable. How might we map this?
Globalization’s increasing commodification of ever more forms of human and natural activity and the concomitant rise of “new” borders (fences, checkpoints, restrictions, gates, walls, prisons, and policies and laws that put greed before need). Where are the critical solidarities being developed?
The challenges to gender borders and the re-inscription of race and class divides. Where are the radical transgressions today?
The effect two changes–old borders under review and new borders in flux–on pedagogy, disciplines, nationalist paradigms, and social justice in education. What are the emergent 21st century epistemologies?
The conference will take place September 25 through September 28, 2014, at the ACSJL on the K campus. Proposals should be sent (by January 15) to Karla.Aguilar@kzoo.edu. Address queries to Arcus.Center@kzoo.edu.
Gail Griffin in the 1986 Festival Playhouse production of UNCOMMON WOMEN AND OTHERS
It’s been 50 years of great theatre at Festival Playhouse of Kalamazoo College. What have been the highlights? And who should choose? Let’s start with the people who have acted and directed many of that half century of productions. They have picked their favorites, and you can enjoy them.
An Evening of Kalamazoo College Theatre Alumni Scenes occurs Saturday, October 19, at 4 PM in the Nelda K. Balch Playhouse. Alumni of past Festival Playhouse productions will present staged readings of their favorite plays. On the schedule:
William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, featuring Emilia LaPenta ’10 and Emily Harpe ’08;
Top Girls, by Caryl Churchill, featuring Wa-Louisa Hubbard ’03, Lisa Ludwinsk ’06, Anne LaTarte ’03, and Betsy King ’05;
Uncommon Women and Others, by Wendy Wasserstein, featuring recently retired Professor of English Gail Griffin and Laura Livingstone-McNellis ’89;
Pullman, WA, by Young Jean Lee, featuring Ryan Hatch ’04 and Matt Pieknik ’04;
Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, by Anna Deavere Smith, featuring Kristala Pouncy ’02;
subUrbia, by Eric Bogosian, featuring Ben Harpe ’09 and Paul Whitehouse ’08;
Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett, featuring Todd Beck ’60 and Bill Vincent ’60
Theatergoers should not miss Festival Playhouse of Kalamazoo College’s production of August Strindberg’s masterpiece of early expressionism, A Dream Play. The opening night performance includes a pre-show ceremony to inaugurate the grand re-opening of the Nelda K. Balch Playhouse. Dates and times are: Thursday, November 7, 7:30 PM; Friday and Saturday, November 8 and 9, 8 PM;, and Sunday, November 10, 2 PM. Tickets are $5/students, $10/seniors, and $15/adults. Thursday night’s performance is “pay-what-you-like.” Call 269-337-7333 for reservations.
“It’s a beautiful theatrical experience,” says Festival Playhouse Manager Laura Livingstone-McNellis (an alumna theatre arts minor from the Class of 1989). Her statement captures the irony of art and suffering, of art on suffering. “The way cast and crew combine movement, text, and voice to create the semblance of a dream is nothing less than stunning,” she adds.
The play depicts a female demigod’s visit to earth to explore the nature and depth of human suffering. Livingstone-McNellis’s “semblance of a dream” description and the play’s theme reminds this author of poet Lucille Clifton’s poem “sorrows,” recently anthologized in Poetry magazine’s The Open Door: 100 Poems, 100 Years of Poetry Magazine.
sorrows
who would believe them winged
who would believe they could be
beautiful who would believe
they could fall so in love with mortals
that they would attach themselves
as scars attach and ride the skin
sometimes we hear them in our dreams
rattling their skulls clicking their bony fingers
envying our crackling hair
our spice filled flesh
they have heard me beseeching
as I whispered into my own
cupped hands enough not me again
enough but who can distinguish
She’s back. And back again! Playwright and performance artist (and alumna…Class of 1977!) Holly Hughes presents The Dog and Pony Show, a hilarious one-person show about lesbians and their dogs. The performance takes place at 8 PM on Saturday, September 21, in the Nelda K. Balch Playhouse. There is no charge but reserving tickets is an option and encouraged for those with special needs or who are attending in partial fulfillment of course requirements. Reserved tickets will be held at the box office until 10 minutes prior to curtain at 8pm; tickets not picked up by that time will be made available to others who are interested. Call 269-337-7333 for ticket reservations and for more information. Hughes is a 2010 Guggenheim recipient and a professor at the University of Michigan School of Art & Design. She describes Dog and Pony as “a blend of autobiography, animal behavior and bald-faced lies…a poetic/comic meditation on the midlife crisis in the key of canine by the woman who drove Jesse Helms nuts. Or nuttier.” It will not be her first visit to campus. She performed her one-woman play “Preaching to the Perverted” on campus in 2000. That play was inspired by the 1990 revocation of grants that had been made to Hughes and three other artists by the National Endowment of the Arts. Hughes was an art major during her student years on campus (1973-77). she has won numerous awards for her work, including Kalamazoo College’s Distinguished Achievement Award (1995). The performance will be followed by a talk-back, book signing, and reception.
The difference between traditional theatre and performance art, she explains, is that the latter is more experimental, quasi-anarchistic, and rebellious. And that suits her perfectly. “If you’re really committed to change,” she said, “then you must be committed to being uncomfortable.”
The Dog and Pony Show is part of The Festival Playhouse Diversity Guest Artist Series. That program is committed to providing culturally diverse art free to the Greater Kalamazoo community. It is made possible primarily through funding from the Dorothy U. Dalton Enrichment Fund. Previous Guest Artist Series performances include Oni Faida Lampley in The Dark Kalamazoo, Lisa Kron in 2.5 Minute Ride, and Guillermo Goméz-Peña in The Return of Border Brujo.
Rachel Kushner, the 2009 Summer Common Reading author, returned to Kalamazoo College for the 2013 commencement, where she received an honorary degree (Doctor of Humane Letters) and delivered an important speech about the future and “movements of the young.”
Kushner asked the Class of 2013 many questions. The most important: “How has this experience of college formed you, and what does it mean, at this intersection of your past, and future?” Kushner compared time to water, always flowing, changing us gradually.
She emphasized the importance of books throughout the course of her speech. “By reading books, you can understand greater patterns in the movement of people through history, even history that you never witnessed yourself.”
Kushner’s talk posited a hypothetical Q & A, the questions of which touched on current news, the young, and novels. A sample question: “Was Occupy, the Arab Spring, the anti-austerity movements across Europe, and in Greece, and now in Turkey—all, by the way, historical events that happened while you were in college—were these essentially movements of the young, but about and including, a whole spectrum of people? —Yes”.
She closed with advice on how to enter the world of art, knowledge, and love. One must commit to “human depth–beyond jobs, profits, debt, petty differences, résumés, and grad school applications. Read, and live engaged with ideas. No matter what happens in your life, no one can take that away from you”.
For 13 years the College’s Summer Common Reading program has brought to campus writers of startling renown. Kushner is no exception, after she became a New York Times Bestseller with her novel from the Summer Common Reading, Telex from Cuba. She’s now making a splash in the literary world with her new novel The Flamethrowers.
The Flamethrowers takes place in the 1970’s. The protagonist is a woman in her early 20s, nicknamed Reno. She moves to New York to become an artist, and there falls in love with an Italian man, and with motorcycles; she quickly becomes the “fastest chic in the world.”
Kushner was born in Eugene, Ore., and graduated from the University of California-Berkley, majoring in political economy. After Berkley, Kushner headed to Columbia University to earn her Master of Fine Arts degree.
She now lives in Los Angeles. She drives a ’64 Ford Galaxie 500, much like the ride of her character, Reno.
Four documentary films centering on social justice issues critical to both Africa and the United States and that also have global implications will be presented at Kalamazoo College, Saturday June 22 and Sunday 23, in the Light Fine Arts Building, Connable Recital Hall, at 7:30 p.m. Showings are free and open to the public.
Saturday films are Fuelling Poverty (28 minutes) and Sweet Crude (93 minutes), which are about the destructive crude oil extraction economy and the Occupy Movement in Nigeria.
Sunday films are God Loves Uganda (90 minutes) which analyses the political implications of the American evangelical movement in Uganda, and Native Sun (21 minutes), a film by Ghanaian rapper and visual artist Blitz the Ambassador.
The Broadcast Africa Film Series is brought to Kalamazoo by The US-Africa Network (http://usafricanetwork.wordpress.com), an independent network with the aim of fostering an inclusive international and intergenerational dialogue about priorities and strategies for solidarity with Africa in the United States, in collaboration with Kalamazoo College’s Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership. Additional support is provided by Western Michigan University Housing and WMU Professor of Social Work and City Commissioner Don Cooney.
The US-Africa Network Consultation is bringing together a small group of organizers, activists, and scholars living and working in Africa and the U.S. to discuss a broad range of issues such as human rights, economic justice, climate change, and threats to human security in both Africa and the United States.
The US-Africa Network has come together in the belief that there is an urgent need to reinvigorate solidarity work between the U.S. and Africa. Their initial objectives are to foster an intergenerational dialogue on the future of U.S.-Africa solidarity work and to help activists both old and new to rethink, regroup, and claim a space for activism linking progressive movements in Africa and the United States.
The Kreisler Trio will present a concert of works by Mozart, Beethoven, and Hummel–performed on period instruments–on Sunday evening, October 20, at 8 PM in Dalton Theatre of the Light Fine Arts Building on the Kalamazoo College campus. The event is sponsored by the Kalamazoo College Department of Music; admission is free.
