Theater and Live Performance

Sarah Wolfe ’12 interviews Lily Haje ’13 about “Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights” (April 26-28)

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The Wesleyan Theater Department is presenting Gertrude Stein’s “Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights” this weekend. Ms. Stein’s play uses the traditional Faust story but departs to examine technology and industrialization as well as perceptions of the self. Earlier this week Sarah Wolfe ’12 sat down with cast member and Assistant Director Lily Haje ’13 to discuss the upcoming performance. The show opens this Thursday, April 26 and ends Saturday, April 28. 

Cast members of "Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights"

The Faust is a popular German legend that has been told most famously through Goethe’s “Faust” and Christopher Marlowe’s “Doctor Faustus.” Can you give me a brief description, in your own words, of both the original legend and what Gertrude Stein has done to it?

The traditional Faust story is about a human scholar who tries to make a pact with the devil to exchange his soul for either ultimate knowledge or ultimate power. The Stein story is rather different. Instead of beginning with the moment of the pact, as the Goethe and the Marlowe do, she begins at the moment of collection. We don’t actually see Faustus make the pact with the devil. Also, rather than exchanging his soul for knowledge or power, this Faustus exchanges his soul for the ability to create electric light. Ms. Stein had been living in the U.S. when electricity had first come into common usage. She then moved to Paris, back to a place where they did not have universal electricity, and re-experienced the introduction of electricity and wrote this play. There’s a lot in it about the process of industrialization and man’s relationship to nature and man’s relationship to himself and to religion.

There is another character in Ms. Stein’s play named Marguerite Ida and Helena Annabel. She exists outside of Faust’s urban, industrial, technical world, and she is both four women and one woman. The way we have her in the play she’s sometimes one, sometimes four, sometimes two, and sometimes five women. This brings up this idea that the play grapples with: what is the self and how are identities both singular and multiple.

The play is less about characters in a traditional realist sense than it is about the language, which is beautiful. There are very few words in the play that have more than two syllables. It’s very simple, very much everyday language that then is constructed in completely bizarre and wonderful ways. For example:

I am I and my name is Marguerite Ida and Helena Annabel, and then oh then I could yes I could I could begin to cry by why why could I begin to cry.

And I am I and I am here and how do I know how wild the wild world is how wild the wild woods are…

How has Wesleyan adapted Gertrude Stein’s intentions for this play?

What Ms. Stein was writing about was the newest kind of technology. For her, electric light, which we take for granted now, was a completely innovative thing which opens up the world of what light is like. So we’ve been trying to take a similar approach to the show in terms of thinking about what is technology now. So we have lots and lots of lights, doing all kinds of crazy things. And we have a lot of projections, which is the most exciting new technology in theater that is still connected to light. It is all light, it is just a very different way of using light.

Furthermore, a lot of the production is not trying to hide what is not real. We have actors operating puppets, we have actors operating flashlights to operate the puppets. All of the masking goes away and you can see actors sitting on the side of the stage. All of the lighting instruments are visible. It’s very much about creating a theatrical event that is consciously a theatrical event. We have many people playing many different characters. With the exception of Mephisto [the devil], who is played by the same two people for the duration of the piece, pretty much every character gets played by multiple people, often at the same time. So it isn’t just Marguerite who is one and four and two and five, but Faust is also played by almost all of the men in the cast at one point or another. There are often two Fausts on stage at the same time.

The Theater Department has branched out in terms of design for this project. Designing sound is Demetrio Castellucci, of Dewey Dell. Designing lights is Ji-Youn Chang, a graduate of Yale School of Drama who previously collaborated with the Theater Department on The Tragedy of Richard III. Can you describe the experience and challenges of working with designers who were spread across the globe?

One of the things that’s both been cool and challenging about the process is that it is such a tech-heavy show. Demetrio only got in a week ago and Jiji was here a little before then. Everything that we’ve created has been videotaped and put on Dropbox so that Demetrio could be in London, seeing what we were doing and creating scores for it and same thing with Jiji and the lighting. It’s been fascinating to see how you can put a show together over huge distances. It has been a challenge given how much we interact with the lights and sound and projections, to not get those elements until very late, but now that we have them we’re working very intensely with them. 

What should the audience expect to take away from the show when they see it this weekend?

I think that it’s a show that benefits from watching it at face value first. Because it isn’t character driven in the traditional sense and because it isn’t plot driven in the traditional sense, I think the best way to watch it is without trying to make sense of it until it is over. There’s so much to look at and to hear and to engage with in it on its own terms before trying to analyze it. It does have a logic. It does make sense. But you kind of have to let it make sense instead of trying to make sense out of it.

Come see “Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights” at the CFA Theater, from Thursday, April 26 to Saturday, April 28. The show starts at 8pm.

Precision Dance Ensemble annual dance show “Chaka Pose: Khan Style” April 20 & 21

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Wesleyan University’s Precision Dance Ensemble presents its annual dance show, “Chaka Pose: Khan Style” in the Memorial Chapel, located at 221 High Street in Middletown, at 8pm on Friday, April 20 and Saturday, April 21, 2012. Admission is free, tickets are not necessary.

In conjunction with the show, the public is invited to attend a dance workshop and learn some moves from the show. The free workshop will be in the Fayerweather Dance Room on Saturday, April 21, 2012 from 3pm to 4pm.

For more information, please email Precision Dance Ensemble co-director Cynthia Tong ’14 at ctong@wesleyan.edu.

Theater Professor Ron Jenkins discusses his new work “To See the Stars”

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Wesleyan Theater Professor Ron Jenkins was invited to present a new work at a Harvard University conference on race, class, and education called Disrupting the Discourse: Discussing the “Undiscussable’’, sponsored by the Graduate School of Education’s Alumni of Color, March 2-3, 2012. The work by Jenkins, which was commissioned by the Center for the Arts at Wesleyan as part of Feet to the Fire: Fueling the Future and was presented as a reading at Wesleyan on September 28, 2011 under the working title Recylcing Pain, has been revised and retitled To See the Stars.

The play is based on interviews conducted with participants of Jenkins’ prison education program inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy and the Department of Justice Report on the Federal Prison Industry’s electronic recycling program. The play serves as a reminder that the importance of conserving and recycling the human resources in our jails is no less important than the challenge of conserving and recycling the natural resources of the planet.

“The play is an outgrowth of my prison outreach class,” Jenkins described. “I was happy to present it for a conference at Harvard that focused on the issue of race in education, because the prison system is one of the most blatant examples of racial injustice in American society, and the course gives students a chance to learn about that system from the inside and do something to help change it. The title of the conference was “Discussing the Undiscussable”, and I think it was important for the students of color in my prison outreach class to be part of a national discussion about race that included formerly incarcerated women of color, whose voices are rarely heard in public discourse. In addition to performing and participating in the post-performance discussion, my students had a chance to listen to Harvard Professor Sara Lawrence Lightfoot’s eloquent keynote address on the challenges that higher education faces in regards to social justice.”

Amber Smith ’13, who took the prison outreach class last year, expressed her experience at the conference. “It’s hard to come from an affluent college and go into prison, but these are people who are just like us. We are all related to them, because we are all affected by the prison system and we have to do something to help.”

Amber Smith ‘14, Esi Quagrainie ‘14, and Alma Sanchez-Eppler ‘14 sang during the performance. The performers with them were Saundra Duncan, Lynda Gardner and Deborah Ranger, who also performed at Wesleyan for Recycling Pain.

To See the Stars was also invited to perform at Brown University on March 1 as part of Arts in the One World: A Life’s Work conference. The conference focused on best practices for art in the prison system.

Ritual, Health, and Healing: In the Classroom with Shira Engel ’14

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A personal account by Shira Engel ’14 of “Ritual, Health, and Healing”, a course which is part of the Creative Campus initiative of the Center for the Arts.

Photo by Hailey Still.

“Ritual, Health, and Healing” is an interdisciplinary class that transcends disciplinary boundaries. It is cross-listed in Anthropology, Science in Society, and Dance. It is co-taught by Anthropology professor Gillian Goslinga and Artist in Residence Jill Sigman. Gillian Goslinga has an academic background in ethnographic research on ritual practices. Jill Sigman comes to Wesleyan from New York City, where she is a choreographer working in performance and installation, and directing her company jill sigman/thinkdance. She is currently engaged in her Hut Project. She also has a background in philosophy. The course is a true blend of the disciplines it is cross-listed in as well as the disciplines of the professors. As a student in the course, I find my mind being constantly expanded to think not in terms of a singular discipline, but to creatively combine them in ways that allows the material to sink in.

The course is divided into two segments. The first quarter of the semester, we learned about ritual, health, and healing and what these broad terms means to different cultures. This comprised the necessary theoretical component of the course that feeds into the service learning we are currently doing in Williamsburg-Greenpoint, Brooklyn (but I will let my lovely classmate Hannah elaborate on that in posts to come).

The course is also comprised of a three-hour seminar on Mondays and a movement lab on Tuesday evenings. On Monday, we discuss readings on the cultural and theoretical significance of ritual, health, and healing and on Tuesdays, we embody those readings and theories in movements that transcend the definition of dance.

Because we are constantly encouraged in this course to be self-reflexive, I will come out and say that I was attracted to this course in large part because on WesMaps, the description said that people without any dance experience are encouraged to apply. I do not consider myself a dancer and this course allows for a lack of labels. It allows for a blurring of the lines between disciplines, as well as a blurring of the lines between self-identified labels of artistic identity. After class, I talked to Jill Sigman about what makes this course creatively unique and she said, “This isn’t strictly a dance class. We may be using dance in the context of learning about other things, but there are people who are totally not here to learn to point their foot and that’s what makes it fascinating to me.”

This course shifts disciplinary boundaries in ways that make us – the students – uncomfortable, thrilled, challenged, self-reflexive, and on our toes. It challenges preconceptions of academic work, teaching us that it is inherently creative. Jill Sigman’s studio in Brooklyn is called “The Border.” In many ways, we exist on the border between disciplines, definitions of art, activism, and service in this course as we grapple with definitions of ritual, health, and healing. I am excited to see how these definitions will continue to unfold as we progress into the service learning, creatively translating the work we have done in the seminar and movement lab into practice, while realizing that all is part of the same process.

Katherine Clifford ’14 interviews performers for the Spring Senior Thesis Dance Concert

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The Spring Senior Thesis Dance Concert will be on Thursday, April 5 through Saturday, April 7, 2012*, and will include new works by the senior dance majors. Come support the seniors and the culmination of all the incredible work that went into their theses. Katherine Clifford ’14 asks each performer about their individual theses.

Choreography by Naadu Bentsi-Enchill ’12, James Gardella ’12, Nik Owens ’12, and Hsiao-Tung Huang ’12 will be performed Thursday, April 5 through Saturday, April 7, 2012 at 8pm in the Patricelli ’92 Theater.

Left to right: Naadu Bentsi-Enchill, James Gardella, Nik Owens, Hsiao-Tung Huang, Elena Georgieva.

*Elena Georgieva’s Interactive Presentation Bridging Science and Dance will be on Friday, April 20, 2012 at 6pm in the Bessie Schönberg Dance Studio, 247 Pine Street.

Here’s what the seniors had to say about their theses:

Naadu-Bentsi-Enchill:

“My piece explores the different levels of existence as a person, body, and mover in space. It’s a very internal dance that concludes my movement research on audience perception and choreographer relationships.”

James Gardella:

“My thesis addresses the Yoga Sutras, which is the foundational text of the philosophy of yoga, one of six major schools of thought in Indian philosophy. I critique the Sutras’ assertion that mental stillness is a prerequisite to self-realization and freedom. In the fall I created still mystery, a site specific work performed by an ensemble of five dancers in the CFA lawn. Once the performance ended, viewers were left unexpectedly with a resounding quiet, the very thing my research rejected. My upcoming spring piece embraces the unknown and accepts stillness as a valid, and potential, state of being. I return to the theater to perform a deeply personal and also highly conceptual solo titled Indelible. Indelible may be viewed as a dance of reclamation, and/or a metaphor for the philosophy of yoga itself, as I yearn for freedom through movement.”

Nik Owens:

“I am interested in looking at how behavior is reflected through dance performance and translated to and by an audience. This thesis topic originates from an interest in and hyper-awareness of how I change my behavior to match whatever context I’m placed in. For example, when I’m with my friends I’m very energetic, charismatic, loud and funny, where as when I’m at work I’m more quiet, reserved, mature, and knowledgeable. Now I’m sure this is the case for a lot of people, but the extent to which I shift is considerably more drastic than others in my opinion. So I wanted to investigate this phenomena and I decided to use dance performance as a proxy.

Additionally, since the link between dance performance and behavior can be interpreted in so many different ways, I chose to look at this link through a pedagogical framework; meaning that I’m investigating how social mores and values are established and taught through dance performance and then later translated into behavioral patterns that are context specific. I’ve chosen three (really four) distinct areas of dance performance that vary from each other. The first is looking at Nigerian Yoruba and Cuban Santeria ritual dance performance, particularly their dances that praise their gods. The second is Vogue dance in the ballroom scene of Harlem, New York during the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s and the role that vogue battles play in establishing social framework and hierarchy at the ballrooms. Lastly I will be looking at how Merce Cunningham and his use of chance procedures on the proscenium stage evoke new notions and behavioral relationships with modern dance amongst the audience members that have watched his work.

For the final chapter of my thesis I will investigate my own two-semesters worth of choreography, culminating in two different pieces, and how these choreographic processes have helped to give me insight into answering the question: how is behavior reflected through dance performance and translated to and by an audience?”

Hsiao-Tung Huang:

“My thesis is on Pina Bausch and Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, her dance theater company in Wuppertal, Germany. I am most interested in how history and culture (she grew up in postwar [West] Germany) influenced her as a person as well as how these influences are reflected in her choreographic works. My piece is a personal experience in developing a deeper knowledge of Bausch’s creative process as well as understanding Bausch as a dancer and choreographer.”

Elena Georgieva:

“While historically science and dance have been indelible from our understanding of the world, nowadays they seem to be more dichotomized than ever. To address this misconception, in my thesis I study how dance and science inform each other in the fields of education, research, and performance to make something called science choreography, a novel term describing the embodied connection between the two. In my research process I look mostly at all science-dance intermediary work that has emerged in the last 20 years and I explore some of it through movement. Thus I hope to better understand what science choreography is and how it works, with which I am aiming to define the status quo of the field and lay out a base for future research. In addition, by stressing the importance of developing this emerging field, with my own work I hope to popularize the concept of science choreography among the broader audience.”

Come see the dance performances, Thursday, April 5 through Saturday, April 7, 2012 at 8pm in the Patricelli ’92 Theater; and Friday, April 20 at 6pm in the Bessie Schönberg Dance Studio, 247 Pine Street.

Jack Chelgren ’15 Visits the Espwesso Poetry Reading

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Jack Chelgren ’15 attends a poetry reading held at Espwesso, and reflects on their work.

Last Thursday night, thirty or so people piled into Espwesso for a cozy and thoughtful program of student poetry.  Chairs and tables were cleared from the far corner of the room, where a shiny 1950s-style microphone now stood in their place, hooked up to a Fender guitar amp.  The mic teetered precariously on the end of its stand, and every time someone got up to read and adjusted it, the whole room watched in apprehension, waiting to see if it would fall.  (It did.)

The focus of the evening meandered from social and literary commentary to fantastical misadventures and questions of sexuality, love, and identity, a smorgasbord of topics that somehow seemed all in keeping with one another.  Robby Hardesty ’12, first on the roster, read a poem dedicated to his sister, set in a pitch-perfect tone of mock heroism (“To die!  O!  What?” he exclaimed to a tittering audience).  Alek Barkats ’12 rattled off a handful of quirky haikus before launching into a pair of ribald longer poems, one dedicated to his friend on his twenty-second birthday, the other a hilariously sardonic account of a man who has sex with dolphins.  Claire Dougherty ’13 wove a litany of strange, detached images into elegantly prosodic lines reminiscent of Sylvia Plath, while Betsy Sallee ’13, who teamed up with Dougherty to read a poem they cowrote, favored more violent, corporeal language.  Sallee lashed out graphically with lines like, “It is for you that I shave my prickle p*ssy and commit an ambien homicide.”  In another one of her poems, the speaker walks in on a girl she’d gone to elementary school with filming a porn sequence.

Peter Myers ’13 followed up in completely different vein, prefacing one of his poems: “This is a Wikipedia page: ‘List of fatal wolf attacks.’”  There is indeed such a page, and Myers seemed at first to be reading from it verbatim, bringing to mind the work of conceptual poets like Kenneth Goldsmith.  It soon became clear, however, that he was making at least some of it up—in recounting one supposed incident, he paraphrased the opening lines of Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis”; in another, he cited the victim as “John Fitzgerald Kennedy.”  Emily Brown ’12 read her set of poems twice, first somewhat timidly, then again with more force, delivering pithy, somatic reflections on sex and relationships.  Josh Krugman ’14, who followed her, read in a strange, theatrical voice like that of a bad Shakespeare actor, but the effect was amusing when coupled with the hallucinatory content of his work, lines like, “Just call me porcupine.”  He interrupted himself to inform us that he had just quoted Tennessee Williams, and took a deep, histrionic bow when he finished.  Leia Zidel ’12 read prose poems from her senior thesis, as well as one she had written just the day before, which seemed addressed or otherwise related to James Joyce.  Whereas Sallee was brutal and Brown almost tender with regards to sex, Zidel spoke of it lushly, in verdurous, organic terms: “I have shut my thighs, and still the terrible sap.”  Last in the lineup was Glenn Stowell ’13, whose work exuded a Whitman-esque regard for nature, evoking both a sense of motion and a kind of terrain or topography (which is fitting given that one of his poems was actually titled “Topography”).

What stood out most to me about the reading was just how well each of these poets was able to balance personal expression and earnestness with novelty and experimentation.  The poetic community at Wesleyan can often feel divided between the popular, galvanizing fare of WeSLAM and the rarified, hole-and-corner exploits of an unappreciated avant-garde.  But while such a polarity exists, Thursday night’s reading was a testament to the fact that between these two extremes lies a whole spectrum of work that doesn’t conform to either one.  A diversity of tastes doesn’t necessarily imply a division, but can in fact, as I saw on Thursday, be indicative of just the opposite: a community of individuals united by the common purpose of creating good work.

Emily Brown ’12, Claire Dougherty ’13, Josh Krugman ’13, and Glenn Stowell ’13 are this year’s Wesleyan Student Poets; their selected work has been published in a collection which is available around campus.  For information about upcoming events at Espwesso, like their page on Facebook.

Spotlight on Seniors: Sarah Wolfe ’12 interviews playwright Ben Firke ’12

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Ben Firke ’12 sits down with Sarah Wolfe ’12 to discuss his theater experience at Wesleyan, including the upcoming production of his play “Clem and Paul Build a Fort,” running March 1 to March 3 at 9pm in the ’92 Theater.

Ben Firke '12

Ben Firke ’12 has been writing plays for ten years, getting his start at theater camps when he was twelve. He was lucky enough to be able to see his in-progress scripts read by semi-professional actors, brought to the camp by director Elyse Singer, who runs the Hourglass Theater Company in New York City. These experiences, and finally getting to see his plays performed by the actors at the camp, gave him his first love for theater.

“I learned very early on in the process of being in theater to be flexible and roll with the punches. I learned that how you see it in your head isn’t how it’s going to be on stage, and also how it is in your head may actually be worse that what appears on stage. These actors know what they’re doing.”

This has been a motto for Firke as he’s written and produced plays while at Wesleyan. The plots of his scripts have been about as varied as the playwrights he considers inspirational, including his friend and mentor Amy Herzog (“4000 Miles”, “After the Revolution”, and “The Wendy Play”); Edward Albee (“The Zoo Story”, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”), who Firke was lucky enough to be pen-pals with for a time; Paula Vogel (go see “How I Learned to Drive” this weekend at 7pm in the ’92!); Sarah Ruhl (“Melancholy Play”, “Eurydice”); Ionesco; and Shakespeare.

Through Second Stage Firke has written and produced three plays, and directed two of them. The topics have been highly varied, from “How to Be a Man in West Belfast” (directed by Justin Wayne ’12), which was about growing up during the Troubles in Ireland, to his current project “Clem and Paul Build a Fort”, which opens this Thursday at 9pm in the ’92 Theater.

According to Firke, “Clem and Paul” is about “a bunch of young people who really care about doing the right thing but they don’t know what the right thing is.” The play addresses the concerns that all graduating seniors have, of what comes next, and how to make the right choices for the future, but it uses a unique lens to do so.

“Two students, Clem and Paul, have a one night stand, and ten months later Clem shows up and tells Paul that she’s decided to keep the kid, and he needs to decide whether he or not he’s going to be there for the kid.” More than just the issue of how to deal with early parenthood, the play is about the relationships that develop in college, between people who barely know each other and people who are already very comfortable with each other. Firke was especially interested in male friendships and how these relationships are different or similar to male-female relationships.

The Cast of "How to Be a Man in West Belfast"

Along with last spring’s “Shovels vs. Shubert”, which Firke wrote and directed, his fourth project at Wesleyan was also what he considered to be his first serious play, “Mark David Chapman: Live in Concert”. “It was a pretty dark drama about a record producer whose career has stagnated. He ends up producing an album (and then a concert) by Mark Chapman, the man who shot John Lennon, and how he finds himself identifying with rock n’ roll’s most notorious murderer.” It was done as a staged reading during Second Stage’s Outreach Weekend in the fall of 2008, but it was also produced in 2007 at the Blank Theater Company’s Young Playwrights Festival in Los Angeles. The production in this professional setting gave Firke an invaluable lesson in editing and working with constructive criticism.

What the budding playwright has learned throughout these experiences is that he just can’t quit –  not that he hasn’t tried. He related a notable experience in high school while working on a play that just wasn’t coming together. In the middle of his school’s library, he stood up, shut his computer and yelled “I’m done! I quit!” But sure enough, three days later, he was back at work again. His plans for after Wesleyan are still unclear, and he has wide interests including Government and Educational Policy, but he knows that no matter what he will continue writing plays and hoping to have people read and act them.

“Writing is a very solitary thing, you’re up in your own head space. And theater is a very different medium. But if I’m going to be a writer, I’m going to be a playwright, because that collaborative experience is something that I’d never trade for anything.”

Don’t miss “Clem and Paul Build a Fort” Thursday, March 1 through Saturday March 3 at 9pm in the ’92 Theater. Written and directed by Ben Firke ’12, Stage Managed by Jillian Ruben ’12 and starring Michelle Agresti ’14, Matt Lynch ’15, Eli Timm ’13 and Sarah Wolfe ’12.

Katherine Clifford ’14 talks to Artist in Residence Hari Krishnan about the Spring Faculty Dance Concert (Mar. 2 & 3)

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Katherine Clifford ’14 interviews Hari Krishnan, Artist in Residence at Wesleyan University, on the Spring Faculty Dance Concert: March 2 & March 3, 2012 at 8pm in the CFA theater. Hari Krishnan is teaching the Bharata Natyam and Repertory and Performance classes this spring. The Spring Faculty Dance Concert will feature the U.S. premiere of “Quicksand” and the world premiere of “Nine.”

inDANCE. Photo by Miles Brokenshire.

The Wesleyan dancers performing the world premiere of “Nine” will include Abigail Baker ’12 and Aditi Shivaramakrishnan ’12 (both performances); Arianna Fishman ’13, Allison Greenwald ’14, Christian Lalonde ’13, Francesca Moree ’14, Cristina Ortiz ’15, Sarah La Rue ’12, and Rachel Rosengard ’14 (March 2); and graduate students Taylor Burton and Natalie Plaza, Dawanna Butler ’15, Arin Dineen ’13, Jessica Placzek ’12, Claire Feldman-Reich ’12, and Tess Scriptunas ’14 (March 3).

Q: Tell me about the piece “Quicksand,” which will be performed in the Spring Faculty Dance Concert; what does it explore, and how does your work combine South Indian Classical Dance, or Bharata Natyam, with contemporary influences?

A: Both pieces are about the search for identity, the search for selfhood. This is the overarching theme that binds the pieces together. “Quicksand” is a piece that I choreographed in March 2011 for a high profile dance festival in Canada. The work I do usually challenges dominant discourses about culture. I try to subvert popular culture, and I try to challenge stereotype and cliché. “Quicksand” is a prime example of this prominent theme. The inspiration of the work came from nine archetypal emotions popular in Indian classical dance. These nine emotions are usually hyper-exaggerated and done in a specific way by a classical dancer, usually female. I decided to subvert that popular depiction by using nine contemporary male dancers, and by creating a postmodern interpretation for those nine emotions.

“Quicksand” is like a metaphor for my life; my name is Hari Krishnan, my ethnicity is Indian, I teach Bharata Natyam and contemporary dance at Wesleyan. I have a dance company that does a whole range of work in Toronto, Canada. I choreograph and perform around the world: in Europe, Malaysia, Singapore, and India. Wherever I go and perform my work, some of the comments I get are that my work is not Indian enough, it’s too Western, or that my work is not Western enough, it’s too Indian. All those opposite reactions to my work put me in an interesting location as a dance artist and in terms of my identity. I use “Quicksand” as a metaphor to demonstrate that complexity; it is a personal meditation on identity and selfhood. From a dance point of view, it is an engaging, physical, high-energy work by nine top Canadian male dancers who are going to showcase a new, unique movement vocabulary that blends Indian classical gesture and contemporary dance body movements.

Q: What inspired your other piece “Nine,” and how does it further explore these themes?

A: As a parallel story to “Quicksand,” the Repertory and Performance class at Wesleyan will do the same interpretation as “Quicksand”, but in a “classical” mode, using nine dancers and the same nine emotions. By “classical,” I mean a classical Indian style of movement, but with contemporary presentation in terms of lighting design, spatial dynamics, and the dancers’ relationships with each other.

Q: What is unique about the show and how do the two pieces come together to form one coherent meaning?

A: What’s unique about this show is that it’s one idea, nine emotions, and two interpretations of this idea: one postmodern and one classical, which are displayed through radically different works. It is the culmination of my own artistic, research, and pedagogical practices. It also allows me to blend my two worlds; I’m artistic director of inDANCE, the Toronto-based dance company, and I’ve been at Wesleyan for over ten years now.

Q: What do you hope people will gain from the show? Why should people come see it?

A: This show is for anyone who is interested in dance, design and music. We have a U.K.-based composer who composed the music for “Quicksand.” He has combined electronic and computer-generated music with music from popular culture. “Nine” consists of an amazing Indian classical dance call, which is very lush and rich. Visual design and costume design are also very strong; “Quicksand” is a multimedia work. The lighting design for “Nine” has been specially lit by Theater Professor Jack Carr.

This is for anybody interested in movement and high-energy physicality. It is about celebrating diversity and experiencing humanity in various hues, colors, and tints. It is a bizarre look at life, and a fun, accessible, and engaging evening of dance. The dance department reflects the concert in terms of its openmindedness and the eclectic dance courses we offer in the dance department: from Javanese to Ballet to Modern to Bharata Natyam to West African. This is the kind of concert that can really thrive at Wesleyan, and it’s a testimony to the open-minded, progressive attitude at Wesleyan.

Finally, I tell people that it is a must see for “anyone interested in dangerous liaisons and delicious diversity.” I hope that the audience will come in with an open-minded attitude, and not expect either Indian or contemporary dance; this is “Wesleyan dance.”

Shira Engel ’14 reviews the annual Wesleyan performance of “The Vagina Monologues”

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Shira Engel ’14 reviews the annual Wesleyan performance of “The Vagina Monologues”. 

This weekend marked the belated true meaning of Valentines Day for most Wesleyan students: The Vagina Monologues. More valued than pink candy hearts are the cast of student actors dressed in purple and black, spilling their souls out on the stage of the ’92 Theater. It is no surprise that all the shows were sold out.

Even though the audience was encouraged to shut off their cell phones, they were also encouraged to be loud when appropriate. For The Vagina Monologues, this meant screaming “cunt” in response to one particular monologue, and then cheering at enacted orgasms.

What is beautiful about The Vagina Monologues is that it balances the sad with the hilarious, the tear-jerking with the gut-wrenching. A part of the national V-Day movement started by Eve Ensler, The Vagina Monologues is a way to artfully spread awareness of the violence against women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And the proceeds of those $4 tickets that came straight out of student accounts went to Planned Parenthood of Connecticut and the national V-Day movement.

While a tribute to the Congo, the show is not only about Congolese women. The diversity of the monologues is their common thread. They range from the voices of sex workers to the voices of elderly women learning to rekindle their sexuality.

The actors were fearless. From freshmen to seniors, they rose to the task of reproducing a production that happens all over the country. It was their fearlessness that evoked a raw production that had the audience gripped, hooked, and responding emotionally. Even with the evident sadness, I left inspired and happy, satisfied by monologues that were about the expression of truth, in a variety of forms.

To learn more about The Vagina Monologues, visit the V-Day website.

Spotlight on Seniors: Katherine Clifford ’14 interviews dancer Nik Owens ’12

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An interview with Nik Owens ’12 on dance at Wesleyan by Katherine Clifford ’14. Nik is a Dance major and an Environmental Studies Certificate candidate.

Nik Owens '12

Q: How long have you been dancing and what is your background in dance?

A: I’ve been dancing for about 5 years now. I was a gymnast for 14 years before I started dancing. Before I came to Wesleyan, I danced for a year, during my senior year of high school. I started with jazz classes, then I moved to ballet classes, and I started modern when I got here. When I was younger, while I was still doing gymnastics, I did a lot of hip hop and a little tap. Now I do a lot of modern. I still do hip hop and I still take ballet classes when I can.

Q: What is your involvement in student dance groups on campus?

A: I’m co-director of Precision Dance Company, which is both Precision Troupe and Precision Ensemble, both of which I’m in. [Precision Troupe performs hip-hop pieces once a semester, while the other half, Ensemble, puts on a show choreographed by its members which includes a variety of dance styles]. I’m also a Terp [Terpsichore] Core member. [Terp Core is responsible for organizing the student-choreographed Terpsichore show that occurs every semester.]

Q: What is the process of doing a senior thesis for dance?

A: The base requirements for a senior thesis are 60 to 100 pages of writing and two semesters of choreographic work that you produce. I choreographed a piece last semester called “Mirr(or) Reality”. Generally, dance majors aren’t allowed to be in their own pieces, they just choreograph them, but I petitioned to be in mine. This semester, I’m doing a duet with Sally Williams ’14, who is also a dance major. My thesis is looking it audience and performer dynamics and relationships in different dance contexts.

Q: What dance events should the Wesleyan community look out for, besides of course, your Senior Thesis concert?

A: Yes, the Thesis Concert is a big one (the weekend of April 5-7). Also, you should look out for the Terpsichore Performance: April 13-14, the Precision Ensemble show, which is April 20, and the Precision Troupe show on Friday, May 4. Also, Chunky Move, an Australian-based company is coming to Wesleyan on March 30 and 31 to show their piece, “Connected.” That’s not to be missed. DanceMasters Weekend is also something to look out for [March 10-11.]

Q: What is distinctive about dance at Wesleyan, and how has dancing here shaped your experiences?

A: You get a variety of things in terms of dance here. I believe in the philosophy that everyone at Wesleyan should take at least one dance class or be involved in at least one dance-related show or aspect. Being able to explore your body in that sort of format is something that is very intuitive and special. Dance is something that everyone should participate in at least once and then decide if that’s something they like. It’s a better way to know yourself, and to discover how you think of things and how you process things, so I think dance can be really powerful in that sense.

Q: What is it like being a male dancer, a somewhat rare breed?

A: We need more male dancers! Right now, I only know of three male dancers who are really involved in the dance community; including myself, Matt Carney ’13 (also a dance major) and Cole McNamee ’15 (who is involved in the student groups X-Tacy and Precision Troupe). Those are the only other two male dancers that are consistently involved in dance on campus, and I’m graduating in the spring, so we really need more male dancers to get involved. I would say that if you’re interested in a dance major, they love male dance majors and people who’ve never danced before in their lives. It’s a lot of fun; you get to meet some cool people.

Q: Any further thoughts or advice on dancing at Wesleyan?

A: Just get involved in the dance community; either participate yourself or support your friends who are involved. Dance is pretty big on campus; there’s a lot going on. I think to go through your whole Wesleyan career and not participate in dance in any way is a shame.