Andrew ChatfieldWesleyan’s annual Navaratri Festival celebrated the diversity of Indian music and dance from October 5 through October 8, 2023. "Over its 47 years, our festival continues to widen representation, to expand the classical canon of Indian arts and who is allowed to perform it, and to rigorously engage with South Asian culture through a creative lens," said Fiona Coffey, Associate Director for Programming and Performing Arts. Coffey mentioned Wesleyan’s new major as part of the Global South Asian Studies program, which offers students opportunities to explore the cultures connected to the region through a diverse set of disciplines. ”We're incredibly excited…
Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts (CFA) started the celebration of its 50th birthday with a joyous party featuring a dozen activities spread out across six of the complex’s buildings on campus. “In a very Wesleyan fashion, we're not doing an anniversary,” said Director Joshua Lubin-Levy ’06. “We're doing a birthday party for buildings, and for the people that fill them and the art that has filled them over fifty years,” Lubin-Levy said. Roger Mathew Grant, Dean of the Arts and Humanities and Professor of Music, said the CFA has never been just about its structures - it has a…
Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts (CFA) starts a celebration of its 50th birthday in September. The 2023-2024 season features live performances and exhibitions that reflect on the roots of the center while also bringing new artists and works to campus. Director Joshua Lubin-Levy ‘06 said he and his staff want to hear from anyone who has engaged with the CFA over the years. The CFA’s curatorial team will be asking students, faculty, staff, and visiting artists to join them in their reimagining of what it means to center art in the context of a liberal arts education. “As with…
Wesleyan’s Embodying Antiracism Initiative Fellows shared stories about their work this academic year during the program’s Think Tank at their third and final salon this spring, held in the Library’s Smith Reading Room on April 20. Two previous salons–intimate, informal gatherings looking at works-in-progress and building community–were held in February. The initiative’s Summer Leadership Institute, “The Power of We,” takes place on campus from June 5 through June 11. The April salon was facilitated by two Summer Leadership Institute faculty members who have worked with partnering organization Urban Bush Women: choreographer and artist Marjani Forté-Saunders, and movement coach and community practitioner…
Assistant Professor of Art and Luther Gregg Sullivan Fellow in Art Ilana Harris-Babou’s video project “Liquid Gold” is being screened each night now through Wednesday, May 31 on the electronic billboards of Times Square in New York City. Over 92 digital displays spanning 41st to 49th Streets are showing the synchronized film from 11:57pm to midnight as part of Time Square Arts' Midnight Moment program, creating a dream-like canvas filled with flowing cream-colored bubbles. Since 2012, the Times Square Alliance has showcased over 100 contemporary digital artists on a monumental public scale in the iconic urban setting. A longer version of “Liquid Gold” was previously on display in Wesleyan’s Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery from January through March 2023, and included a sculpture in addition to the video installation. “I had such a lovely time sharing ‘Liquid Gold’ with the…
Students from the “Dance as Activism” course this spring will perform a new movement piece based on excerpts from Shapiro-Silverberg Distinguished Writer in Residence Mahogany L. Browne‘s poetry collection “Chrome Valley” at Lincoln Center in New York on September 9. Their performance, called “Movement Through The Valley,” received its first showing in the Bessie Schönberg Dance Studio April 14. The “Dance as Activism” course is taught by Assistant Professor of the Practice in Dance and African American Studies Joya Powell. On May 8, the class will share individual projects—solos and duets, and a workshop—in conversation with social issues of their…
April is Jazz Appreciation Month, which culminates on campus with the 20th annual Wesleyan Jazz Orchestra Weekend, featuring two nights of concerts in Crowell Concert Hall. Cellist, composer, and educator Akua Dixon makes her Connecticut debut with her string quartet, Quartette Indigo, on Saturday, April 29 at 8pm. The group includes violinists Meg Okura and Frederika Krier, Judith Insell on viola, and bassist Jennifer Vincent. The Wesleyan Jazz Ensemble, directed by Noah Baerman, presents a concert with a variety of modern small-group jazz traditions and techniques on Friday, April 28 at 8pm. Assistant Professor of the Practice in Music Jin…
A group of artists and academics came together in the first of a series of climate change conversations to examine how art can impact policy. This event is part of the Ocean Filibuster: Art and Action series—a semester of art and activism, science and storytelling—building to the Connecticut premiere performances of PearlDamour’s "Ocean Filibuster" in the CFA Theater from Thursday, May 4 through Saturday, May 6, 2023. For more information and related events, please visit www.wesleyan.edu/cfa/ocean. The first panel discussion on March 28 considered the relationship between artmaking and policy—how artists, scientists, and policymakers can be more powerful, and more able to shape…
Does theater really change somebody? That is the question that director and Assistant Professor of Theater Katie Pearl always asks herself when she does a show about an issue she cares about. In her most recent work “Ocean Filibuster,” Pearl explores the intimate, critical relationship between humans and the ocean. “I make a play because I want to have a conversation with the topic,” Pearl said. “I like to think of the rehearsal room as a little radical ecosystem. As a director my job is to create a community that is in the conversation that the play is wanting to…
Through a series of intimate and informal salons, Wesleyan’s Embodying Antiracism Initiative Fellows shared some of the work they have created this year during the program’s Think Tank. The salons are mini-festivals of arts, ideas, and activation, looking at works-in-progress and building community, said Stephanie McKee-Anderson, Executive Artistic Director of partnering organization Junebug Productions and Special Advisor to Provost Nicole Stanton. A Fellow might have the seed of a creation, so a salon could be a helpful place to dialogue about that idea, while the others might act as thought provocateurs. “What questions make a creator more excited about their…
Every exhibition presented in the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery establishes an idea–or an argument–of what art is, how art is made, who makes art, and what art does. “With every presentation, we attempt not to narrow the answers to any of those big questions,” said Associate Director of Visual Arts and Adjunct Instructor in Art Benjamin Chaffee ’00. “We think critically about the art that is shown and also how we’re framing it.” The most recent exhibition at Zilkha has created an interesting opportunity for juxtaposition. "Liquid Gold" includes a video installation and a sculpture by Assistant Professor of…
Through a series of fun masterclasses and performances, members of The Second City integrated the company’s tenets of improvisation into the curriculum of four Wesleyan performance courses. Since its premiere in 1959, The Second City has revolutionized improv as an art form and launched the careers of iconic performers ranging from John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, and Gilda Radner to Mike Myers, Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, and Keegan-Michael Key. When Dean of the Arts and Humanities Roger Mathew Grant learned that The Second City would be available to come to Wesleyan, he thought about how improvisation is a foundational…