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IU freshman Ben NIchols films during a rehearsal for his upcoming movie, "Just Call Me Jack."
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IU freshman Ben NIchols films during a rehearsal for his upcoming movie, "Just Call Me Jack."
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>WIUX will present Culture Shock, an outdoor festival and concert, at noon Saturday in Dunn Meadow. Culture Shock has been a WIUX event since the 1970s, Events Director Jen Samson said. The events were smaller in scale, but WIUX has upheld the old tradition and expanded the event. “We are all huge supporters of local music, and that is a key element of Culture Shock every year,” Samson said. The committee plans to have a bounce house, art wall, food trucks and other local vendors set up. An event DJ will play music to keep the crowd entertained until 4 p.m., when a lineup of bands and musicians will begin playing.The first band featured until 4:30 p.m. is Little Timmy McFarland of Flight 19. IU student Daniel Talton started the band and originally performed by himself. The band expanded in 2013 to include five musicians who play guitar, drums, bass and accordion.Experimental musician Drekka will perform from 4:45 to 5:15 p.m. Drekka’s Facebook page describes his music as “hushed, cinematic, ambient, ethereal and industrial.” Three-member pop band Sleeping Bag will take the stage from 5:45 to 6:15 p.m. The Bloomington-based group is made up of Dave Segedy, Tyler Smith and Glenn Meyers. Sleeping Bag is scheduled to perform in Indianapolis, Bloomington and Muncie later this month. Rapper Tunde Olaniran will perform from 6:45 to 7:15 p.m. at Saturday’s festival. Olaniran is a Michigan native who has released a handful of EPs, including his newest, “Yung Archetype.” From 7:45 to 8:30 p.m., the Culture Shock crowd will hear indie rock group Royal Bangs. The Tennessee-native band has produced seven albums and released its single, “Better Run,” earlier this year. Mac DeMarco will headline the evening with his closing performance from 9 to 10 p.m. DeMarco is a Canadian indie rock solo artist who released his sophomore album, “Salad Days,” April 1. Choosing DeMarco came naturally to the Culture Shock committee, Samson said. The committee met to brainstorm bands that are becoming more popular and recently released albums. “He was always up there on the list,” Samson said. “People who hadn’t heard him before would go listen and research and come back the next week loving him.” Running such a long event does present challenges for the WIUX committee, but none have been too hard to deal with, Samson said. “I’m so thankful to be working with the people at WIUX,” Samson said. “We really work as a team, and I don’t feel like it’s been a super difficult process.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Designer Dawn Hancock wants to do work that matters.For several years, she said, she worked at a large web-consulting company that focused on creating logos, brands and websites for big corporations. But it wasn’t inspiring for her.“I ended up volunteering at a bunch of nonprofits,” Hancock said. “Even though I wasn’t getting paid for it, I saw the impact that I was making in other people’s lives.” It wasn’t until her dad died unexpectedly that she reconsidered what she was doing with her career. “It made me think, ‘Why am I not working on things that really matter?” she said. “‘Life is short.’”Hancock quit her job at the consulting company and in 1999 started Firebelly Design, which focuses on designing for projects that matter, she said.The Henry Radford Hope School of Fine Arts welcomes Hancock as its final speaker of the semester Friday. Hancock will present lectures at 1:30 p.m. and 5.In her lecture, she plans to deliver her “Top-10 List of Shit I’ve Done to Create A Life I Love.” Her list is composed of the principles she used to build Firebelly Design and the lessons she’s learned along the way, such as being flexible and investing in your community.“I started the idea that I wanted to do work that mattered,” she said. “Thankfully, I was young and didn’t realize that I was doing something risky.” The company began when she designed a website for a friend of a co-worker. The man made his own handmade guitars, which sold for about $10,000 each. Hancock was initially drawn to him because of his passion and interesting art. “Firebelly truly only works on stuff that they care about,” Firebelly designer Nick Adam said. “You’ll never have to do any big, evil corporate work.” Adam followed a path similar to Hancock’s in finding Firebelly. He had previously worked for six years at a publishing company. “During the six years doing the publishing gig, it was a very easy job,” Adam said. “You got in at 9 and left at 5 and never thought about it.” Adam took on freelance work and art projects he found more interesting when he wasn’t working at the publishing company. Adam met Hancock at an exhibit where some of his work was being shown, and she was impressed. She gave Adam a freelance opportunity and eventually created a position for him at Firebelly based on his skills. Adam now works at Firebelly as a strategist, which means his main role is to meet with an organization or group to devise a plan for its brand. He talks to clients to figure out what they need in terms of design work. Firebelly design now has about six designers, and it has won awards and taken on larger projects. One of the most recent is a project called Divvy, a bike share system implemented in Chicago which allows users to rent a bike for half an hour and return it to any station across the city. The city project was intended to be an alternative to public transportation and cars in order to get citizens more active in the community, Hancock said. Firebelly was contracted to name and design the project for the entire city. This meant designing everything from the actual bikes to be rented to the signs and maps people would see at the stations. “Every time I see someone riding one of the bikes, there’s this sense of pride that we were a part of that,” Hancock said. The design firm also took on a project called Rebuilding Exchange in 2008. When the market crashed, many people were out of work, which affected their ability to buy things and the job market itself. Many buildings were being neglected in Chicago as they fell apart, Adams said. Usually these buildings would be torn down and the materials thrown away but, the Rebuilding Exchange salvaged these materials and sold them at cheap prices. To do this, they employed people who would normally never be hired, such as ex-cons, Adam said. Firebelly taught the workers how to disassemble the buildings without damaging the materials, which included wood, sinks, chairs and appliances. The program put people to work, created an inventory of high-quality materials and put them on the market for a fraction of the price. Failing businesses that needed cheap materials were able to access them for less than market price.When the project contacted Firebelly, it didn’t have a brand or identity. Firebelly built the Rebuilding Exchange project a brand that would stand out from other companies in the building material market and a Tumblr page within the company’s small budget. Helping projects like the Rebuilding Exchange was the main goal of Firebelly, but in 2006 the company expanded to also house a nonprofit called Firebelly Foundation. The Firebelly University program is an incubator for people who want to start design businesses in a socially responsible way, according to their website.Firebelly Camp is a 10-day training program to help college students learn design skills and collaboration to give them more experience in the design world, according to the website. IU alumna Alysha Balog participated in the camp in 2011. She said she saw the camp as a great networking opportunity and a way to explore her passion for doing good. While at the camp, Balog worked on the Center for New Community in Chicago, which helps with immigration reform. The organization is focused on creating diverse communities in the United States, and Balog worked on developing a website for the project with the other campers. While working at Firebelly, Balog said she saw Hancock’s passion for her company and designing for good causes. “I love when she mentioned to us that she wanted to hire people around her that were better designers than she was,” Balog said. “She doesn’t design as much as she used to, and that’s because she’s running a company of people who she thinks are more talented than she is.” Adam said she sees the same passion and humility in Hancock. “She’s a massive inspiration to each one of us here,” Adam said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone have the ability to dream so big and actually make it happen.”
MFA Sculpture Student Donny Gettinger displays his piece, "Boys will be Boys," Wednesday at the Grunwald Gallery of Art.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Blue-tinted water projected on the front and back windshields of a gray Honda Civic parked in the Grunwald Gallery of Art. It’s two back doors remained open for visitors to sit inside and experience a car wash. The Grunwald presented its master of fine arts group show Tuesday and will present an opening reception from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday. Artists will give talks about their pieces at noon Friday to discuss the inspirations and methods involved in making their pieces. Master of fine arts student Donny Gettinger used his thesis piece to explore the transition between boyhood and adulthood and how it relates to Midwestern consciousness. To accomplish this, Gettinger chose to use the classic icon of a teenager’s first car. “Your first car is your first ability to go out and drive through these flat spaces, corn fields and country roads,” Gettinger said.Gettinger tried to focus his piece on the Midwestern experience by choosing a 1990s Honda Civic because it’s a standard first car, he said. Finding the car was the hardest part for Gettinger because of how particular he was about the type of car he wanted for the right price. Gettinger searched Craigslist for a Honda Civic made sometime in the ’90s. The next step was to remove the engine and other parts to make the car lighter and more transportable. “I don’t know much about cars,” Gettinger said. “I had to learn how to become a mechanic.”Becoming a mechanic was a way for Gettinger to involve himself further in his piece. He said there is a big push in the Midwest for boys to work on cars and be mechanics. “I wanted to dive into that culture and see what the appeal was,” Gettinger said. After working on the car, Gettinger filmed a carwash from the inside of a car with two cameras so he could project the video onto the front and back windshields of the Honda Civic. After the show, Gettinger hopes he can keep the vehicle to show in other galleries, but the reality of storing it could lead Gettinger to scrap it. MFA printmaking student Kristy Hughes is also displaying her work in the exhibit, but her pieces focus on her own experiences making them. Each print was made using the same stencils and four inks. For Hughes, seeing the transformation of her material layer by layer is what she wants viewers to see as well. “Each time they look at it, I think they will see something different,” she said. “It will give the viewer the opportunity to search like I did.”Hughes has been working on the pieces for about a year and faced a few challenges during the printmaking process. When making the prints, Hughes would lay a stencil on the paper and run it through the print machine. However, what she laid down was not usually what ended up on the page. “I don’t ever really know what they’re going to look like,” she said. “It’s exciting, but sometimes I would lay down another layer, and it would totally mess it up, and I’d have to fix it.” Other artists showing in the exhibit include Nakima Ollin, Mike Reeves, Hyejin Kang and Rachel Baxter. The exhibit will remain on display until April 19.
MFA Sculpture Student Donny Gettinger shows his piece, "Boys will be Boys," Wednesday at the Grunwald Gallery of Art.
Rachel Baxter displays her art pieces Wednesday at the Grunwald Gallery of Art.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Violetta, a young escort, sits in a lavender gown atop a cushioned stand. She is surrounded by other women in royal blue, joined by a large group of men. They begin to laugh, flirt, dance and drink with one another until Alfredo Germont, a nobleman, comes in with friends. He sees Violetta and his friends tell her that he is in love with her.The group celebrates further, until Violetta abruptly sits on the stand, coughing. A doctor comes in to give her medicine as the crowd exits. She stands up and returns to the party.IU Opera and Ballet Theater will present La Traviata, its last season opera, at 8 p.m. Friday in the Musical Arts Center. Tickets start at $12 for students and $25 for general admission. The performances will also be streamed live Friday and Saturday through IUMusicLive! Live performances in the MAC will continue April 18 and 19.La Traviata is an opera written by 18th century composer Giuseppe Verdi based on the novel “The Lady of the Camellias.” To prepare for this opera, actor Derrek Stark, an IU graduate student, read the original novel to better understand his character, Alfredo. Although the opera is not entirely true to the original novel, reading the work helped Stark develop his character’s persona. “You have to work to flush that character out as fully as you can,” he said. “That happens throughout the entire process. You spend time learning who that character truly is.” The first step in preparing for the opera was learning the music, Stark said. Stark went though the text with a diction coach to ensure that he was pronouncing each name and word correctly in his singing. His coach had previously performed the female lead, Violetta Valery, and was able to offer a lot of advice about the part, Stark said. After practicing diction and learning the music, Stark worked on blocking, or learning where he needs to be on stage, and creating natural movement for his character. His character, Alfredo, falls in love with Violetta, a 19th century French escort who has moved up the ranks in her work. Violetta has never allowed herself to fall in love because of her various relationships with men. But when she meets Alfredo, she decides to follow her feelings and falls in love, stage director Jeffrey Buchman said. “I’m the only man who truly cares about her beyond what she can offer me,” Stark said. However, Alfredo has a sister back home with a wealthy suitor who refuses to marry her because of her brother’s relationship with an escort. Because of this, Alfredo’s father Giorgio comes to speak with Violetta about her relationship with Alfredo, asking her to end it in order to help his daughter and stop tainting the family name. “She does that, which infuriates Alfredo,” Buchman said. “And in the end, she is just hoping that Alfredo and the world understand the sacrifices she made, all while she is dying.” Violetta suffers from tuberculosis, also known as consumption. The disease typically attacks the lungs and causes victims to experience chronic cough, which can often draw blood. Tuberculosis was usually fatal, especially in the 19th century, when the disease was more common and there were few known cures.“In the opera, people really see the demands society places on women,” Buchman said. “It’s a woman who society never gave a chance in this world, and all she’s looking for is to be a noble creature.”One particular scene that Stark struggled with was near the end. At one point, a large Plexiglas wall comes down between Violetta and Alfredo onstage to symbolize their separation. Alfredo sings through this wall to Violetta, but because he couldn’t hear the actress on the other side, it caused some difficulties. “It’s all about finding that inner connection and personal point of reference that you can use to fuel the acting,” Stark said. “I’m still working toward it, but it’s a little more self-reliant because you can’t immediately interact with someone.” He was forced to work even harder in order to make his character believable in this scene.Stark participated in musicals his senior year of high school and worked as a pianist for a few other musicals. It wasn’t until his undergraduate work at Mansfield University that he became interested in opera from his vocal teacher.“I always thought opera was just a bunch of fat ladies gurgling,” Stark said. “Through learning to sing and really careful guidance, I became really interested in it. Now, it’s a very large part of my life.” From his experience with musical theater, Stark can see a few differences with opera. “One of the most immediate differences is that the singers don’t use microphones,” he said. “It’s the singer against the orchestra.” “La Traviata” is different from other operas. “It’s one of those pieces that’s so immediate for the audience,” Buchman said. “It touches you very deeply. It has its own unique quality in the way it does that.” New stage elements occur during the first few minutes of the opera. Traditionally, the set opens with a 19th century Parisian parlor with rich fabrics, a fireplace and other period décor. “We let that go and created a world that was influenced by symbols,” Buchman said. “We created an atmosphere instead of literal structure and detail.” The production is new because of the poetic approach the director and designers took with the original play. “It stays true to the text, but allows us to create a world that the audience will get a new experience out of even if they’ve seen it 10 times,” Buchman said. With a new production, it’s all about seeing the day-to-day changes and eventually seeing it all come together, Buchman said. “Live theater is something we don’t get a lot of anymore,” Stark said. “In an opera that you’re watching live, anything can happen. I think you would get an entirely more moving experience coming to a live show than you would doing anything else.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>For 144 hours, student filmmakers shoot and edit their videos, ones they have been preparing for months, writing scripts and working with actors and musicians.Students are given six days to complete a five-minute video for the IU Campus MovieFest competition every spring. These 144 hours are the only time the students can work on filming or editing for the competition.IU student filmmaker Chandler Swan and his partner Brendan Elmore took turns sleeping on a makeshift bed of three chairs in Wells Library while the two edited their video for last year’s competition. Their movie, “Under Euclid’s Watch,” is a drama about a young prodigy who is on the verge of a mathematical discovery. In the same library where the drama was being edited, IU student Ben Tamir Rothenberg was creating a very different production — an infomercial for toilet paper called “SheetWOW.” Little did these filmmakers know, the two movies would both be selected for a screening at the Cannes Film Festival in France this summer. At the film showing for Campus MovieFest a few days after the videographers finished editing, “Under Euclid’s Watch” won Best Picture and Best Cinematography. “SheetWOW” won Best Comedy. Four films from each campus are selected to be shown in Hollywood after every competition.Because of their awards, Rothenberg, Swan and Elmore traveled to California for the screening. It was here that Swan and Elmore met Rothenberg. The three were recently informed that their films will screen at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. This film festival is one of the most prestigious in the world and shows films from Meryl Streep, George Clooney and Steven Spielberg, Swan said. Only one film created by 21- and 22 year-olds has been shown at the Cannes Film Festival before, Swan said, so this screening is a huge accomplishment for the student filmmakers. Swan and Elmore first met through their fraternity, Sigma Phi Epsilon, when Swan had been selected to receive an award for cinematography work he completed with his father. Elmore interviewed him about the award and the two started working together soon after that. Both filmmakers began creating videos from a young age. Swan began making films when he was given a Digital Blue camera at the age of eight. His father works for a news channel, he said, and his mother works for Paramount Pictures, so the interest was always there. Elmore remembers shooting videos with his uncle’s camera before shooting a horror movie with his brother in second grade. His freshman year at IU, Elmore met a senior in his fraternity that was participating in Campus MovieFest. “I had no idea what I was getting into,” he said. “But it was a great learning experience.” These experiences helped lead up to the success of “Under Euclid’s Watch.” The two met many challenges reserving spaces and lighting their scenes when making the movie, but Elmore said it was all worth it when they finally saw it screen at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater and eventually in Hollywood. Rothenberg said he watched hundreds of infomercials every day in order to prepare for the six days of shooting. “The film gives the viewer this weird feeling because it looks really professional, but it’s about poop,” Rothenberg said. Most of the movies he makes are graphic, he said, and showing them to his family always makes for interesting responses. “I showed it to my grandma and she said, ‘Ben, I love you, but you’re not winning anything there,’” Rothenberg said. All of the work Rothenberg put in made for an award-winning film, but it didn’t come without dedication.“If you want to make a good film, you just have to stop going to school,” Rothenberg said. “I just stopped going to classes eventually. It was more important to me.” Rothenberg was a telecommunications major, where he said he learned all of his video-shooting skills. Although IU doesn’t have a film school, Rothenberg is now pursuing his passion through a general studies major. “One thing that’s really cool about these films’ success is that it shows what IU is doing without even having a film school,” he said. “We’ve won the past four years.” Now that the campus festival and Hollywood screening are over, Rothenberg, Swan and Elmore are looking toward their preparation for Cannes. Attending the festival and paying for expenses in France will cost each student upwards of $5,000. The three are trying to propose to have some of these costs subsidized by the University as well as starting their own Kickstarter campaign. The group is also working to get a variety of actors and production companies to come to the screening of their films, so they can get more publicity while they are in France. Although the costs can be high, the group feels it is worthwhile. “We didn’t want to miss out on an opportunity to represent IU,” Rothenberg said. “We are proud Hoosiers.” Despite the festival plans hovering over the filmmakers, all three have continued to work on other projects. Elmore said he just finished a short film script that he hopes to begin shooting in the next few weeks and send on to other film festivals. Swan said he has begun a script about a newscaster and the psychological effects that reporting stories about events like school shootings can have on the character and his family. Rothenberg said he recently completed his film for this year’s Campus MovieFest called “The Rebound,” which won Best Comedy and Best Soundtrack at this year’s awards ceremony. The musical is about a young woman who breaks up with her cheating boyfriend and hits the town with her friends. Rothenberg is also working on a documentary called “Art Heals,” he said, which follows his mother, an artist working in St. Vincent’s Hospital. She works with cancer patients and helps them use art to communicate with people about their sickness and disabilities. “To make a good film, you have to have good actors, good production and a good story,” Rothenberg said. “A lot of films will be missing one of them, but the good ones have all three.”To get all three assets, the students said they look to their fellow Hoosiers. “Because we’re students, the community really wants to help us make films,” Rothenberg said. “We want to be representing Hoosiers.”An earlier version of this story identified Ben Tamir Rothenberg as Ben Tamir Rothenberger, and called the production "SheetWOW" an infomercial for musical toilet paper.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The Ivy Tech John Waldron Arts Center will open its newest exhibit, “Save As: A Computer-Aided Exhibition,” today with a reception from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.The exhibit is opening as part of today’s Gallery Walk, which features new exhibits from about 10 different venues in downtown Bloomington. “Save As” focuses on work created using 3-D printing and computer design by IU faculty from various art and science departments on campus.Some pieces were made entirely with a 3-D printer while others include certain components of computer-aided design. Using a 3-D printer can be a confusing process, exhibit curator Payson McNett said. The exhibit will feature a 3-D printer and laser cutter during today’s reception to show gallery viewers the process involved for many of the showcased works.The audience will be able to see how a 3-D printer works and how pieces in the exhibit were created by the advanced technology. One piece that was created entirely with computer processes in the exhibit is an 8-foot-long and 1-foot-tall skateboard by McNett.McNett said he was always interested in skateboarding and building ramps and half pipes as a teenager, which served as the inspiration for this particular piece. McNett created a rendition of each part of the skateboard on a computer and then enlarged each piece so it would be to scale with the rest of the piece. With these pieces designed on the computer, McNett could print and cut them with a laser cutter and then assemble the skateboard. Another piece shown in the exhibit is titled MiRAE, which stands for Minimalist Robot for Affective Expression. The robot was created using a 3-D color printer and microcontrollers, which allows the robot facial-recognition capabilities. Gallery viewers will be able to interact with the robot as it reacts to them and recognizes them. The piece was a collaboration between Casey Bennett, Christopher Myles, Selma Sabanovic, Marlena Fraune and Katherine Shaw. Many pieces in the exhibit were created with aid from a 3-D printer, and every piece incorporated advanced manufacturing technology. “The exhibit is an opportunity to show the importance of these technologies in the future of the art world and the University,” McNett said. “These tools are not only part of the art world, but it’s part of the greater world in general.” Nicole Jacquard, who runs the 3-D printers in the School of Fine Arts, compared the potential of 3-D printers to the same potential computers had when they came on the market in the 1970s. These printers and technology are becoming easier to use and are typically less expensive, Jacquard said. Jacquard said IU has not taken the lead on this up-and-coming technology because the majority of campuses with these machines have strong engineering programs. “It’s the next industrial revolution,” she said. “We really need to start investing in these at IU.” The “Save As” exhibit provides the art and sciences departments the opportunity to share this type of technology with a wider audience and show the versatility of the machines. “Very few people know what’s being done on campus with these machines,” Jacquard said. “To actually bring this out and have people realize that people are using it and using it in new ways is a great opportunity.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>There was a knock on the front door. Bloomington resident Trevor Doud answered. On the other side stood a man, wearing handmade crocheted clothes, asking to bum a cigarette. Doud didn’t have a cigarette for the stranger, so he watched the man return to the house across the street and come back with two crocheted koozies in hand, one for Doud and another for his roommate.The three started talking, and Doud told the man, Rafael “Stitch” Diggs, he liked his vibe. Diggs, he found out, sells his crocheted pieces to customers in Bloomington through his business, “New Diggs.” “He carried a musical tune and he was wearing his crochet stuff,” Doud said. “I genuinely connected with him and we talked a lot.”Not long after, Diggs moved in with Doud and his three other roommates. He didn’t pay $200 a month for rent, though. Rather, Diggs offered his crochet work in exchange for a place to live. Diggs said although most people are not entirely appreciative of his art, the four guys living in the house believe he works hard to accomplish everything he has done. “They realized how cool it was and how passionate I was about doing it and so it was an easy sell,” he said. His new roommates suggested the idea to trade crochet work when he was moving in. “I always saw it as a fair trade,” Doud said. “It was a rare experience for someone to really care about what they’re doing. I always thought he was bringing in as much as he was getting.” Diggs made each roommate a jacket, valued at about $500 because of the time he spent on each piece. He said he is still overworking while getting underpaid for the exchange, but that the money is not important to him.Money takes away from the main point of his crocheting, which is the art and self-expression that accompanies each piece, Diggs said.“That’s kind of lost when you appraise it or assign it a value in green pieces of paper that were invented,” he said. Diggs employs this philosophy when he runs his crochet operation.“My customers design what they buy, and the point of it isn’t money,” he said. The main point of crocheting is to promote intuition about art in others. “Even if they don’t realize it, the fact that they can appreciate what I’ve done for myself is valuable,” he said. “If you appreciate good art, you’re an artist.” Diggs doesn’t add his logo to each item of clothing to allow his customers to put themselves into his pieces, so it shows their own personality. Despite the desire to avoid money, Diggs can’t evade it entirely. To combat this, he tries to promote awareness by asking questions about the validity of money. “I have to pretend that money means as much as my art, or it’s equivalent,” Diggs said. “I have to make up a number.” He first learned to crochet from his mom when he was 12 years old.“One Christmas we were too poor to buy presents, so she taught us to crochet to make each other things instead,” he said. Diggs has now been crocheting for about 20 years, and has learned to create jackets, overalls, hats, koozies and bags without using a single pattern. “The potential of things I can create is pretty much limitless,” he said. Diggs is also a DJ. He said that he found the dancing and music cool and had a really personal experience with it. Both DJ-ing and crocheting remind Diggs of his mom and the hard work she always put into her children’s lives. Diggs remembers his mom staying up late at night braiding his and his siblings’ hair, working on projects and crocheting. His mom started college two separate times after having five children. “Growing up she gave us everything and nothing,” Diggs said. “We were poor so she gave us the skills of crocheting. We were not rich after my dad got fired from his rich job, and we moved to the ghetto. But we were still rich in our heads. We were poor, but we hid it well.” Currently, Diggs sells his crochet work and DJs smaller events around Bloomington. “It’d always be fun making a living off of what I love, but it’s easy to forget that if it’s not one thing it’s another,” he said. “Rich people have their problems, too. I’d rather be a happy poor guy than an angry millionaire.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>“Menopause, The Musical,” showing at the IU Auditorium at 7 p.m. today, tells the story of four women who are brought together by a lingerie sale at Bloomingdale’s. Three women fight over a lacy black bra until they realize they all have something in common — aging.The women move to different areas of the department store through the rest of the production and talk about the symptoms of both menopause and aging.“It’s funny the title is ‘Menopause, The Musical’ because it’s more about just growing older,” actress Valerie Mackay said. “A lot of people enjoy it even if they’re not a woman or going through menopause.” Mackay plays the Earth Mother, who is one of the four women in the internationally-performed musical, each depicting a different stereotype of woman.“I love the Earth Mother because she’s most like me,” Mackay said. “She’s very spiritual and is always looking to be peaceful and happy.” The second actress is called the Iowa Housewife, who is an innocent character who seldom leaves her hometown. She takes propriety very seriously and is concerned with being appropriate and dignified. This character is the one most of the audience can probably identify with, Mackay said. “It’s her first time going to New York, but then she has a big opening-up and she kind of finds her wings,” she said. The third character is called the Soap Star. “Soap Star is our hot mess,” Mackay said. “She’s this beautiful woman who is a star on the soap operas, but now she’s being replaced by someone younger.” Losing her beauty is the main concern of this character, until she has an important realization at the end of the play.The final character is called the Power Woman, who has climbed to a high position in the business world. At every turn, this character tries to constantly be in charge, Mackay said. However, the Power Woman is experiencing symptoms of memory loss, where she constantly forgets what she was planning to say, which is a weakness in the business world. The four women are meant to represent different spectrums of women all around the world, and connect with the audience through the story and their parody renditions of 1960s, ’70s and ’80s hits. Power Woman performs a gospel reprise about hot flashes, and there is one disco melody to the tune of “Stayin’ Alive,” but the lyrics are changed to “Stayin’ Awake.” “It’s a funny script, but the magic happens in front of the audience,” Mackay said. “The audience becomes the other member of the cast. There are some moments that I’ve never heard an audience so loud.” Mackay said her favorite part of the show was being on stage and connecting with the audience. After one performance, Mackay said, a 23-year-old woman came up crying to the cast members. She told them that she had a hysterectomy, which is surgery that removes a woman’s uterus, and this had caused early menopause. She thanked them for their great performance and said that she had been going through everything they had shown on stage and it made her feel more comfortable with what was happening to her. “The audience can always recognize themselves in it or someone they know,” Mackay said. “A lot of men even say they think they’re going through menopause, too.”
The stage darkened. A ballerina in a pearly-white tutu slowly danced down a six-foot ramp.She lifted her leg more than 90-degrees from her body, balancing on nothing but her toes.As she moved down, another dancer followed. Each ballerina was followed by another until about 20 women danced in unison onstage Tuesday at the Musical Arts Center for a dress rehearsal of the upcoming spring ballet. IU Opera and Ballet Theater will perform their spring ballet “East by Northeast” at 8 p.m. Friday and 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturday at the Musical Arts Center. Tickets start at $8 for students and $12 for the general public. Laura Whitby, lead soloist of “La Bayadère”, has been preparing all year. Last fall, Whitby fractured a bone in her foot after a partnered jump she had performed many times in practice and rehearsals for the fall ballet “Classical Europe.” “I was tired, it was the end of the day and for some reason I landed on the side of my foot,” she said. “I heard a big crack.” After fracturing the bone in two different places, Whitby was out for a couple of months and placed on crutches.After her injury, she said, she did her best to remain positive and work with the athletic trainer and ballet instructors to get back on her feet.She used a trampoline to get her jump back, completed conditioning exercises and did Pilates and yoga. Moving from bar work in sneakers to completing entire jumps took about two months of patience and dedication. “I had to create a timeline,” she said. “When you first start back, you can’t just jump back into it, because you’re going to be weak.” Although the injury was traumatic, Whitby doesn’t see the experience as a complete loss. “When I was forced to take a step back and reevaluate my techniques, it was actually a blessing,” she said. “It’s kind of a good thing to break down the basics again.” “East by Northeast” is Whitby’s first major production since her injury. “It’s definitely trying,” she said. “I’m just excited to be able to be on stage again.” Getting there required a lot of practice. Learning the choreography took only a few days, Whitby said, and the rest of the time was dedicated to perfecting the technique and movement. “Classical ballet is so precise and so difficult,” Whitby said. “You’re in this white tutu with pink tights and you can’t hide anything.” The ballet is split into three different parts, titled “La Bayadère Act II”, “Airs” and “Donizetti Variations.”Each part is a separate ballet performed by a different set of dancers. Preparation began two weeks after the beginning of January, and since then, the ballet dancers have been working on technique and stamina exercises, coaching and rehearsals. Whitby is part of the first act, which is actually the second act of the production “La Bayadère”. IU Opera and Ballet Theater opted to only perform the second act, which is about a warrior from India who smokes opium and has a hypnotic dream about reuniting with a dancer from The Kingdom of Shades. Junior Matthew Rusk portrays the warrior, which he said he found to be the hardest part of the production. “In a ballet like this there is so much in terms of detail and you have to be portraying a character on top of that,” he said. “It’s an uncomfortable process, but it’s also very rewarding and fun.” “East by Northeast” is Rusk’s ninth major production at IU. He said he has been a part of every ballet since his freshman year. “I started ballet when I was about 6 years old,” he said. “I saw the Nutcracker and started lessons a month later and never stopped.” Rusk said that he was most attracted to the athleticism of ballet dancing. “Ballet is a very hard physical activity,” said principal coach Violette Verdy. “We are most definitely athletes.”Verdy is the main coach for the ballet dancers, meaning that she helps the dancers refine their technique and work with the style of this particular Russian ballet. Verdy teaches a class throughout the week and coaches the dancers for each ballet. She’s been working at IU since the end of 1996. “It’s like working with Shakespeare, you really have to know your text,” she said. “Because it’s classical dancing, you are showing discipline over the body and yourself.” That discipline is hard to achieve and has taken a lot of patience and work to get the show ready for the premiere. “It’s absolutely about control and purity,” Verdy said. “You have to be something other than yourself. That is what we try to teach the dancers.” The second part of the production is called “Airs” and was choreographed by Paul Taylor. “Airs” is a more contemporary ballet with classical music. The ballet is characterized as being high-energy with big movements and will include dancers Justin Barbour, Bella Calafiura and Rachel Duvall. The third and final piece of the ballet is “Donizetti Variations,” which was choreographed by 20th century Russian choreographer George Balanchine. Balanchine actually worked with Verdy on this ballet when she performed for him and she coached the dancers for the performance, including Aaron Anker and Carly Hammond. A live orchestra will accompany each part of the ballet, providing music with a beautiful, ethereal quality, Whitby said. “It’s like opening a very good bottle of champagne and all of the little bubbles go right into your nose,” Verdy said. “Ballet is never a negative experience, it’s always an elevating one.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The fantasy of marriage, home improvement techniques and a response to Internet culture will all come together in the Grunwald Gallery of Art’s bachelor’s and master’s of fine arts thesis exhibits opening today. BFA student Bryn Taubensee plans to exhibit her installation exploring the ideas of marriage and the fantasies and plans that surround the tradition. Her idea came from seeing the wedding Pinterest boards of her friends and other women.Pinterest is a website that allows users to accumulate links and pictures that they can organize into different boards. Many users share ideas for their future weddings on the site. Taubensee said she thought it was strange her friends created these fantasy weddings so early in their lives without even having marriage plans in the near or distant future. With this inspiration, Taubensee created a sculpture with spray foam, cardboard, paint and a few statues. “I used spray foam because it molds in a really gross way,” she said. “I think dreams are really oozy and I thought that correlated.”Taubensee also incorporated various pastel colors into the piece to contrast the disgusting appearance of the spray foam, she said. “The idea is you can never achieve this look because it’s so vibrant and intense,” Taubensee said. The fantasy dreams of a Pinterest-perfect wedding are hard to achieve, and Taubensee wanted to communicate to her audience that people desire marriage without really considering its importance and effect on their lives. “I just think art is one way to express your cultural opinions,” she said. “This is my way of vocalizing mine.” Another sculptor exhibiting in the show is MFA student Devin Balara, who also decided to criticize an aspect of society. Balara’s installation utilizes the tools of home improvement and applies them to cast-off objects. For example, the sculptor took old mattresses she had found and painted them to turn them into decorative objects. Balara’s idea came from growing up in the suburbs of Tampa, Fla., where everything seems perfect on the surface, she said. “People try to decorate their homes according to their individual tastes, but they are shopping at the same stores for the same crap that ends up in everyone’s homes,” she said. “If everyone has the same blinds from Target, that doesn’t make your home any different from anyone else’s.” Poking fun at this idea, Balara created her installation to appear like a mix of a furniture showroom and the way furniture actually gets set up in a home. Her installation includes six mattresses, a rug, a separate wall and various other household objects that have been comically decorated to appear unique, she said. A second MFA artist in the exhibit is painter Zach Koch, who is displaying a series of 16 paintings he has been working on over the past year. Koch described himself as an appropriation artist. He takes things from other existing artwork or items in pop culture and adds his own creative spin to them. “Basically I would take screenshots of things and arrange them in a new order,” he said. “I would mash them up together or layer them on top of each other.” The process begins when Koch creates a digital collage of screenshots he has collected. Working off the collage, he paints the images onto wood panels with oils. “It would be easy to keep them as digital images, but I like translating it to some kind of archaic form,” he said. Each painting takes one to two weeks, and almost every one ends up differently than he expected from the digital image. “Since you’re working from something that’s artificial, it’s hard to emulate the same kind of look that a digital file has,” he said. “A lot changes along the way, but I think they look even better with the oil paint. Some expectations fall flat sometimes, and that can be hard.” Despite the time and challenges involved in creating the pieces, Koch was able to install his pieces in time for today’s show. “I think it’s an opportunity to see different perspectives,” he said. “I hate imposing things on people, especially when it comes to art. There’s that thing that if you don’t look at art, you’re uncultured, but I don’t necessarily believe that. Anybody that does anything creative, if they can make people amazed by their work, that’s a success.”
Student volunteers plant seeds during their time volunteering Campus Garden Initiative on Feb. 7 at the Hilltop Gardens.
Campus Garden Initiative Intern Audrey Brinkers and a group of student volunteers move outside to begin their seed starts on Feb. 7 at the Hilltop Gardens. The group plants these seeds into small plastic containers.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>As the red curtain rose at IU Cinema, the screen showed a crowd at the National Theatre in London preparing to watch a live performance of “War Horse” starring a marionette horse. Sunday evening, the IU Cinema presented National Theatre Live’s production of “War Horse,” a performance art piece that is played from the theater in London to cinemas across the country. The show was performed with actors and a horse that was created by the Handstring Puppet Company in England, controlled by three puppeteers who move the horse in realistic ways. IU Cinema director Jon Vickers said the puppet’s movements are very convincing and the object has a distinct personality given to it by the puppeteers. Sunday’s performance of “War Horse” is a Broadway production based on a book by Michael Morpurgo and follows the life of a young horse from Ireland as he is sold to various owners and serves in World War I. The play won the Tony award for “Best Play” in 2011, along with six other awards. The story was also adapted into a 2011 film directed by Steven Spielberg.National Theater Live is a popular theater group in London that has expanded to bring performing arts to a cinema audience, making it cheaper and more accessible, Vickers said.To do this, they allow their performances to be played in cinemas, sometimes streamed live. When the IU Cinema began showing these performances a year and a half ago, it became the second venue in the state of Indiana to host them. The only other venue was the cinema at Notre Dame, where Vickers worked before coming to IU. “There has been a desire to bring this to IU and the IU Cinema,” Vickers said. “We resisted for a while because we wanted to be mainly focused on film, but there was a need in the community to do this.”Vickers said the cinema had been getting a lot of emails from students and faculty from the theater department who wanted to include tzhese programs and offer them on campus. Coming from Notre Dame, where the films have been wildly successful, Vickers decided to add them to the cinema’s programming.The program has been met with a lot of success, Vickers said.People traveled from neighboring states including Ohio, Illinois and Kentucky to see the performance. The programs haven’t been widely adopted around the country. English professors De Witt Kilgore and Ranu Samantrai brought their two children to see the performance because of their love of IU Cinema and the National Theatre in London, where they have attended performances many times, Kilgore said. “Bloomington used to be a place that didn’t have a venue to see independent cinema,” he said. “The big chains have been spotty at best. IU Cinema has put Bloomington on the map.” Kilgore has lived in Bloomington since 1996 and said he sees these performances as a great addition to the community. Since the Cinema began its live performances, Indianapolis has begun to show performance pieces at the Keystone Art Cinema, becoming the third venue in Indiana. Previous live performances have included the Shakespeare plays “Othello,” “Macbeth” and “Coriolanus” and other genres such as comedy, drama and tragedy. The Cinema is still waiting to hear from National Theatre Live about next semester’s performances, but it tries to include at least one a semester. “This has been a successful program for us and we intend to continue it,” Vickers said.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>When the Union Board Films committee tried to rent a copy of “Dallas Buyers Club” this semester, they encountered a problem.The film wasn’t available in a 35mm format.Union Board Director of Films Greta Smith said the out-of-date projector at the Whittenberger Auditorium previously limited the options of films they can screen.“You can relate it to a record player,” Smith said. “They’re around, but people don’t use them anymore. It’s really hard to find films available in 35mm.”A new digital projector, to be installed March 17, will give Union Board the largest selection of movies to show in the 50-year history of the weekend film series. Brandon Walsh, Union Board’s previous film director, proposed the purchase of a new projector. He worked with IU Cinema Director Jon Vickers and developed a six-year financing plan to pay for the upgrade.Union Board works with two different companies, Swank and Criterion, in order to show newly-released films to students without charging.These companies market toward college campuses and offer movies to be rented by college groups, Smith said.Each company has a long list of movies available to be rented. When the group decides which films they want to show, they request them to be sent, spending about $1,000 for each weekend rental.The new digital projector provides an updated filming format, which means more films are available for screening.“Students want to see new movies,” Smith said. “We showed a double feature of ‘Saw’ and ‘The Notebook,’ and no one came out. We are going to be showing new films from now on.” A good weekend for Union Board films attracts about 800 people to the film screenings, but that double feature only brought out about 150 people.About 1,200 students attended last weekend’s Union Board showing of “Gravity,” an Academy Award-winning film that has not yet been released on DVD. It was the most popular of the semester and second most popular of the year, only behind “The Great Gatsby.”The showing, like all showings organized by Union Board’s film committee, was free of charge for students. Non-students are charged $2.Students file into the Whittenberger Auditorium at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night to watch some of the most recently-released films. The committee will show “Frozen” this coming weekend and “12 Years a Slave” the weekend after students return from spring break. In addition to showing films on weekends, the group is planning two different events in April, though both are still tentative. There is a plan to have a sneak peek showing on April 29 of the movie “Neighbors,” which will be released in theaters May 9. The following evening, Union Board planned a double feature to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of “Mean Girls.” The film will show after “Finding Kind,” a 2011 documentary which tells the story of two friends traveling across the country to expose bullying between girls. By showing the different films, Union Board offers students an alternative activity option on the weekend, Smith said. “Union Board is such an awesome organization because it allows students to do something on the weekend if they don’t want to go out to the parties,” Smith said. “Also, because movies are so expensive now, I think it’s so cool that we’re showing them free for students.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater will perform at 8 p.m. today in the IU Auditorium.Tickets start at $23 for students and $44 for the general public.The auditorium brought Alvin Ailey to IU because of the company’s popularity, prestige and culturally relevant work accomplished all over the world, IU Auditorium Associate Director Maria Talbert said.“They are one of the world’s most celebrated dance ensembles, and their live performances have been seen by over 23 million people,” Talbert said. “Witnessing the Ailey company perform is considered by many to be an artistic ‘rite of passage,’ and we are thrilled to be able to give that opportunity to the IU and Bloomingtoncommunities.”Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is a performing arts community that works to preserve African-American heritage and celebrate other cultures as well, according to the group’s website.The group grew out of a performance by a man named Alvin Ailey and a group of African-American dancers in New York City in 1958. Their performance revolutionized African-American participation in dance and transformed modern dance in general.The group performs modern dance from a wide variety of influences including ballet, jazz, hip hop, lyrical and ballroom.“It will at times be upbeat, fast-paced and lively, while others will be tender, gentle and endearing,” Talbert said. “Audience members often find they are so enraptured by the performances that they catch themselves holding their breath.”This is especially true for the final dance of the program, “Revelations.” Watching this piece can be a transcendent experience, Talbert said.“What I find so captivating about watching the Ailey company perform is their unique mix of stunning athleticism and deep, soulful spirituality,” Talbert said. “Audiences can expect to be awed by the sheer physical power of these dancers, and moved by their ability to connect to each viewer on a deeply personal level.”Talbert first saw the company perform when she was at Albion College, and it made an unforgettable impression on her, she said.“Whether or not you have seen a professional dance performance before, to watch anyone who is arguably the best in their field doing what has made them renowned is a unique and special experience,” Talbert said. “It’s like viewing the Mona Lisa, or watching Michael Jordan play basketball — if the chance presents itself to see it, you simply have to.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater will perform at 8 p.m. today in the IU Auditorium. Tickets start at $23 for students and $44 for the general public.The auditorium brought Alvin Ailey to IU because of the company’s popularity, prestige and culturally relevant work accomplished all over the world, IU Auditorium Associate Director Maria Talbert said. “They are one of the world’s most celebrated dance ensembles, and their live performances have been seen by over 23 million people,” Talbert said. “Witnessing the Ailey company perform is considered by many to be an artistic ‘rite of passage,’ and we are thrilled to be able to give that opportunity to the IU and Bloomington communities.”Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is a performing arts community that works to preserve African-American heritage and celebrate other cultures as well, according to the group’s website. The group grew out of a performance by a man named Alvin Ailey and a group of African-American dancers in New York City in 1958. Their performance revolutionized African-American participation in dance and transformed modern dance in general. The group performs modern dance from a wide variety of influences including ballet, jazz, hip hop, lyrical and ballroom. “It will at times be upbeat, fast-paced and lively, while others will be tender, gentle and endearing,” Talbert said. “Audience members often find they are so enraptured by the performances that they catch themselves holding their breath.”This is especially true for the final dance of the program, “Revelations.” Watching this piece can be a transcendent experience, Talbert said. “What I find so captivating about watching the Ailey company perform is their unique mix of stunning athleticism and deep, soulful spirituality,” Talbert said. “Audiences can expect to be awed by the sheer physical power of these dancers, and moved by their ability to connect to each viewer on a deeply personal level.”Talbert first saw the company perform when she was at Albion College, and it made an unforgettable impression on her, she said. “Whether or not you have seen a professional dance performance before, to watch anyone who is arguably the best in their field doing what has made them renowned is a unique and special experience,” Talbert said. “It’s like viewing the Mona Lisa, or watching Michael Jordan play basketball — if the chance presents itself to see it, you simply have to.”