See the Fall 2004 Arts Newsletter
Performing Arts Series
— Notes from the director, Paul Nelson
Cyrus Chestnut Trio Returns
It's been a few years since jazz pianist Cyrus Chestnut played here, but he's coming back, with his trio, on Friday, October 22, at 8:00 P.M. He enchants audiences every time. Of his trio's most recent recording, You are My Sunshine, Cyrus has said, "It is my wish that the spirit of hope and love that went into the making of this musical document will fully reach you. May it take you on a beautiful journey and let you return feeling much better." We think his description of the disc accurately describes our reactions to everything he plays; his playing always lets us return "feeling much better."
NOW SOLD OUT! If any tickets are returned/released, they will go on sale at noon on the day of the show at the Center for the Arts Box Office, on a first-come, first-served basis. An in-person waiting list for any late returns will be taken starting at 7:00 P.M. at the Box Office window.
This performance will be preceded by a pre-performance dinner at 6:30 P.M. Contact the Box Office at 802-443-MIDD (6433) for tickets and reservations.
Pieter Wispelwey, cello
Dejan Lazić, piano
Several years ago, Pieter Wispelwey played a solo program of cello suites by Bach and Britten to a rapt audience in Mead Chapel. Since then he has become one of the most recorded and most interesting cellists in the world. Of his recital with pianist Dejan Lazić at the University of Chicago, John von Rhein wrote in the Chicago Tribune, "Phrases that began at the piano as virile chords or sweeping arpeggios were absorbed by the cellist's fleet fingers and prodigious bow arm as if by osmosis. One player ceded the right of way to the other with a spontaneity that fairly crackled." Wispelwey and Lazić play a program of sonatas by Beethoven, Shostakovich, and Brahms on Saturday, November 13, at 8:00 P.M. in the Center for the Arts Concert Hall. Tickets are $12/10/5 and are available through the Center for the Arts Box Office.
Henning Kraggerud, violin
Helge Kjekshus, piano
We first heard Henning Kraggerud in 2001 in London's Wigmore Hall . We'd been told about him by a friend who presents concerts at the University of Chicago. She'd heard his promotional disc, playing Norwegian music for violin and orchestra, and had booked a recital on the strength of the recording alone. She has since told me he is the finest young artist she has yet presented. Henning Kraggerud and pianist Helge Kjekshus will play in Middlebury, then travel to Washington, D.C., to play a recital for the lighting of the Christmas tree at the Norwegian Embassy. They will perform the three sonatas for violin and piano by Johannes Brahms on Friday, December 10, at 8:00 P.M. Tickets are $12/10/5 and are available through the Center for the Arts Box Office.
Dive
The Department of Theatre and Dance presents Dive, the ninth annual First-Year Students' Production, October 21–23 in the Hepburn Zoo. Visiting artist Carrie Baker '96 directs this evening of scenes, monologues, and movement pieces that explore the intricacies of love, from the tummy flutters of first dates to the ache of lost love. Authors include Judith Thompson, Kenneth Lonergan, Jeremy Dobrish, and others. The cast presents first-year students in their debut performances on the Middlebury stage.
Performance times for Dive are Thursday October 21 at 8:00 P.M., Friday October 22 at 8:00 and 10:00 P.M., and Saturday October 23 at 8:00 P.M. Tickets are $1 and are on sale at the Center for the Arts Box Office: 802-443-MIDD.
The Melting Pot
The Melting Pot, by Israel Zangwill, is the theatre program's first production of the 2004–2005 season. The play is directed by department chair Richard Romagnoli. Presented in conjunction with the Jubilee Anniversary of Middlebury College Hillel and the Silberman Symposium in Jewish Studies—celebrating the 350th anniversary of the arrival of the first Jews in North America—this early 20th-century work will resonate with audiences today.
In 1908, The Melting Pot became one of the most successful productions in the history of Broadway. An updated version of Romeo and Juliet, Zangwill replaced the feuding families in a medieval Italian city with Russian Jewish and Russian Cossack families in America. Zangwill's play emphatically claimed that America was a new country in which the old hatreds had no place. For the new immigrants, keeping alive old hatreds and prejudices became pointless, evil, and practically impossible.
God, Zangwill claimed, was using America as "a crucible" to melt the "50" barbarian tribes of Europe. Since crucibles are used in metallurgy to reduce ores and metals to their liquid form so they can be purified, mixed, and poured into castings, the crucible metaphor had a violent connotation to audiences of the day. Zangwill told them, they, too, were being molded in the fires of the Almighty into a new entity: the American. And they loved it.
Zangwill's religious interpretation of America was not new. Two and a half centuries earlier, the Pilgrims believed that the New World had been divinely provided, and Americans have over the years referred to this country as the New Jerusalem. Lincoln's second inaugural address explained the terrible price of the Civil War as God's just punishment for the sin of slavery. Zangwill found a religious metaphor that worked perfectly to explain how the urban immigrant experience translated into American exceptionalism: If they would but suffer to be melted in the pot, then they would become just as American as anyone else.
The company includes Bill Army '07, Leah Day '07, Liz Hammett '05, Matthew Johnstone '07, Lucas Kavner '06, Rebecca Kanengiser '05, Zach Maxwell '07, Sheila Seles '05, Devin Wardell '06, and Andrew Zox '05. Hallie Zieselman is set designer, with lighting design by Mark Evancho, video design by Deb Ellis, and costume design by Jule Emerson. Haylee Freeman '06 is the stage manager, and Jackie Hurwitz '07 is assistant stage manager. Technical direction is by Allison Rimmer with Jim Dougherty, associate technical director and props manager.
The Melting Pot plays in Wright Theatre November 11–13 at 8:00 P.M. each evening, with one matinee performance on Saturday, November 13, at 2:00 P.M. A free, Behind-the-Scenes Lunch and Discussion takes place on Tuesday, November 9, at 12:30 P.M. in Wright Theatre. Tickets are $5/4/3 and go on sale October 28 at the Center for the Arts Box Office.
Halloween Organ Concert
Emory Fanning
Ghosts and ghoulish goblins prowl on the eve of Hallowmas. We conjure cruel witches, lost souls, and playful spirits; a hunchback in a dark catacomb; a tall Transylvanian; the mischievous creations of Charles Addams…
Organist Emory Fanning, professor emeritus of music, performs music celebrating the many moods of Halloween on Sunday, October 31, at 4:00 P.M. in Mead Chapel. Come hear Bach's majestic Toccata and Fugue in D Minor; Franck's dramatic Piece Heroique; Saint-Saens's Dance Macabre; Gounod's Funeral March of the Marionettes; playful Cats and the fearsome Storm by Jean Langlais; and Leon Boellman's ominous Toccata from his Gothic Suite. Costumes are very much encouraged for this free and fun musical treat. Admission is free.
Knoxville Summer 1915
François Clemmons
Alexander Twilight Artist-in-Residence François Clemmons performs Samuel Barber's Knoxville Summer 1915 on Friday, November 5, at 8:00 P.M. in the Center for the Arts Concert Hall. Barber's rich, expressive composition, set on a text by James Agee, evokes a uniquely American reverie of childhood in a small Southern town.
Clemmons attributes his love of Knoxville Summer 1915 to his own childhood. "Samuel Barber has been bouncing around my mind since the early 1960s, when I became aware of him as a great American composer. I heard soprano Leontyne Price sing his Hermit Songs and his opera Anthony & Cleopatra at the Metropolitan Opera, and fell in love with their rich melodies and the unique presentation of the poetry. Knoxville Summer 1915 feels close to my own Southern upbringing, when people sat on porches and relaxed during lazy, hot, summer evenings. This was before air conditioning and jet planes and rockets to the moon. I often wish for those nostalgic days of easy conversations with my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and myriad cousins, while I ran and played and reveled in my unsuspecting innocence. Barber's score captures that innocence, while at the same time hinting in rapturous, rhapsodic musical phrases that it's all coming to an end. I hope that the November concert will allow those who attend to relive some small portion of their own lost youth—and still enjoy the ever-hopeful vitality of an adventuresome and creative future."
Clemmons's concert is free and open to the public.
Natasha Koval Paden, piano
Lazar Gosman, violin
On Thursday, November 4, at 8:00 P.M. in the Concert Hall, Natasha Koval Paden and Lazar Gosman reunite for an exciting public concert. Their program, similar to their performance at Oxford this past June, includes Beethoven's Spring Sonata, along with works by Brahms, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, and Britten. This free concert is presented by the Department of Music.
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| Natasha Koval Paden, above, and Lazar Gosman |
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Lazar Gosman was a major figure in the musical life of the Soviet Union. He served as one of the concertmasters of the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, was a member of the faculty of Leningrad Conservatory, and for 17 years was the music director of the Leningrad Chamber Orchestra, with whom he made over 40 recordings. He has performed with many of the Soviet Union's most acclaimed artists, including David Oistrakh, Emil Gilels, and Gidon Kremer.
Immigrating to the United States in 1977, Gosman became associate concertmaster of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, joined the faculty of the St. Louis Conservatory, and established the Kammergild Chamber Orchestra of St. Louis, whose annual concerts he continues to conduct.
In 1979 he founded the Soviet Émigré Orchestra, now the Tchaikovsky Chamber Orchestra. Gosman has appeared frequently as a soloist with his orchestra at New York's Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Washington's John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and Israel.
Gozman taught at the State University of New York at Stony Brook for 20 years and is now professor emeritus there.
Natasha Koval Paden was raised in the Ukraine and trained with the sister of Vladimir Horowitz. She attended the Eastman School of Music and later Juilliard. Her career has spanned several continents and has included programs with a number of distinguished orchestra and chamber groups, including the Vermont Symphony Orchestra. She has performed extensively with Gosman's Tchaikovsky Chamber Orchestra.
Well known to Vermont audiences, Koval-Paden brings considerable experience to the concert stage. She has been involved with many international causes, including the Vermont/Honduras Partners of the Americas, and has given many benefit concerts to assist organizations that are working to improve social, economic, and educational conditions in other countries.
Natasha lives in South Burlington and teaches part-time at Middlebury College.
College Community Chorus:
A Thanksgiving Celebration
All are welcome at the second annual community Thanksgiving celebration on Sunday, November 21, at 4:00 P.M. in Mead Chapel. Admission is free.
The program begins with readings in celebration of Thanksgiving, by area clergy, and is followed by an exciting concert from the 60 members of the College Community Chorus. The choir performs choruses from G. F. Handel's oratorio Sampson, the beautiful Cantique de Jean Racine by Gabriel Fauré, and music by contemporary American composers Z. Randall Stroope and Stephen Paulus. Stroope's Where the Earth Meets the Sky features poetry by African American poet Langston Hughes and Vermont's Robert Frost, as well as Native American texts. Appropriate for the season, the program concludes with distinguished composer and arranger Stephen Paulus's setting of the Pilgrims' Hymn.
The College Community Chorus draws on the strong traditions of choral singing, both on campus and in the community—indeed, records in the Henry Sheldon Museum of Vermont History show that the Middlebury Musical Institute, a choral group, was founded in the 1840s! In recent years, the chorus has performed works of Middlebury's Jean Berger and Peter Hamlin, and compositions by Handel, Haydn, Brahms, Mendelssohn, and Rutter. Under the direction of Jeff Rehbach, and accompanied by George Matthew Jr., the College Community Chorus is open to all interested singers.
Chamber Singers
Nowell Sing We
On Saturday evening, December 4, the 30 members of the Middlebury College Chamber Singers present Nowell Sing We, delightful settings of holiday songs and carols from medieval times to the present. The program includes William Byrd's lush setting of "O magnum mysterium"; settings of traditional carols, such as "In dulci jubilo," by several composers, including Michael Praetorius and J. S. Bach; and early English carols dating back to the 14th century. Contemporary works by Morten Lauridsen and Eric Whitacre are also planned, as well as humorous renditions of "The Wassail Song," "Jingle Bells," and "The 12 Days of Christmas."
Jeff Rehbach has conducted the Chamber Singers since April 2000. Annual fall and spring concerts have included music by Samuel Barber, Béla Bartók, Johannes Brahms, Benjamin Britten, Anton Bruckner, Maurice Duruflé, Morten Lauridsen, Claudio Monteverdi, G. P. da Palestrina, Arvo Pärt, Francis Poulenc, John Tavener, Randall Thompson, Michael Tippett, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Thomas Weelkes, Eric Whitacre, and among many.
The concert is at 8:00 P.M., in the Center for the Arts Concert Hall. Admission is free.
Lessons and Carols
This annual traditional program combines choral music, congregational singing, and the biblical texts of the season. Chaplain Laurel Macaulay Jordan officiates at this celebratory community service. Emory Fanning, professor emeritus of music, plays the organ, and Jeff Rehbach leads the Middlebury College Chamber Singers.
Lessons and Carols takes place on Sunday, December 12, at 4:00 and 7:00 P.M. in Mead Chapel. The event is free and open to the public.
Middlebury College Orchestra
The Middlebury College Orchestra, under the direction of Troy Peters, offers two free concerts on the Concert Hall stage before the year's end. The first, on Saturday, October 30, at 8:00 P.M., features the work of three composers who explore humanity's relationship with time and the mystery of existence. The program include Dvorak's Legends, Op. 59, nos. 1–5; Ives's The Unanswered Question; and Haydn's Symphony no. 101 in D Major, Clock.
The second concert, to be held Friday, December 3, at 8:00 P.M., includes music from four different centuries, all inspired by Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream: Weber's Oberon Overture; Purcell's Music from The Fairy Queen; Mendelssohn's Wedding March from A Midsummer Night's Dream, Satie's Cinq grimaces pour Le songe d'une nuit d'été, and Elvis Costello's Il Sogno Suite.
Celebrating Bernard Rands
It's a party! In recognition of his 70th year, the Department of Music sponsors a concert highlighting the sounds and achievements of renowned composer Bernard Rands. The concert features a performance of his celebrated Pulitzer Prize-winning work Canti del Sole, scored for tenor voice and large instrumental ensemble. Noted American tenor Paul Sperry sings the solo. Sperry commissioned Rands's song cycle and performed in its premiere with the New York Philharmonic.
Written in 1983, Canti del Sole is a virtuoso work that grew out of a selection of poems Rands collected in the early '80s. One group of poems fostered the cycle, Canti Lunatici. The second group became Canti del Sole. The 14 texts that form the backbone of this extraordinary piece are from a diverse set of poets, sources, and languages—Baudelaire, Wilfred Owen, Dylan Thomas, and Ungaretti, among others. Arranged in a pattern to suggest the sun's passage from sunrise to dusk, the music surrounds the texts in a luxurious radiance.
Bernard Rands hails originally from England. Since immigrating to the U.S. in 1975, his works have established him as one of the most important composers of the 20th and 21st centuries. His works have been performed by most of the major orchestras across the U.S. and Europe. Rands is also well known as a conductor, having been engaged by many major orchestras, and he established the virtuoso SONOR ensemble at the University of California, San Diego. He has taught at numerous institutions, including the University of California, San Diego, Boston University, the Juilliard School, and Harvard.
Paul Sperry is one of America's most versatile and respected tenors, having premiered, commissioned, recorded, and championed many new works by a daunting, long list of American composers. He has performed with many major orchestras and in recital, and for many years has been on the faculty of the Juilliard School and Aspen Music Festival. He has served as president of the American Music Center, and he founded and runs the annual festival of song performance, Joy in Singing.
This concert event takes place on Friday, November 19, at 8:00 P.M. in the Concert Hall.
NOW CANCELLED-- TO BE RESCHEDULED IN SPRING 2005
Champlain Philharmonic
The newly formed Champlain Philharmonic is the brainchild of Vermont violinist David Gusakov and cellist Dieuwke Davydov. In the spring of 2004, 60 amateur musicians from all over western Vermont answered the call to audition at Middlebury's Parent-Child Center. From that enthusiastic response, a large chamber orchestra of some 45 players was selected.
The orchestra performs its first concert on Monday, November 15, at 8:00 P.M. in the Center for the Arts Concert Hall. Conducted by David Gusakov and joined by pianist Diana Fanning (pictured), the program includes Mozart's Overture to the Magic Flute, Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto, and Mendelssohn's Symphony no. 5.
Tickets are $8, regular admission, and $6 for senior citizens and students, and are on sale at the Center for the Arts Box Office.
Brainerd Commons Presents
For a number of years now, Paul and Jennifer Nelson, faculty heads of Ezra Brainerd Commons, have organized a series of free concerts by rising stars of the classical music world. These concerts, with support from the Christian A. Johnson Foundation, have included performances by pianists Jonathan Biss and Alon Goldstein, violinists Soovin Kim and Judith Ingolfsson, and mezzo-soprano Stephanie Houtzeel. This year, five performances are scheduled on the Rising Starts Series.
The first concert features violinist Sergey Khachatryan (pictured) and pianist Vladimir Khachatryan, who play a program of works by Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, and Prokofiev. Sergey Khachatryan won the Jean Sibelius Competition in Helsinki in 2000 when he was 17 years old, the youngest winner in the history of the competition. He has already played concertos with the Concertgebouw, Cleveland, and Philharmonia Orchestra, as well as recitals in major halls in London, Paris, Zurich, Salzburg, and Tokyo. This performance is on Thursday, October 21, at 7:30 P.M.
Cellist Natalie Clein (pictured) and pianist Charles Owen play the second concert of this series on Friday, October 30, at 8:00 P.M. Natalie Clein was praised by violinist Edward Dusinberre of the Takács Quartet, with whom she has played the Schubert Quintet. Winner of the 1994 BBC Young Musician of the Year award, she has collaborated with Paul Lewis, Martha Argerich, Stephen Kovacevich, and Steven Isserlis. Her Middlebury program, performed with pianist Charles Owen, whose recent recording of some of Poulenc's piano music won high praise in Gramophone, will include two sonatas by Brahms and works by Schumann and Webern.
Next is an extraordinary pianist: Kirill Gerstein, on Wednesday, November 17, at 7:30 P.M. His program includes a Beethoven sonata, the Op. 90 Schubert Impromptus, Rachmaninov's Corelli Variations, and Fritz Kreisler's arrangements of Liebesleid and Liebesfreud. Gerstein started his career as a jazz pianist at the Berklee School in Boston, and was one of the three winners of the prestigious Gilmore Awards for pianists (the others were Piotr Anderszewski and Jonathan Biss, both of whom have appeared on the Middlebury concert stage). Gerstein substituted in major venues for Ivan Moravec when Moravec cancelled a tour in early 2004 on account of illness.
Looking ahead to the remainder of the season, mark your calendars for pianist Olli Mustonen, playing Rachmaninov, Sibelius, and Scarlatti on Sunday, February 20, at 3:00 P.M., and mezzo-soprano Jessica Grigg, with pianist David Holkeboer, performing Jorge Martin's cycle A Cuban in Vermont, on Sunday, March 13, at 3:00 P.M. More details on these concerts will appear in the winter 2005 issue of this newsletter.
All performances in the Brainerd Commons Rising Stars Series take place in the Center for the Arts Concert Hall. The concerts are free and open to the public.
Film News
Lecture by Sarah Kozloff
The Program in Film and Media Culture and the Hirschfield Fund present a lecture by Sarah Kozloff, professor and chair of film studies at Vassar College. Entitled "Lives Interwoven by Celluloid: The Multi-Storyline Film," the talk takes place on Thursday, October 21, at 4:30 P.M. in Sunderland 110. This event is free and open to the public.
Filmmaker Trinh T. Minh-ha Visits
On Thursday, November 11, filmmaker Trinh T. Minh-ha delivers a lecture "Tea and Tear (on World Debt)" at 4:30 P.M. in Twilight Auditorium, followed by a 7:30 P.M. screening of her film, Night Passage. Both events are free and open to the public.
Trinh T. Minh-ha is a world-renowned independent filmmaker, feminist, postcolonial theorist, and poet. A member of the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, she has published eight books, has created large-scale multimedia installations, and her six feature-length films have been honored in 27 retrospectives around the world: Reassemblage (1982), Naked Spaces (1985), Surname Viet Given Name Nam (1989), Shoot for the Contents (1991), A Tale of Love (1996), and The Fourth Dimension (2001).
Night Passage, her latest film, is a spiritual tale of a young woman's journey from death back to life, told through the metaphor of a long ride on a night train. An homage to the novel Milky Way Railroad, by Kenji Miyazawa, the story unfolds around the young woman, her best friend, and a little boy. At each train stop, the travelers disembark to encounter a world of waking dreams, at once strange and spectacular, yet mysteriously in tune with their inner desires. Sponsored by the Department of Women's and Gender Studies, the Committee on the Arts, the Program in Film and Media Culture, and the Hirschfield Fund.
Shawn Ryan '88 Joins Forces with David Mamet
Film program alumnus Shawn Ryan '88 has enjoyed recent success as the writer and producer of the Golden Globe Award-winning television series, The Shield. He may soon add to his credits with a new project—one that also involves acclaimed American playwright, director, and producer David Mamet.
Ryan and Mamet are teaming up on an hour-long CBS drama revolving around the elite antiterrorism force known as Delta Force. The two met on the set of The Shield, when Mamet directed an episode. If the new project's pilot is successful, Ryan will have two high-impact projects running concurrently.
Studio Art News
Sculptures in the Form of a Chair
Can a chair have a life of it's own? By itself, it is a stand-in for an absent human being. If a chair is both life-size and adult-size, it has a vitality and presence that resonates with our bodies as we move about the object. By employing both functional and nonfunctional design—as well as unusual materials in the objects they create—students can produce surprisingly animate experiences out of inanimate objects.
Student sculptures (including a chair sculpture made of burdocks, pictured, by Louisa Conrad '04) created under the instruction of Eric Nelson, represent students' response to the idea of a chair's many functions: as an object of design, as a socializing or civilizing device, or as a historical artifact. For this project, students are asked to create a hybrid chair-sculpture that completes the phrase, "a chair for _____________," meant to be filled in with the name of a person, a scientific principle, a historical period, a cause, a deeply held belief, or a favorite activity. Some students have their concept clearly in mind at the outset; others may discover it in the process of selecting the materials, designing the form, and creating the object.
The exhibition of Sculptures in the Form of a Chair is on view in the Johnson Memorial Building's Pit Space from November 2–16 and is free and open to the public.
Print Exhibition
Student work made in Hedya Klein's printmaking course is on view November 29–December 10 in Johnson Memorial Building's Pit Space. This exhibition is free and open to the public.
Using imagery from personal, ideological, literary, and political sources, students employ traditional intaglio etching techniques. The resulting prints exploit the visual and conceptual potential of the medium beyond its simple ability to reproduce a single image several times over. Many works go beyond the border of the square or rectangular plate and may even be presented in book, sculptural, or multilayered configurations.
Measure your knowledge of and expectations for intaglio printmaking against our students inventive approaches to the medium.
Dance News
Japanese Artist Creates Installation/Performance
Japanese visual artist Shinji Komiya creates luminous, evocative works that have been exhibited worldwide and are often developed on site, using the materials available. During a two-week residency, Komiya will produce a site-specific installation-performance in the Johnson Gallery, in collaboration with students in studio art, dance, music, set design and Japanese language courses. The Middlebury piece will combine a variety of media and traditions and will be based on the resources at hand—both human and material. Performance and exhibit schedules are available on the Web at www.middlebury.edu/dance.
Celebrating the 3rd Annual
Accessibility Week with Dance
Seattle-based dancer and choreographer Charlene Curtiss will join forces with veteran modern dance choreographer Bill Evans to celebrate Middlebury's third annual Accessibility Week, November 4–7.
Curtiss, who developed the "front-end chair control" technique—for wheelchair dancing—founded one of the first physically integrated dance companies in the country. As part of this year's accessibility-awareness symposium, she will teach a master class for dancers of all abilities on Thursday, November 4, at 4:30 P.M. During the symposium luncheon, November 5 at 12:30 P.M., she will speak about her work as an artist and performer.
Bill Evans, now based in Brockport, New York, is a dancer, teacher, choreographer, lecturer, administrator, movement analyst, and writer, as well as artistic director of the Bill Evans Dance Company (founded in 1975). He offers a master class on Sunday, November 7, at 2:00 P.M. All these events take place in the Center for the Arts Dance Theatre and are free and open to the public. The symposium has been coordinated by dance and neuroscience major Kate Stamper '04,
On Saturday, November 6, at 8:00 P.M., Curtiss and her performing partner, Joanne Petroff, join with Evans and his partner, Don Halquist, to present an evening of highly expressive solos, duets, and trios. Tickets are $5/4/3 and go on sale October 22 at the Center for the Arts Box Office.
Dancing Now, Featuring Šara Stranovsky
Dancing Now, the fall dance concert, is jam-packed with exciting new work this year. Šara Stranovsky '04, known for her powerful performances with the Dance Company of Middlebury's first Cuba Project and as a singer with the Sharipoons Funk Brigade, caps her Middlebury career by presenting her senior independent dance work. In a suite of dances inspired by her travels in Senegal, Paris, Cuba, and Slovakia, Stranovsky explores self-expression through movement, text, and vocal work, and weaves her own poetry into this sensitive inquiry into human nature.
Student choreographers in Andrea Olsen's intermediate course, The Place of Dance, also contribute dances to the concert, which includes a birdhouse set designed by well-known local artist Carl Phelps.
The annual Newcomer's Piece, choreographed this year by Ellen Smith '05, rounds out Dancing Now. Smith recently returned from a semester in Mongolia, where she worked on developing a sign language for the deaf. She spent the summer dancing in New York City, after performing with Chavasse Dance and Performance in the Goose Route Dance Festival in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. Her choreography is always sumptuous, dynamic, and nuanced.
Dancing Now is presented in the Center for the Arts Dance Theatre on December 3 and 4 at 8:00 P.M. Tickets are $5/4/3 and go on sale November 16 at the Center for the Arts Box Office.
Fall Exhibitions at the Middlebury College
Museum of Art
Rodin: in His Own Words
Selections from the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation
This spectacular exhibition of 35 bronzes by the French artist Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) continues through December 5 in the Christian A. Johnson Memorial Gallery. Regarded as the greatest sculptor since Michelangelo, Rodin left behind the prevailing academic traditions of his era, creating his own form of artistic expression. Focusing on the vitality of the human spirit, he developed a vigorous modeling technique that emphasized his personal response to his subjects.
The exhibition has been organized and made possible by the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation. At Middlebury the exhibition is supported by the Christian A. Johnson Memorial Fund.
On Thursday, October 28, Dr. Ruth Butler gives a lecture entitled "Rodin/Rose/Camille: What to Do about Love If You Want to Be a Genius." Butler is the author of the definitive biography of Rodin, for which she was awarded Chevalier of the Legion of Honor (the only American to be so honored.) The public is welcome to attend this discussion of the private life of the internationally famous artist. The lecture takes place at 4:30 P.M. in Twilight Auditorium.
Art Now: Sculpture of Joel Shapiro
The five sculptures in this gemlike installation are a mini-retrospective spanning 25 years of the career of internationally acclaimed American artist Joel Shapiro. Coming to prominence in the early 1970s, in the heyday of Minimalism, Shapiro used elementary building blocks to create figural forms, combining wooden beams in ways that suggested complicated stick figures. His work seemed more attuned to spiritual feeling and to subtle shifts of mood than other works of art of the day, by Sol LeWitt and Tony Smith, for example. Though cast in bronze, Shapiro's sculptures retain signs of their handmade origins—a significant departure from the Minimalist vocabulary he has chosen to adapt. His immensely rich and impressive body of work has revised and reinvigorated the figurative tradition in modern art. This exhibition is on view in the Overbrook Gallery through December 5. Admission is free.
In conjunction with the exhibition, Shapiro speaks about his work on Tuesday, November 9, at 4:30 P.M. in Johnson Memorial Building, Room 304. This event is free and open to the public.
Vermont in 1904: A Photographic Portrait
Taken by Adolph B. Lane (1877–1942), an enterprising amateur photographer from Barre, Vermont, the 20 photographs in this exhibition depict a world of new freedoms and opportunities as railroads brought new visitors to the mountains and lakes of Vermont. Organized by Marissa Williamson '05 and Diana Harya '04, this exhibition is on view in the Upper Gallery through December 5. Admission is free.
On Tuesday, October 21, at 7:30 P.M. in Twilight Auditorium, Dr. Art Cohn, director of the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum, offers a public talk on commerce and recreation 100 years ago. Explore the history of our local great lake with this author, professional diver, historian, adjunct assistant professor at the University of Vermont, member of the U.S. State Department delegation to UNESCO, and 2004 recipient of an honorary doctor of letters degree from Middlebury College. Cocurator Marissa Williamson '05 discusses the exhibition in the gallery on Wednesday, November 3, at 4:30 P.M. Both talks are free and open to the public.
Ongoing Exhibitions
Ancient, Asian, and Medieval Art from the Collection
Lower Gallery
European and American Art from the Collection
Cerf Gallery