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(06/19/13 10:32pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Forty-six Bloomington restaurants will be serving up their tastiest dishes to large crowds this weekend at the 31st annual Taste of Bloomington.Locals and visitors will sample items from the variety of cuisine offered in Bloomington from 3 to 11 p.m. Saturday in the Showers Commons at City Hall.“No other Indiana city has this kind of selection of restaurants,” Crazy Horse owner and event organizer Ron Stanhouse said.This mid-summer food festival is one of Bloomington’s biggest events for local restaurants, especially for newer businesses eager to expose their menus to the public.This is true for the owners of The Big Cheeze, a local food truck specializing in gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches, which debuted itself at the Taste of Bloomington last summer.“It was pretty crazy and nerve-racking because we had never had to deal with such a big crowd,” co-owner and IU graduate Chad Sutor said. “But we got a lot of press after that and compliments around town. It was a great experience for sure.”Now one year into business, The Big Cheeze truck, parked on Kirkwood Avenue at late hours of the night, is recognized by some as a staple of Bloomington nightlife.It is known for seven signature grilled cheeses, such as the “Cheesy F Baby,” complete with buffalo chicken and provolone cheese, but the truck also makes customized sandwiches to order.“We can make a sandwich with just about anything you want,” Sutor said. “Some guy brought us Cheetos one time. We are down to do whatever as long as you pay for it and eat it.”At the Taste this weekend, The Big Cheeze will be making its best-selling “Mac Daddy” sandwich, stuffed with mac and cheese, as well as one of its new items, the Fajita Grilled Cheese.Serving up cheesy treats until 3 a.m. right outside the bars has been a hit with IU students, Sutor explained, but he hopes to reach a broader audience at this year’s Taste.“We kind of just ran witwh the college IU market because that’s who responded to us, but we want to branch out more to Bloomington locals and communicate with them,” he said.Sutor said The Big Cheeze served around 400 sandwiches last year and is planning for about 700 this weekend, and it won’t be making any of the food until the day of the event.He doesn’t anticipate this to be a challenge, despite operating a two-person kitchen in the truck.“Since we are only doing two sandwiches, it’ll be easier than when people order at the truck,” Sutor said. “But I remember from last year, I don’t think I looked up from the grill once.”With one Taste of Bloomington under its belt, The Big Cheeze is excited to return. Others’ positive testimonials have encouraged other restaurants like Chomp to enter the festival this year.Chomp, a burger restaurant located on Dunn Street, recently celebrated one year of business.Chomp is one of few restaurants that make their signature burgers with meat fresh from local farms and produce only from the Midwest.Attendees will be able to sample Chomp’s burgers and fresh-cut fries at the Taste of Bloomington.On the menu are five burgers including the “Cream and Crimson”, the “Fire Chomp” and the “Bacon and Bleu Chomp”, along with the restaurant’s veggie burger and barbecue burger. Chomp’s fresh hummus and salsa will also be provided for the crowd to sample.The small restaurant, adorned with ketchup and mustard-colored walls, has seen a lot of growth this past year, according to Front-of-House Manager Addison Blyeth, especially with the IU student market.Chomp hopes the Taste will get its name out in the community even more.“Sales would go up weekly, but that has kind of been cut off with the students gone,” Blyeth said. “We want to stay on the scene and attract more local people, and the Taste is a great way to do that this summer.”Like The Big Cheeze, Chomp has a small kitchen to work with, which Chef Dante Decanini said is “cozy because everything is within reaching distance.”Decanini said they aren’t nervous for the large crowds they will be serving, but they are gradually preparing for the big day.“I made 12 batches of hummus today instead of our usual one batch,” he said. “On Friday, we are going to be patting about 1,000 burger patties for Saturday.”Though unsure what to expect Saturday, Chomp is prepared with double staff and enthusiasm.“Chomp’s food is so good because it is all local, made with love and served with joy and happiness,” Chomp server Amber Keel said.Feel-good foods, such as mini burgers and mac-and-cheese-stuffed sandwiches, name just a couple of the hundreds of dishes that will be served and enjoyed at the Taste of Bloomington. The community tradition promises to continue its delicious legacy this weekend.“The Taste is a local event — and it feels authentic and local,” Stanhouse said. “You’ll see your friends, your friends’ friends and people you think look familiar. Everyone is enjoying the music, food and people. It’s just Bloomington at its best on a nice summer day.”
(05/19/13 10:31pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Strangers exchanged “v-cards” while couples stared at the fixtures on the walls and tried to identify which crevice of the body had been photographed and enlarged beyond recognition.Anne Kinsey Call, Alfred Kinsey’s 89-year-old daughter, sat in the middle of the gallery, talking with the artists.“Sex was always complicated by principles and morals, but for most it is an individual relationship,” Kinsey Call said. “Sex is a lot healthier today, and you can see it in the art.”Alfred Kinsey’s research about sex and gender at Indiana University pushed the envelope more than 60 years ago, and his reputation for exposing the taboo lives on today through forums such as the Kinsey Juried Art Show.Large crowds visited the Grunwald Gallery of Art to view more than 90 artworks that aim to expose issues with gender, identity, sexuality and reproduction at the opening reception of the eighth annual Kinsey Institute Juried Art Show Friday evening. Three jurors had selected 94 artworks to be displayed in the Kinsey art show out of 924 submissions by artists from six countries. “The quality of the work has gone up every year,” Grunwald Gallery director Jeremy Sweets said. “More and more entries are coming internationally, which shows that the art show is getting recognition and is becoming more prestigious.”The Kinsey art show attracted a diverse audience of IU students, graduates, professors, Bloomington locals and people who had traveled specifically for the event, as well as at least 20 of the featured artists in the show, said Catherine Johnson-Roehr, Curator of Art, Artifacts and Photographs at The Kinsey Institute.“It’s crowded, it’s great,” Sweets said. “People are engaged and networking. There are a lot of people here from the community and outside the area because the show has that kind of a pull. This show is very unique.”The Kinsey Art Show helps artists display artwork that may not always be welcomed in galleries due to sexual content.The curators added a movable wall at the front of the gallery space to create a “peep show effect,” Sweets said. The exhibit included photography, video, paintings, sculptures, interactive gadgets and computer programs, drawings, fiber art and jewelry. As viewers took in the various artworks, their facial expressions showed reactions of confusion, entertainment, curiosity and disgust.“It’s definitely something to look at for a while,” Sue Riegsecker, a first-time Kinsey art show visitor, said. “But something I really like about the show is that there are so many different experiences coming together in this one place.”Call believed the juried art show represented Kinsey well.“The show is infinitely superior to last year,” she said. “The quality gets better every year.”The recognized artworks were “Together: Animator, Animated” by Robin Carlson of Evanston, Ill., a stop-action video installation that received the Best in Show award. “The Position,” a photograph by Erin Randle of Chicago, Ill., received the Gallery Visitors’ Choice award. The sculpture “Labor Intensive,” created by Michael Brohman of Denver won the Curators’ Choice Award. No two pieces were alike. Carlson’s stop-action animation video dealt with the relationship between real and artificial bodies, while Brohman’s cast bronze sculpture illustrated surrogate pregnancy. “I thought the sculpture was the most provoking and shocking piece of all,” attendee Afua Kwaaning, said. “How the baby’s face was wrapped up within the two outstretched arms, maybe reaching for help, was really outside of the box.”Artists identified by nametags mingled with the visitors in the gallery for a personal and unique art-viewing experience. Returning Kinsey art show artists and new artists alike were given the chance to display and engage in dialogue about their work.Therese Shechter of Brooklyn, N.Y., passed out “v-cards” to visitors when discussing her digital interactive web project and documentary “The V-Card Diaries.” Her interactive project of different peoples’ stories and ideas about sex delves into “the myth and meaning of virginity in America,” Shechter said.“There isn’t this big before and after moment of losing virginity that society sells to us in teen movies and pornography and so on,” Shechter said. “It is a long process of self-discovery.”
(05/19/13 10:21pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Robin Carlson said with a giggle that she has a “split personality.”“It is very disturbing to image-search me,” Carlson said. “There are beautiful flowers and scientists on one hand, then there are all these altered, fleshy doll head animations that twitch. I keep Googling myself.”Carlson, 33 of Evanston, Ill., said this is because she is one of those artists with a day job. Carlson is a photographer for the Botanic Gardens in Chicago, but she explores photography as art outside of her daily work. Carlson’s day job may pay the bills, but those fleshy, twitching doll heads won “Best in Show” Friday evening at the 2013 Kinsey Institute Juried Art Show.“This was a total surprise,” Carlson said. “I didn’t even know awards were given out at this show.”Carlson’s stop-action animation video titled “Together; Animator, Animated” was awarded the prestigious “Best in Show” title at the opening reception of the Kinsey art show. Her piece was recognized out of the 94 selected artworks in the juried show, which came from a pool of more than 900 submissions from artists around the world. This was Carlson’s first time entering the increasingly selective Kinsey Juried Art Show, which received 200 more submissions than last year.Carlson originally created this project for her thesis in photography at Colombia College, where she graduated with a Bachelor’s in Fine Arts last year. “I submitted my work because a classmate of mine had been in the show, but the deadline was only a day away,” she said. Three jurors — including Catherine Johnson-Roehr, Curator of Art, Artifacts, and Photographs at The Kinsey Institute — selected Carlson’s artwork. “We chose Robin Carlson’s video as Best in Show because it was a really intriguing example of stop-action animation, and none of us on the jury had ever seen anything like it before,” Johnson-Roehr said. “The artist is exploring ideas about human interaction. The artist used her medium to express a discomfort with those close emotional bonds between people.”Carlson’s video was projected 30-feet wide on a wall in the Grunwald Gallery of Art at the opening reception, taking up the entire far end of the gallery so that the visitors could not overlook Carlson’s piece. Many stopped for some time to consider the images with pensive stares. Patrons’ reactions to the piece varied. Carlson had not seen her work displayed at this scale until opening night of the exhibit, which she said was another surprise.“Together; Animator, Animated” is a looped, black-and-white video featuring four headless, nude female torsos each holding a different doll-head in their arms. The hands touch the doll-heads in varying ways and gestures, each time in a stoic and stiff manner as a result of the stop-action effect. “People think it’s creepy, but that’s okay because that is the intent in a way,” Carlson said. “It shows a relationship of the manipulation of a helpless object even when attempting to be nurturing. It is really weird to look at.”She said her project aims to challenge the boundary between real and artificial. “Real life can feel very performative and disingenuous,” Carlson said. “The heads are half-fleshy, half-artificial. I wanted to make the impression that something seemed natural and real but was obviously artificial.”Carlson said she is the female body performing in the video. She made the heads out of several dolls that she altered with clay and wigs, including a Cabbage Patch doll and a Dora the Explorer doll. “It doesn’t even register that this is my naked torso,” Carlson said. “I am more self-conscious about people seeing the heads.”Some viewers said they were disturbed by the images, but Carlson’s piece did evoke emotions, dialogue and varying interpretations. “It bothers me,” IU graduate McKenzie Goodrich said. “It’s uncomfortable to see such lifeless female faces with real bodies.”Her husband had a different take on it. “I think the artist is asking us to question the relationship between a real female and a sexualized woman,” Jeremy Goodrich, also an IU graduate, said.“Together; Animator, Animated” may not have been as directly sexual or erotic like many other pieces in the art show, but Carlson said it is an intimate look into her life.“I made it, I think, mostly for myself,” she said. “I probably would have still made it if nobody wanted to see it.”
(05/15/13 11:03pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Transgendered dolls, an erotic Pinocchio and “naked chicks on rocks” — as described by featured artist Dave Levingston — are just a few of the things to see at the Grunwald Gallery of Art this weekend. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction will present an opening reception for the eighth annual Kinsey Institute Juried Art Show Friday.The free exhibit will be on display to the public through July 13.Jurors selected 94 out of 924 contemporary works of art submitted by artists from six countries. The jurors include Nan Brewer, curator of works on paper at the IU Art Museum, Betsy Stirratt, director of the Grunwald Gallery of Art and Catherine Johnson-Roehr, curator of art, artifacts and photographs at The Kinsey Institute.Johnson-Roehr said this was a record high for the number of submissions the show received.“We received about 200 more art submissions than last year,” Johnson-Roehr said. “This gives us a high-quality pool of art to select from. We tried to get a real interesting mixed-media exhibit.”The artworks include paintings, photographs, ceramics, sculptures, fiber art and video installations created by artists from across the U.S., Canada, France and Germany. Each piece acts as a social commentary on topics including sex, gender and identity, though the show was originally founded as an erotica exhibit in 2006, Johnson-Roehr said.“We do include erotica, but as an institute, erotic art doesn’t encompass all that we do,” Johnson-Roehr said. “We deal with gender issues, identity, relationships ... We deal with a lot more issues than just sex and this show really represents that.”The Kinsey Institute Juried Art Show exhibits fine art dealing with the human body; this ranges from more explicit images of body parts and sexual encounters to less obvious depictions of similar topics in nature scenes or portraits of people in their homes.Dave Levingston, a photographer from Ohio and a contributor to the Kinsey Institute’s permanent art collection, will present his photograph “Kat in the Red Groove” at this year’s show. The photograph is of a nude woman posed harmoniously within the naturescape of the red rock formations in South Coyote Buttes in Arizona.“The underlying idea is that all that we understand as beautiful in nature derives from the female figure,” Levingston said. “When cavemen stepped out of their caves, what looked like a woman was then called beautiful.”This is the second time Levingston’s work will be displayed in the Kinsey Institute Juried Art Show. “My work has been shown frequently in other juried shows and galleries, but this show is a special one for me,” Levingston said. “It is very difficult to get in and it is a real honor to be chosen.”Another returning Kinsey art show artist and IU adjunct professor in the School of Fine Arts, Kevin O. Mooney, also photographed the human figure in an unusual way. Mooney’s photograph titled “Double-breasted” is his fourth selected work in the art show’s eight years, he said.Mooney aimed to challenge peoples’ perceptions by layering hundreds of squares in a pixelated fashion that changes resolution depending on viewer distance.The Kinsey Institute Juried Art Show provides an outlet for artists that is not often found in galleries or juried shows elsewhere.“It is an opportunity that not all artists have in most places,” Johnson-Roehr said. “Even today, pieces that deal with the body and nudity can be an issue with audiences, then explicit sexual content can be an issue for some galleries.”Not all of the artwork is focused on the human form. Rita Koehler, a visual artist from South Bend, Ind., was selected for her project titled “Rite of Ordinary,” a series of photographs documenting the lives of more than two dozen same-gendered couples in Northern Indiana.Koehler explained that these portraits are social and historical documentaries of same-gendered couples, as well as political statements. “It challenges who lays claim to the home sphere, to family, to relationships,” Koehler said. “I want viewers to be open to these questions.”Koehler said her project will be adopted into the permanent Kinsey art collection, which has been collecting art since the 1940s.The artists expressed a shared appreciation for the Kinsey Institute’s dedication to art and research.“I’m a big fan of the Kinsey Institute and their work maintaining the importance of gender and sex that is often neglected in science and even art, and we suffer from that,” Levingston said. “And the Kinsey Institute is really doing something about that.”The Kinsey Juried Art Show will award the artist whose work is voted “Best in Show” with a $300 prize. A $200 prize will be awarded to the work voted “Gallery Visitors’ Choice” on Friday night. The show aims to spark dialogue about topics in the artwork, Johnson-Roehr said.“I think people will find it very interesting and worthwhile,” Johnson-Roehr said. “You may not enjoy every piece, but there is such a range of work you can definitely find something to appreciate.”
(05/08/13 11:22pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>By Hannah Cranehmcrane@indiana.eduThe whining of the saxophone and the rhythm of congas could be heard all the way down Kirkwood Avenue.Families, students and passers-by came to enjoy the free Lunchtime Concert between 11:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. Tuesday in Peoples Park.Every Tuesday in Peoples Park, different musical performers will present free lunchtime concerts to the public as a part of the Bloomington Summer Performing Arts Series. Downtown Bloomington came alive on the first clear day of summer to the sounds of feel-good tunes like Bob Marley’s “Stir It Up”.This summer marks the 10-year anniversary of the Lunchtime Concert events. The Summer Performing Arts Series will take place May through August, providing 17 different events at various locations. “It’s just this wonderful intersection of sun, music, lunch and the hustle and bustle of downtown,” Greg Jacobs, the Community Events Coordinator for Bloomington Parks and Recreation, said.Afro-Cuban, folk, blues, jazz and country are among the featured music genres. “I look to offer a variety of types of music,” Jacobs said. “Bloomington has such a great music community, so we can put together a full series.”Afro Hoosier Intl was the featured band Tuesday and performed songs from the African diaspora. This included a variety of covers from Bob Marley to Latin-Cuban songs in Spanish.“It was fun performing in Peoples’ Park,” Robert Port, IU professor emeritus of linguistics and co-founder of Afro Hoosier Intl, said. “We must’ve had several hundred people see us perform throughout the hour and a half time. We’re used to around 50 people at our shows.”Afro Hoosier Intl was founded 13 years ago by Port and another IU linguistics professor, Michael Gasser, after returning from their work in Kenya and Ethiopia with Peace Corps. “I loved the African pop music I heard when I was in Kenya,” Port said. “I just loved what I heard when I turned on the radio, so here I am now playing it.”After 13 years, Port is the only original member remaining, but Afro Hoosier Intl is made up of 11 musicians and vocalists. This includes five IU faculty and staff members, and one Ph.D. student. “We all just really enjoy playing, but we all have day jobs,” Port said. “We are a dance band, and play so that people to dance to our music.”Though Tuesday did not draw much of a dancing crowd, many people flocked to Peoples’ Park to listen to the international rhythms and sing along as they ate lunch, let their children play, and soaked in the summer atmosphere.“IU offers fewer activities during the summer, so we try to cater to the summer audiences,” Jacobs said. “We present these concerts to provide the community with just a fun thing to do in the middle of the work day.”To view the full summer concert schedule, visit bloomington.in.gov/concerts.
(01/14/13 5:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>When thinking of typical weekend activities in Bloomington, Chinese, Brazilian, Japanese and African dance don’t usually come to mind.The Indiana University Dance Theatre’s “Global Perspectives” production presented dance from around the world to Bloomington audiences Friday and Saturday at the Ruth N. Halls Theatre. The Annual Faculty and Guest Artist Concert featured traditional and contemporary dances representing themes within a global community.“Global Perspectives” presented works by influential modern dance choreographers David Parsons, Bill Evans and Ma Gulandanmu, a visiting professor from China, along with pieces by IU faculty choreographers Elizabeth Shea, Selene Carter, Iris Rosa and George Pinney. Each of the nine works was derived from different parts of the world and illuminated different themes. From traditional Chinese folk dances to American modern dance, audiences witnessed a variety of foreign and relatable perspectives. Professor Iris Rosa, director of IU’s African American Dance Company, said she incorporated dance of the African and Cuban diaspora into her piece, “Unfinished Journey,” to depict larger themes all viewers could relate to.“You don’t have to be African-American to understand this piece,” Rosa said. “Everyone has a journey and hasn’t finished. People find themselves moving from one place to another and moving through different phases in their life. It is always an unfinished journey for people.”Senior Annamarie Hosei said she noticed various social topics, including the pressure to conform to normalcy and domestic abuse, within the dances. She also said the connectivity of the dancers and their movements told these stories.“It was like you couldn’t tell when one body ended and when another began,” Hosei said. “The stories showed people isolated, at times, but simultaneously fighting together. It really made me stop and think.”Elizabeth Shea, director of IU Contemporary Dance in the School of Public Health, said her new choreographic work “All Into My Arms” reflected the global community of women and cross-culture violence toward them. The piece, inspired by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s book “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide,” began with a female duet and ended with a large group of dancers.“The duet could have been any two people from opposite sides of the globe, but their shared circumstances unite them,” Shea said. “It was about women around the world sharing the same experiences and offering support. It reflected sisterhood and the idea of communal support.”The final piece of the show, Parsons’ “Nascimento Novo,” was a light-hearted contrast to the previous choreographic themes. Energetic leaps, turns and Brazilian style drum beats filled the theater.“It is always good to put an uplifting piece at the end of the show,” senior Lalah Hazelwood said. “The Brazilian dance and music was energetic and exciting. The whole show is about community in the global climate, so I think that this piece reflects the community of Brazil.”Junior theatre major Helen Cappannelli worked backstage on “Global Perspectives.”“This show goes beyond just showing off the dances and technique of the IU Contemporary Dance Program and really shows their artistry and diligent, creative process,” Cappannelli said.Shea said she hoped audiences were able to see the significance of dance, as well as appreciate the hours of work the IU Contemporary Dance Program, which is celebrating its 85th anniversary, has dedicated to this project.“I hope that people see that dance is one of the most expressive ways of communication,” Shea said. “Dance can transcend cultures and ideas. It is the universal language.”
(06/03/12 11:00pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The popular Disney Channel show “The Suite Life of Zack and Cody” features white twin boys living extravagant lives in a luxurious hotel. The program is meant to entertain, but researchers found that when kids compare their own lives to the “suite life” on screen the effect can be negative. A study by Nicole Martins, an assistant professor at the IU Department of Telecommunications, and Kristen Harrison, professor of communication studies at the University of Michigan, found a correlation between television consumption and self-esteem among children. The study, published in the journal Communication Research, surveyed 396 white and black pre-adolescent boys and girls in Midwestern communities during a year-long period.Researchers found that girls of both races and black boys were more likely to have low self-esteem due to media consumption. White boys, on the other hand, felt better about themselves. “The main finding here is that TV can hurt black children and white girls, but help white boys,” Martins said in an email. “I wasn’t surprised that we found a significant relationship between TV and self-esteem. What did surprise me, however, were the racial differences.”Martins and Harrison attribute media racial and gender stereotypes as the cause of lower self-worth among black children and white girls while white boys experience a boosted sense of self. “(These racial differences are) because of the depictions that exist across the television world,” said Andrew Weaver, an assistant professor in the IU Department of Telecommunications, in an email. “White males are much more likely to be protagonists, to be successful, to have the story told from their point of view. Repeated exposure to this sort of environment can influence perceptions of one’s in-group, which in turn could influence self-esteem.”Researchers distributed questionnaires that measured the amount of television the children consumed, their overall feelings of self-worth and their gender and racial identifications. The study did not focus on the type of programs the children watched.Martins said children spend about seven hours per day with media. Black children in the study, however, consumed an average of 10 extra hours of television per week compared to non-black participants. Martins said that when she conducted research for her Ph.D. at University of Illinois, existing studies focused on media impact on body image and eating disorders. She said research seemed to ignore how media affects children’s overall self-esteem and self-evaluation. “The study definitely has some important points to reveal to the community and to open people’s eyes about kids’ self-image,” Macon said. “Problems like depression could be addressed earlier.”Martins advises limiting children’s media consumption.“I’ve got two kids myself and know how difficult this can be,” Martins said. “However, as we argue in the paper, too much time in front of the screen may displace real-life experiences (e.g. playing a musical instrument, playing ball in the backyard) that could build a child’s feeling of self-worth. Another option would be to actively mediate your child’s media use so that they can more easily understand fantasy from reality.”
(04/06/12 1:06am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>IU’s Arts Week Everywhere has featured events to display the variety of local talent, and more are still to come — including a performance by the African American Dance Company.The Dance Company will present its annual spring concert Saturday at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater.This semester’s production is titled “Collaborations 2012: Finding Freedom.” The concert will feature students performing their own choreography in the pieces “Four Women,” “Behind the Wall,” “Hard Boiled” and “A Free Man.” Student collaboration groups developed the dances and worked to tell different stories relating to the overall theme of freedom, bringing to light issues of identity, incarceration, abuse and the human condition.The students had creative freedom when developing the dances, deciding everything from the costumes to the storyline.“Hard Boiled” was based on an Ernest Hemingway quote, freshman dancer Geneva Moore said.“The piece is about acknowledging the human condition that exists in all of us, and this condition is all the negatives and fears that plague our minds,” she said. “While choreographing, we sat down and wrote down our own personal conditions, such as anxiety, fear of loneliness, disconnect with nature and consumption, and from there, we began choreographing.”Another piece, “Four Women,” tells the story of four black women and their experiences. The dance focuses on finding freedom to identify who you are without external restrictions, said graduate student Monica Fleetwood Black, one of the dancers and choreographers of “Four Women” and the company’s road manager. “For me, my inspiration for this piece is being myself a black woman and the diversity that comes with being black and female,” Black said. “The piece gets at that blackness (that) can’t just be draped over experiences. These are all individual experiences in the black diaspora.”The second act of the concert will be a full company production called “The Circle Will Not Be Broken,” which was choreographed by African American Dance Company Director Iris Rosa. The production is made of works the company performed first semester in “Potpourri,” but the choreography and music have been altered, reconstructed and extended and dancers have been changed to tell an even more in-depth story, Rosa said.The story and choreography focus on the significance of circular formations in African traditions and African-derived dances. “The whole concept of ‘The Circle Will Not Be Broken’ is I’m using the circle as a metaphor for unbroken promises,” Rosa said. “The tradition of the circle, after going through the middle passage to the new world and Africans were dispersed all over the world, even after this disbursement, they came back to this circular configuration.”For Black, the circular configurations show the connectivity of African descendants across cultures and space.“For me, the theme behind it is the global connection of blackness,” Black said. “We are dealing with bigger themes of African-Americans and black people. We are talking about black diasporic experiences from all over the world and how we can use dance to express that global experience.”“The Circle Will Not Be Broken” takes viewers on a journey of the African-American diaspora, starting with the piece “In the Beginning,” continuing to “Middle Passage” and concluding with “Escape.”“In the Beginning” is the newest piece within Rosa’s production. It is supported by a grant from Arts Week Everywhere and features original music composed by Bernard Woma. The piece also features a guest dancer, Evelyn Yaa Bekyore, from the Saakumu Dance Troupe, which is based in Ghana. Bekyore helped the company explore and incorporate traditional Ghanaian dancing into their movement expression, Rosa said. “We start with traditional Ghanaian movements that Yaa has taught us, fusing them with contemporary modern, jazz and ballet movements,” Rosa said. “The fusion of dance styles is something that I always like to do. It gives a different type of aesthetic to the dancing, as well as gives an opportunity for students to showcase their own strengths.”Black said she hopes the audience recognizes and appreciates the diversity of the dance styles and of the company dancers themselves.“People often label us something that we are not,” Black said. “We don’t just do hip-hop or jazz or modern. I hope the show conveys the diversity of what professor Rosa provides for us. And I hope people are taken aback by our creativity in our collaborations.”Rosa’s goal is for everyone to find something he or she can connect to in “Collaborations 2012: Finding Freedom.”“Each piece is really unique and has a profound message,” Moore said. “I hope the audience is receptive to that and gains something from each piece.”
(04/02/12 12:28am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The violin whined as a spotlight illuminated a man and woman. Their faces were inches apart. A towering puppeteer arrived, a man clearly elevated from the cast’s crowd and, holding a dress from his marionette strings, the woman slowly stepped forward, put one arm through the dress sleeve and became the puppet.“We all have felt forced into something that we can’t get out of at some point in our lives,” said Alfredo Minetti, founder and director of This Is Tango Now. “The marionette is completely manipulated by the puppeteer.”This Is Tango Now, an Argentine tango dance company based in New York City, performed its first national touring production, “Identidad,” this weekend. Crowds of about 230 people attended the two performances of dancers and musicians at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater. Audiences watched couples dance fast, traditional tango with a modern twist. Unlike a typical tango show, the props, music, lighting, staging and dancing were designed to tell a story.“I think it is really neat that there was such a strong narrative connected with the dancing,” IU anthropology professor Jeanne Sept said. “Identidad” told the story of a marionette and puppeteer struggling for dominance in a string relationship. The marionette longs for freedom and, once she is free of her strings, goes on a journey to discover her identity. Minetti said the story explores themes of identity, willpower and passion.“Back in the days of traditional tango, people would just do tango for its own sake without much connection beyond that art,” Minetti said. “(This Is Tango Now) believes strongly that tango has components, emotional and kinetic, that lend themselves to great stories. We thought that we should start taking advantage of this medium.”Minetti and his company’s co-founders, Tony Award-winning dancers Fernanda Ghi and Guillermo Merlo, said their goals are to explore and use tango to tell different stories.“Our company name, This Is Tango Now, says it all,” Ghi said. “When people come to watch our shows, they know they are going to see something fresh and something new.”The storyline within “Identidad” connected to the dancing through the use of props. A ladder, bench, trumpet and umbrella were some of the items incorporated into the choreography. Ghi said props help add description to the different situations within the plot, as well as challenge the traditional tango dancers. “It reminded me a lot of a Cirque du Soleil show,” senior Ellena Kruse said. “I didn’t always follow the story, but I got that emotional sense. ... There was longing when the woman with the veil danced, and there was definitely love within all the dances.”Dramatic lighting, sound effects and live music were also used to enhance the performance. A crack of thunder, deep blue lighting and spotlight silhouettes set the mood for every segment of the story. The band was also showcased on stage and included bass, violin and bandoneón, the instrument most known for tango. “This was my first time performing in Bloomington, and it was great,” bandoneón player Ben Bogart said. “The sound quality (in the Buskirk-Chumley) is something I’m not used to in Argentina. This was brilliant and so comfortable.”Minetti said the lighting, live music and dancers all seemed to come together in Bloomington, even though “Identidad” has taken them to places such as Dallas and Chicago. This was fitting for Minetti, as he earned his degree in cultural anthropology here at IU.“It feels like a homecoming to be back in Bloomington,” Minetti said. “It’s a safe place to perform and have people respond to it.”Ghi, Merlo and Minetti said they would like to return to Bloomington every year and with a new production each time. Ghi emphasized the company is always striving to educate more dancers and actors about the creative potential of tango. “When people go watch a (This Is Tango Now) show, they don’t really know what they are going to see,” Bloomington resident Paulo Dias said. “Everyone I invited to the show was like, ‘Oh man,’ and was completely astonished by the music and dance.”
(03/30/12 3:54am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Sophomore Emily Manzanares practiced walking in her high heels, and sophomore Majo Argote had her mother quiz her with mock interview questions. These women, along with 15 others representing their sorority chapters, have been practicing and fundraising for weeks in hopes of being crowned the first-ever Miss Greek IU. Delta Chi fraternity will put on the first pageant this Sunday in Alumni Hall in the Indiana Memorial Union to benefit the V Foundation for Cancer Research. Seventeen contestants will represent their individual sorority chapters. The pageant will consist of pre-event interviews, a philanthropy outfit created by each contestant to represent her sorority’s cause, an evening gown walk and an on-stage question and-answer session.“We want to showcase the wonderful women of IU’s sororities,” said junior Jakson Alvarez, philanthropy co-chair of Delta Chi. Natalie Vertiz, Miss Peru 2011 and a Miss Universe contestant, will come to campus from Lima, Peru to be the pageant’s host. Vertiz, a personal friend of one of the Delta Chi members, was a major inspiration when the fraternity created this philanthropy event, Alvarez said.“I think the point of the pageant is to find a girl who represents the greek community,” said sophomore Sam Dragan, co-philanthropy chair of Delta Chi. “Miss Peru represents her country well and is kind of a role model for what Miss Greek IU needs to represent.”The pageant will include performances by IU’s Straight No Chaser, as well as a performance by the men of Delta Chi.The pageant is meant to be entertaining, but the main purpose of this event is to benefit Delta Chi’s national philanthropy, the V Foundation. The goal was to raise $10,000, but the contestants and Delta Chi members have already met that goal. “We want to raise as much as we possibly can to set the bar for the rest of the years,” Dragan said. “Also, since it is our last year on campus, we want to make a strong impression and a difference. We wanted to do more with philanthropy than we have in the past.”Argote originally considered not joining the greek system due to stereotypes, she said. “I didn’t even think I wanted to rush because I thought I didn’t fit into that sorority stereotype,” Argote, of Alpha Omicron Pi, said. “But so much more goes on in sororities, and sometimes that gets overshadowed by the social aspect of houses. This pageant incorporates the social aspect of it but focuses on the philanthropic purpose of the greek community.”In addition to wanting to participate in the pageant because it sounded challenging and fun, Argote and Manzanares both said they saw this as an opportunity to show what greek women are all about.“I want to show other people what the greek community does,” Gamma Phi Omega’s Manzanares said. “We are not just throwing parties every week. I want people to know that we do a lot more with the community and are able to balance that with our academics. We get criticized because of the stereotypes, but we are trying to change that image.”Sophomore and Phi Mu contestant Rachel Smith was drawn to the Miss Greek IU pageant because of the V Foundation. “The fact that I’ve had multiple family members affected by cancer made me decide to participate in Miss Greek IU,” Smith said. “Millions of people are affected by cancer or know someone who has been, so I think this cause is something we can all relate to.”Smith, Manzanares and Argote have been fundraising, each having collected hundreds of dollars already. Ten percent of each contestant’s donations and sales go back to her own chapter’s philanthropy, which Dragan said shows a real collective effort by the greek community.Though fundraising is the main purpose of the event, the contestants still have to put on a show as they compete for the title. For most of the women, this is their first time in a pageant. Miss Peru advised the women to stay poised and focused.“All contestants should be confident, have an awesome attitude and believe in themselves!” Vertiz said in an email. “Learn to love themselves for what they have, and a great smile is always what I look for.”Greek Alumni Coordinator Judy Downey, Miss IU Brianna McClellan and the two highest-fundraising Delta Chi members, junior Geoffrey Kerbis and sophomore Jacob Kuczmanski, will judge the women based on their two outfit presentations and interviews. Bonus points will be awarded to the contestants who have raised the most money. The top-five women will receive awards, and the crowned winner will also be the first recipient of the Miss Greek IU Scholarship of $150. “Miss Greek IU is a girl that knows how to balance her life and prioritizes giving back to the community,” Alvarez said. “She is proud of her house, proud of the greek community and is willing to work toward bettering the image of the greek system. She is independent and motivated.”Delta Chi members said they hope this event will be successful enough for it to become a main attraction for the greek system and IU in years to follow. “This is such a great philanthropy,” Argote said. “(Miss Greek IU) will definitely catch on, and I hope it keeps going.”
(03/28/12 10:07pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>When one thinks of tango, one might envision a couple dancing and staring into each other’s eyes, a rose clenched in one dancer’s teeth. Puppeteers and marionettes do not fit this image.This Is Tango Now is an Argentine tango company founded by Alfredo Minetti, who earned a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology at IU. It works to push the boundaries of traditional tango. The creators of the company — renowned dancers Fernanda Ghi, Guillermo Merlo and producer Minetti — design performances that fuse tango dancing with contemporary lighting, music, props and storylines.“It is more than a show,” Ghi said in a video press release via YouTube. “This Is Tango Now is an experience.”The company will bring this approach to the Buskirk-Chumley Theater this weekend for the show “Identidad.” “Some reviews say that ‘Identidad’ is too modern and not traditional tango, but Alfredo is more into creating an engaging show that tells a story,” said Annie Orrill, the company’s social media publicist.“Identidad” tells the story of a marionette who longs for freedom from her puppeteer. The two battle for dominance in the string relationship. The story explores the human themes of identity, willpower and passion that Minetti described as relatable for all audiences.“The storyline is one that resonates with anyone,” Minetti said in an email. “Who does not feel that she/he hasn’t made things, got into situations or chose a career, that years down the line they wish could have been different? Who among us does not strive to find passion for someone and for something? And who doesn’t spend their entire lives negotiating between multiple identities?”The dancing, music, lighting, costumes and props all work together to bring this mysterious, dark and whimsical tale of identity to life. Maarten Bout, the director for marketing and technology at the Buskirk-Chumley, said the show will be riveting.“It is an amazing show of music and dance, as well as stage and lighting design,” Bout said. “It is much more than just a dance exposition. They tell a story by means of Argentinian tango, not tango as a means by itself, and very few in the world are doing that right now.”Ghi and Guillermo are celebrated Argentine tango dancers and have won Tony Awards and World Championships. Minetti, a musician and anthropologist, combined his and the dancers’ talents to reinvent the genre of tango in “Identidad.”“The show has layers, like an onion,” Minetti said. “One can wonder at the lights, the choreography, the music, the beauty of each scene, engage more with the plot ... or with all of the above. They should want to come back and see the show multiple times, each time discovering something new.”This Is Tango Now’s national tour of “Identidad,” after selling out the past four shows, has made its way to Bloomington. However, it is no stranger to this college town. This Is Tango Now performed in the 2010 Lotus World Music and Arts Festival, and Minetti lived in Bloomington before relocating to New York City with the company.“Alfredo’s connection to Bloomington brings us this world-class performance,” Bout said. “It is so exciting that Bloomington, Ind., is one of the first places to experience this budding, international phenomenon.”Minetti encourages all people to come embark on this “journey of some of the most fascinating situations and deepest emotions.”“We’re convinced that this show is so good that the Bloomington audience will really eat it up,” Bout said. Catch a performanceWHEN 8 p.m. today and FridayWHERE Buskirk-Chumley TheaterMORE INFO Tickets are $10 for students and $25 for the general public
(03/07/12 3:02am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>IU Health Center nutritionists and counselors said they were concerned by what they read in the article “Big dreams, thin figures” that ran in the Indiana Daily Student three weeks ago. “I was saddened by the article because it showed that a lot of the students are not aware of the services available to them on campus and don’t know where to go for help,” said Bobbie Saccone, a dietitian and nutrition counselor at the IU Health Center.The article featured IU Ballet Theater students who saw a lack of health education in the department. The students also talked about the presence of eating disorders and the vulnerability dancers have to adopt unhealthy diets and body images. The Coalition for Overcoming Problem Eating/Exercise of the Health Center contacted the dancers in response to their testimonies to see how they could reach out to other students in the program.Diana Ebling, medical director of the Health Center, said ballerinas are more vulnerable to negative body images and health practices because of the pressure to look a certain way, but said all types of people deal with body-image-related issues one way or another.“There are a lot of students on campus who would benefit from our services,” Ebling said. “Yet statistics show that only 10 percent of people with eating disorders get treatment. We want to highlight the services we have on campus.”The Health Center actively works to promote healthy lifestyles to students. The last week of February was Celebrate EveryBODY Week, an annual event COPE and the Health Center use to spread positive body image information and awareness of the University’s health services. Additionally, March is considered National Nutrition Month.What was once Eating Disorder Awareness Day is now a week full of positive body image activities to celebrate all body types. A number of other campuses participate in the week, but Saccone said IU was one of the first campuses to adopt and develop the program. “The variety of activities offers something for everyone,” Saccone said. “Students and staff got to do things like take a pledge to stop criticizing a part of themselves or go to a Zumba and hip-hop dance party. Celebrate EveryBODY Week really raises awareness in general.”Ebling said Celebrate EveryBODY Week has encouraged students to seek out available health services in the past. “Students, after going to the different events and learning about eating disorders, are able to see some of the issues we bring up in their own habits,” Ebling said. “We have had students come in to set up appointments after what they learned in Celebrate EveryBODY Week.”The Health Center offers free services to students through COPE, Counseling and Psychological Services and Health and Wellness Dietitians. Nutritionists, medical specialists, dieticians and counselors are available to students at any time.CAPS Director Nancy Stockton said these different resources were created so students can choose where they feel comfortable to receive information or treatment.“Students can start where they want to start,” Stockton said. “This really fits with the issue of control that many people with eating disorders feel a lack of. These options set them up with maximum choice of who they want to talk to.”Though students or friends of students dealing with eating disorders are encouraged to use these resources, Saconne said these services are for everyone, not just for people with a noticeable condition.“Any student who watches TV or goes on the Internet absorbs over 10,000 messages a week about weight and body image,” Saconne said. “This makes college students an at-risk group. It has become such a cultural norm to criticize our bodies and weight, and we are trying to educate students about it.”The Health Center also works to break the stigma that eating disorders only affect women who want to be thinner. It encourages college men to utilize its services, as well. “Males are often affected in the opposite way with a condition called muscle dysmorphia,” Saconne said. “They look in the mirror and see a scrawny person and become obsessed with getting bigger.”Celebrate EveryBODY Week spreads the message that people should appreciate and love their bodies the way they are, but the Health Center recognizes it is not always so easy to get to that point.“We want all students to know we are here and what we can do for them,” Ebling said. “They don’t have to feel ill when they come in. We just want students to know we are here to help.”
(02/15/12 4:07am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Natalie Portman was pushed to her breaking point in “Black Swan” because of her obsession with becoming the perfect ballerina. In the movie “Center Stage,” a dancer was fired from the ballet company because she gained too much weight.These movies tell dramatic stories of what it’s like to be a professional dancer, but a ballerina from Milan’s La Scala Ballet Company recently revealed that these dramatizations are not too far from reality.One in five ballerinas at La Scala has an eating disorder, company member Mariafrancesca Garritano said in her interview with the Observer. Garritano was fired from La Scala as a result of the remark.It is no secret that a long, lean figure is preferred in ballet, but the vulnerability to eating disorders and the health risks associated with ballet is something most dancers would prefer to sweep under the rug.“There is so much pressure to be thin in the ballet world, but the health issues often go unspoken,” said Sami Nagy-Chow, a sophomore ballet major in the Jacobs School of Music.Behind the elegant tutus and whirling pirouettes, the mental and physical demands dancers deal with to fit the ballerina mold reveal a less graceful side of ballet.IU’s Ballet Department in the Jacobs School of Music is no exception to this kind of pressure and vulnerability to health issues.“Ballet is a physical art form,” Jacobs Ballet Chair Michael Vernon said. “Girls need to be lifted. Ballet requires a certain look, like modeling.”Junior ballet major Jacob Taylor said keeping a healthy balance is key to dealing with the mental and physical stresses of ballet.“You can’t do too much of something,” Taylor said. “Our body is our instrument, and we need to keep that instrument healthy.”Alyssa McPherson, an athletic trainer for the ballet program, said this is what the program promotes.“It has always had the philosophy that a dancer’s body is their instrument for performance and therefore has to be properly maintained,” McPherson said.Ballet majors have rigorous schedules of academic classes, technique classes and rehearsals, but Nagy-Chow said “the majority of the dancers are healthy.”“I have seen a lot more issues with weight and health elsewhere, but they still exist here,” Nagy-Chow said. “We all have a bit of ballerina-itis.”Vernon said that, in his five and a half years as the department chair, he has worked to create a healthy environment.“I think that by creating an environment that is nurturing, we’ve taken a lot of the negativity and competition out of the department,” Vernon said.He has also made available a nutritionist from the IU Health Center and an athletic trainer from the School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation. The nutritionist gives a lecture to the dancers at the beginning of each semester, but Vernon said the department did not give one this semester because they were so busy.The ballet majors mainly rely on each other for support and maintain a family-like community to deal with the pressures.Nagy-Chow remembered helping a fellow ballerina in the department who was told to lose weight and began turning to unhealthy methods.“It was really scary to see her start to do that,” Nagy-Chow said. “My friends and I supported her and stopped her from going down a long road of anorexia. You need friends’ support to push against the pressure.”The University’s campus and environment also work to keep dancers grounded. Nagy-Chow said that academics and the social scene remind them that “ballet isn’t the entire world.”For some individuals, though, ballet is their entire world.“Some of the ballerinas, like any type of artist, are so passionate that they will do anything to achieve their goals,” Nagy-Chow said. “If that means using unhealthy ways to stay thin, they’ll do it.”Vernon said he estimated that 99 percent of the students are healthy.Nagy-Chow said she identified three cases that currently need attention.“The problem is teachers will tell dancers they need to lose or gain weight, but the teacher doesn’t always tell dancers how to do it properly,” Nagy-Chow said. “So they will often turn to unhealthy ways to get quick results, but this can turn into a lifelong condition.”Nagy-Chow said this is a current issue at IU Ballet Theater. She said directors will address certain cases of eating disorders, but there is no follow-through.“It’s like they will talk about it and then just forget,” Nagy-Chow said. “I think the health of the dancers should be number one.”Vernon said he and McPherson monitor the students who need attention, but he believes it is ultimately the dancer’s responsibility to take care of his or herself.“At 18, the students come here at a professional level,” Vernon said. “They should know how to make an effort to meet us halfway. We can’t teach them everything.”Taylor agrees that nutrition and health should be a more focused topic in the program.“Health isn’t promoted in the Ballet Department as much as it should be,” Taylor said. “The department’s weak spot is health.”Taylor recalled having two nutrition lectures throughout his three years at IU.“I don’t even know what the nutritionist’s name is,” Taylor said. “I remember having a nutrition lecture my sophomore year. Attendance wasn’t taken and only half of the majors showed up.”Taylor and Nagy-Chow both advocated for more education through consistent nutrition lectures and required personal health classes.“We simply can’t eat a 2,000 calorie diet,” Nagy-Chow said. “Dancers need to know how to fuel their bodies the right way.”Vernon said there has been a lack of communication on the topic of health.“I’d think that if students were seeing an issue they would knock on my door and say, ‘Hey Michael. We need a nutrition class,’” Vernon said.McPherson has also noticed a lack of health education among the dancers.“They are typically meticulous in what they do to take care of themselves, for the most part — if they know what to do,” McPherson said. “The question, however, is they often do not know who to see for a particular problem and what type of care will help them heal. They have spent thousands of hours learning technique but often have little knowledge about the physiology of their body and who are the appropriate health care specialists to assist them.”Nagy-Chow and Taylor both expressed irritation because they’ve seen so many fellow male and female dancers struggle with their weights and body images throughout their dance careers.“IU Ballet Theater really is an amazing program and I love it, but this is what we need help with,” Taylor said.Nagy-Chow has proven that a healthy body and a successful ballet career can be maintained. She had lead roles in both of IU Ballet Theater’s productions this year and potentially will perform the part of Aurora in the upcoming performance of “Sleeping Beauty.”“I am one of the meatier girls in the department,” Nagy-Chow said. “But I’m a good dancer because I am strong and take care of myself. Other dancers who don’t fuel their bodies will be injured, and their careers will be dying by 23.”
(02/06/12 1:23am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The lights illuminated a man as he rocked and bounced to the funky beats that pounded through the auditorium. He was joined by a woman who reached to him and rocked along to Stevie Wonder’s voice, which repeated, “All I do is think about you.”“I hope that when people see the work, their spirits are lifted,” said Ronald Brown, founder and artistic director of Evidence, A Dance Company. “I am interested in sharing perspectives through modern dance, theater and kinetic storytelling. I want my work to be evidence of these perspectives.”Ten Evidence dancers told stories of the African diaspora with their movements on the IU Auditorium stage Saturday. An audience of 700 people watched expressive jumps and turns set to music ranging from funky rhythm and blues to African drumming. The three dances each contained a message, bringing to light topics of self-image, slavery and universal compassion. “You can see the details of the choreographer’s thought process in the dances,” graduate student Elizabeth Clark said. “You can see the story being portrayed.” Brown has been perfecting this type of storytelling since he founded the company in 1985. He has been awarded numerous times for his work, which he and his company share with an annual audience of more than 25,000 people. Brown said he takes inspiration from Latin American, Caribbean and African dance combined with urban and social movements to tell stories about the human condition. A fog rolled off the stage as a woman dressed in black strutted to the pounding bass at the beginning of the first piece, which was called “Ebony Magazine: To a Village.” The tight, black costumes later transformed into flowing fabrics with colorful patterns.“I really liked how the story went from the dancers being vain and obsessed with beauty to more natural and into the ground,” junior Renee Hinesley said. “As the story progressed, the dancing changed.”The dancers showed a variety of movements that combined traditional African dance with contemporary styles. Their high kicks and arms were paired with moves low to the ground. “They have so much energy on stage and are so powerful,” Hinesley said. “It was great to watch.”Five women in white dresses embraced one another after throwing their bodies to the ground during the second piece, “Incidents.” Brown illustrated the experiences of African-American women whose characters were shaped by slavery. “I see dance as text,” said Iris Rosa, director of the African American Dance Company. “I think that Brown’s story telling is very clear by the text in the movement married with the music.”Senior Xavier Medina experienced Brown’s techniques first-hand in workshops Evidence offered to the Contemporary Dance Program and the African American Dance Company dancers the Thursday and Friday prior to the show.“I learned a great deal about how to express my story,” Medina said. “The classes also gave me a new perspective on what people consider to be dance. He showed that even walking is dance.”The final piece of the performance contrasted the others by portraying a lighter message of love and compassion. “On Earth Together,” Brown’s most recent work, focused on interactions between the performers. Their urban style moves fused with influences of modern technique were set to joyful songs by Stevie Wonder. “I think the last piece was a good way to end the show,” freshman Haley McElwee said. “It was uplifting and showed that we always have each other.”The performers took their bows and then finished with style, dancing around in a celebration of life and dance as the curtain dropped.“The freedom of movement and the released quality of everything they did was really great,” said Satsu Holmes, sophomore and contemporary dance major. “I wish it had lasted longer.”
(01/23/12 3:59am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Senior Jared Boze has a Skype session with friends in Germany, and junior Heather Price drinks English tea. Boze and Price are working to stay in touch with the cultures and people they recently left. After months of studying abroad, they have returned to campus life at IU.“The first day I came back, I was driving around my home town and had a little panic attack,” Price said. “I was like, ‘This isn’t London!’”Students who study abroad might learn another language, apply for financial aid and buy the special plugs to fit into the country-specific outlets, all in preparation to immerse themselves in a new country and culture. But what happens when they come home? Students have to readjust to life prior to travel, which “can be as trying as acclimating to a new culture,” according to the Office of Overseas Study website. The environment that once seemed natural can become foreign to students after traveling abroad for an extended time.Kathleen Sideli, associate vice president for Overseas Study, noted returning to campus is a drastic change of environment.“All of our programs are in major urban areas, so the biggest adjustment is coming from diverse, bustling cities to the bucolic and homogeneous city of Bloomington,” Sideli said. Boze recalled staying in his brother’s flat in Cairo in between academic travels. Price recalled catching a bus to anywhere in London. “I do feel a bit bored now,” Price said. “It was so cool to just take a bus to Big Ben on a whim. Now I can take a ride to Kroger.”Price, along with more than 200 IU students who returned to campus after studying abroad in the fall, is vulnerable to reverse-culture shock. This is characterized by feelings such as frustration, anxiousness and boredom, according to CIEE.org. Boze, who is now an Overseas Study peer counselor, studied for 15 months in Austria and Germany and has been acclimating to home since he returned first semester. He felt the biggest shock was readjusting to campus’s way of life.“It can be very frustrating because there are so many people who don’t realize what is important,” he said. Boze said he doesn’t want to be pretentious, but that everyday problems here don’t seem so bad to him after seeing extreme poverty and different values in the world.“Seeing a freshman move in and complain that they couldn’t fit the mini fridge and microwave. ... I was like ‘is that your biggest problem?’” Boze said. Sideli said students traveling abroad see “the basic requirements of life change completely” and are humbled by the experience.“We are very self-centered,” Sideli said. “You have to move out of here to realize we are just a piece of the world.”Both Boze and Price said they felt older and more appreciative after their experiences abroad. “I look at everything with new eyes,” Boze said. “I appreciate everything more about Bloomington.”Price has a new appreciation for Bloomington’s campus transportation. “Time is very different in London,” Price said. “It takes an hour to get anywhere there. I never used to take the bus here because I thought it took too long, but now I’m like, ‘I can get there in 15 minutes?’ That’s so fast.”Boze and Price have noticed the changes in themselves, but they have also noticed the possibility of losing touch with their experiences.“Sometimes it’s scary how easy it is to fall back into your old routine,” Boze said. “You have to put effort into maintaining your connection to the other culture and what you learned.”Price said that her time abroad and life back at home “feel like two completely different worlds.”“I look at pictures and I remember those things happening, but it’s hard to make (the two worlds) connect,” Price said.Sideli said what can be shocking for returning students is feeling so changed while home seems to have remained the same.“Students coming back have had a very energized experience that is hard to articulate to others,” Sideli said. “They are frustrated that they cannot express all that they experienced in such a compressed time.”Boze said he has felt this is the biggest challenge of returning to IU, but advised other returning students to be patient.“What’s frustrating is, you’re trying to work your experiences into every conversation, and you want to tell everybody about them,” Boze said. “You carry all this enthusiasm but can’t share it with everyone. Be patient with people who don’t understand.”Sideli said maintaining contact is key to dealing with the transition back, as well as integrating experiences into daily life. She encourages returning students to keep contact with friends they made overseas, join language and culture clubs or show photos to children in elementary schools.“You can work your new experiences into your life,” Boze said.
(01/11/12 5:14am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>For more than 40 years, the African American Arts Institute has provided thousands of students with the opportunity to preserve African-American culture while pursuing their passion for performance.The ensembles of the Institute — the African American Dance Company, the African American Choral Ensemble and the IU Soul Revue — have performed and facilitated programs on both the local and national level, offering entertainment and community service. Since its conception, the Institute has built a resume to be proud of, including an opening performance by the IU Soul Revue for The Temptations.The Institute offers the performers one benefit in exchange: academic credit. The Revue, established in 1971 by Herman C. Hudson, was America’s first collegiate black popular music ensemble offered for academic credit.Last night, the Institute held auditions for the African American Dance Company, which performs a broad range of dance styles representing the African diaspora.Everyone secured numbers to their chests when entering the studio. The occasional pop of joints was heard as people on the marley floor stretched. Old friends chatted while new faces looked at their reflections in the three surrounding mirrors.Any performer could recognize it as an audition.“Whatever your style is, I want to see it,” shouted Iris Rosa, a professor in the Department of African American and African Diaspora, as the dancers traveled across the floor.The African American Dance Company held its semi-annual auditions last night. The 17 first-time auditioning dancers and five returning members performed to African beats in hopes of being a part of the company for the 2012 spring semester.Rosa, who has been the director of the African American Dance Company since 1974, stressed for the dancers to find individual expression in the movements.“I do look for the normal things, like technique and if they take direction,” Rosa said. “I also look at what their expression is in their face and body when they are performing.”Rosa said she choreographs pieces that tell stories and “are based on concepts.”This kind of expressive and conceptual dancing is what drew senior Amelia Smith to the auditions.“So many people told me I had to audition for the African American Dance Company when transferring to IU,” Smith said. “The repertoire and instruction are so unique. It is rare to find such a wide range of dance in one place.”The audition displayed the company’s diversity with a fusion of modern, jazz and African dance styles in the choreography. Diversity was also seen in the people present. Though the company’s mission is “to provide dance from the perspective of the African diaspora,” Rosa said, the company is not exclusive to African-Americans and represents all backgrounds.“I love the diversity of what we do,” said freshman and returning company dancer Alex Rhodes. “There are so many different dance styles and backgrounds. Then Rosa adds so much deep rooted history into the dancing.”The dancers reached their arms, rolled to the floor and contracted sharply to the rhythmic music. Even in the audition, Rosa’s choreography told a story. The undulating and grounded movements were meant to portray people in African slave ships.“It was really fun and I loved the choreography,” senior Patricia Millard said. “It has very much encouraged me to do more with African dance or just something with dance.”Eight new dancers, as well as three understudies, were selected for the spring semester. The company will have several performances this semester including a show on Feb. 9 at Ivy Tech and its annual spring concert on April 9 at the Buskirk-Chumley Theatre.“I hope to instill a love for the dance discipline, learning, history and respect for each other and what we do,” Rosa said.Senior Rachel Livingston has been with the African American Dance Company for four years and has seen the company, as well as her own dancing, evolve.“Everything I have learned in dance has come out of this company,” Livingston said. “The company is always evolving. I’m expecting a lot of big and great things this year.”
(12/12/11 1:52am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Some people have called it “a circle of happiness.” Freshman Sarah Mancourt calls it “the magical portal to positiveness.”Mancourt is referring to her hula hoop.Mancourt is most widely known as Shortie, the hula hoop girl. Standing at 4’10”, Shortie has brought the joy of hula hooping to IU by performing all over campus.She hoops just about everywhere: at tailgates, by the library, on Kirkwood Avenue, even in her dorm room. She is most often seen performing outside Foster Quad, where she lives.“I carry my hoops with me when I go run errands,” Mancourt said. “I just set up camp anywhere I feel like hooping.”When Mancourt hoops, she is sure to catch people’s attention. “People are usually astonished,” Mancourt said. “Many people comment that (my hooping) is very artistic and ask how often I practice.”Freshman and Foster resident Grant Pendrey has seen Mancourt in action.“I think (her hula hooping) is interesting,” Pendrey said. “It’s also a bit funny. It is definitely out of the ordinary but looks like she puts in a lot of time and effort.”Mancourt said she has spent hours mastering tricks like “the vortex,” in which she circles the hoop up and down with her hands without touching her body, or “the isolation,” in which she keeps the hoop in a perfect circle in front of her. She also invents tricks of her own.Mancourt began hooping after she saw a group of hula hoopers last summer at a music festival. “It just looked like they were having so much fun,” Mancourt said. “So I got a hoop and discovered it was really fun for me, too.”Mancourt is self-taught, with a little help from YouTube videos. She said hooping came very quickly to her because of a “natural ability to move in that way,” even though she has only practiced since she arrived at IU about five months ago.Sophomore Sophie Guthrie is a desk clerk in Foster and said she sees Mancourt toting around her hula hoops on a daily basis.“At first when you see her, you think, ‘What the heck?’” Guthrie said. “But she is so confident you can’t help but accept and admire her.”Mancourt has 11 hula hoops, 10 of which she made out of PVC pipe and duct tape.“When I carry around my hoops, I talk to the most interesting people,” Mancourt said.Mancourt recalled walking into an art gallery in Bloomington when a man sitting playing a guitar looked at her and said, “Hula hoops. Those will destroy your youth.”The man explained he was a trapeze artist and performed with the Ringling Brothers for years. Mancourt’s hula hooping has become somewhat of a circus act; she has recently picked up fire hooping. She lights wicks that stick out of her hula hoop on fire, which burn for about two minutes at a time, and performs advanced tricks. Freshman Lucas Donaghue is a close friend of Mancourt’s and has witnessed her flaming act.“I’ve seen her hula hoop and fire hoop multiple times, and every time, it’s been crazy impressive,” Donaghue said. “Shortie is incredibly talented, and her fire hooping is awesome.”Mancourt said fire hooping is particularly challenging because “it changes the weight of the hoop, and you have to watch where you put your hands.” Mancourt’s hula hooping passion came about quickly, but she does not plan on stopping anytime soon. She encourages others to try hooping and is always willing to give lessons.
(11/17/11 3:53am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Senior forward Erin Cummins read a text message a couple weeks ago in her afternoon class that sent her running out of the room.“I thought it was a sick joke,” Cummins said. “I was literally shaking the rest of class.” The text came from her co-captain and senior outside midfielder Bekah MacGregor. It said the IU women’s club soccer team qualified for nationals.The women’s club soccer team will travel to Phoenix today to play in the 2011 NCCS National Soccer Championships. Twenty-four of the top women’s teams in the country will compete at the Reach 11 Sports Complex.The women finished their league season 9-1 at the top of their division, resulting in an automatic bid to go to nationals.Coach Phalo Pietersen said the team has been so successful because it played the entire season in “tournament mode.”“The girls approached every game as if the season depended on it,” Pietersen said. The last time the women’s club soccer team went to nationals was in 2005, though they were close to returning in the past three seasons. Last year’s team was two wins away from going to nationals.“We all had the common goal not to get that close and fail again,” Pietersen said. For Cummins, who has played with the team all four years, making it to nationals is a long-awaited reward.“It really does mean everything to me,” Cummins said. “It is the perfect end to my competitive soccer career.”Winning against Purdue on the final day of the regular season was a major accomplishment for the women’s team because it secured its spot at nationals. The win was especially big for Cummins who made the only goal of the game.“It was like a fairy tale,” Pietersen said. “Senior captain Erin Cummins makes the winning goal to nationals with three minutes left.”Cummins’ teammates give her full credit for the win.“Erin was a star in that game,” junior center back Hannah Davidson said. “She kept shooting the entire game. She’s the hardest worker I’ve ever met.” Though Cummins has spent some time in the spotlight, she said the success is due to the collective effort of the 24 players.“You’ll see girls doing extra workouts or jogging around campus after we already had practice that day,” Cummins said. “It is amazing to see everyone get rewarded for all the hard work we put in.”Pietersen said the team works so well because the players genuinely like each other and love the game of soccer.“I am always excited to go to practice,” Davidson said. “I leave with an ab workout just from laughing so much.”The tournament lasts three days, with the semifinals and finals on Saturday.Pietersen said the strategy is to concentrate on the team in front of them.“I always say to them, ‘All you can control is the game you are about to play,’” Pietersen said.Cummins said she wants to win but making it to this point is an accomplishment in itself. “(Going to nationals) means more for us than others because this is something that wasn’t handed to us,” Cummins said. “This is something we aren’t used to. This is it.”
(11/03/11 2:11am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>For more than 25 years, the City of Bloomington Parks and Recreation Department has coordinated the Summer Performing Arts Series to showcase local talent. The department will continue the tradition for summer 2012 and is seeking musicians and bands to participate in the summer series, which will take place May through September in city parks. Applications must be postmarked by Dec. 16. The series consists of free concerts featuring a variety of entertainment in Peoples Park, Bryan Park and Third Street Park throughout the summer. Kristy LeVert, facility and program coordinator at the city’s Parks and Recreation Department, said having concerts in the park is “just a natural fit” for Bloomington.“Bloomington has a wonderful music scene,” LeVert said. “The parks are a great place for people to gather, so it made sense to hold concerts there.”The summer series showcases a variety of music, including blues, original folk and Celtic. “We try to book everything,” LeVert said. Some local favorites from past summer series will return.Names like Jenn Cristy and Krista Detor are expected to draw in the crowds, but new bands and musicians are added to the performances every year. The series is an opportunity for up-and-coming musicians to perform and get exposure.“It is a great opportunity just because the city advertises a lot and draws in great crowds, especially for bands just getting started,” LeVert said. Artists are selected for the series based on their musical submissions to the city’s Parks and Recreation Department. A panel of Community Events members looks at the type and quality of performance, availability, past performance record and cost. People interested in performing in the summer 2012 series must submit an artist application, a CD or DVD of their music, current photos and any recent publicity that has been printed for the artist or group to the City of Bloomington Parks and Recreation Department. “I hope to have another great summer series full of variety for the community to enjoy,” LeVert said. “It is definitely fulfilling for me to have 600 people in the park at a concert I coordinated.”
(02/26/10 4:06am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The African American Dance Company is presenting its 14th annual dance workshop this weekend. Guest artists and dancers from across the state will travel to IU for the two-day event. The African American Dance Company workshop is the only workshop in Indiana offering various dance classes taught from the perspective of the African diaspora. The guest artists are dancers, percussionists and instructors well-known in the African-American dance community, including Joel Hall, Alfred Baker and Rogelio Kindelan. They will teach technique and choreography classes in Afro-Cuban, modern, salsa and West Indian dance styles. Professor Iris Rosa, director of the African American Dance Company, said people often assume the workshop only focuses on African dances, but the dance opportunity offers tutelage in many different movement genres. “People like to put things in boxes,” Rosa said. “Just because a class is taught by a black man does not mean he just does African dance. This workshop is an opportunity to learn outside of the box.”The workshop’s coordinators aim to expose students and community members to different dance forms from the perspective of the African and African American diaspora, as well as the aesthetics and techniques of the dances. “The dance workshop is unlike any other workshop I’ve been to,” said senior Rachel Livingston, a dancer in the African American Dance Company. “It is about the experience more than the dancing.”When Rosa developed the workshop in 1998, she saw a need in the IU community for dance taught from the African perspective, she said.“Most dancers are used to taking classes with white dancers taught by white teachers,” Rosa said. “(The workshop) gives people a chance to explore the aesthetic and experience that these black artists bring to dance.”Students in the workshop will also have the opportunity to perform the choreography they learned in a showcase Saturday night in the Neal-Marshall Grand Hall. The performance is open to the public and will feature the guest artists, workshop students and the African American Dance Company dancers. Rosa said no dance experience is needed to participate in the workshop, but an open mind and a desire to learn are necessary. The enriching nature of the workshop attracts dancers of all ages and dance backgrounds, from 16-year-olds to 60-year-olds, Livingston said.“It is a lot deeper and more meaningful than other workshops,” Livingston said. “The teachers don’t just teach you movements. You learn about the music, religion and culture behind the dances.”Students and community members can sign up for the workshop on the African American Arts Institute website, as well as in the Neal-Marshall Center the day of the classes. “At the end of the two days, even if you haven’t danced before or dance every day, you will be sore,” Livingston said. “It’ll mean you learned and really worked.”smile.