No one at Yogi's Grill and Bar seems to know what a kundabuffer is. Customers ask the employees every day, especially when the fluorescent green signs facing 10th Street near Indiana Avenue are lit up at night.
Imagine going from playing a Munchkin in a community theater production of "The Wizard of Oz" to playing Mother, one of the leads in the national touring company of "Ragtime". Emily Herring did it. "(Touring with a show) is a lot like living out of a suitcase," Herring said with a laugh. Herring grew up in Alabama and studied classical music and opera at a college in Southern Mississippi and at the University of Tennessee. "Two good southern schools," she said about them. She now lives in New York when not on the road.
As the curtains went down on "Waiting for Godot," Dale McFadden knew it was time to say goodbye. McFadden, associate professor of theatre and drama, directed "Godot," the last play performed at the University Theatre. Although he said he is "grateful" to be moving to the facilities at the new Theatre/Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center, McFadden will miss the historic and aesthetic details of the old space.
Many lessons students learn at IU will take place outside the walls of the classroom. In a population that brings together students and faculty from all over the world to share ideas, a hidden curriculum presents itself throughout the community. It is evident in the many opportunities at IU for learning about the cultures of others. One such opportunity is a new exhibit titled "Rudy Pozzatti: A Printmaker's Odyssey," which will open to the public at the IU Art Museum Saturday and ends May 5. The exhibit is funded by the Richard Florsheim Art Fund, the IU Foundation, the Bloomington Area Arts Council Inc., the Indiana Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts. It will feature more than 70 pieces -- mostly prints -- organized with a basis on Pozzatti's many themes.
When I first arrived in Bloomington a few years ago, I burst into tears. I contend it was the confluence of a sleepless night, a long day of plane travel marked by multiple delays, and the growing anxiety of starting both a new degree and life in a Midwestern town more than 2,000 miles from my Bay Area home that reduced me to a pathetic puddle. My parents, who claim to know me better than I know myself, maintain that I was merely cranky from hunger.
Are you looking to start little change in your life? Would you like to add a little spice, a little intrigue? We all do. But what would you do to get it? Some might go skydiving or take up needlepoint. For some though, that isn't enough. Some need it so badly, that they could kill.
Standing ovations from a nearly full house at the Musical Arts Center greeted the Beaux Arts Trio Tuesday night. Menahem Pressler, pianist, Daniel Hope, violinist, and Antonio Meneses, cellist, bowed with pride after completing a commanding and exciting performance.
Tortillas, pita bread, lavash and focaccia may be relative newcomers to Indiana restaurants and supermarket shelves, but in their native lands these flatbreads are as old as civilization itself. When people first began harvesting grains, they were faced with the same problem many of us have with a cupboard-full of ingredients: how to turn what's on hand into what's for dinner.
Stories of loves, deaths and betrayals from the distant past come together with original songs written from personal experience in the music of French folk singer Gabriel Yacoub. At a concert Saturday at the John Waldron Arts Center Auditorium, Yacoub will play guitar and sing both traditional French folk songs and his own modern music. The concert, which begins at 7:30 p.m., is presented by the Lotus Concert Series, also organizers of Bloomington's annual world music festival.
Though it only played nine performances in its original production in Vienna in 1786, Mozart's opera buffa "The Marriage of Figaro" has become one of the world's most popular and most performed operas.
As inevitable as the changing of the seasons and the return of students to campus, a Bloomington tradition will enter its 15th year this weekend. HoosierFest, Bloomington's long-running outdoor music festival, is coming back to Kirkwood Avenue this Saturday for a full day of music, food and dancing in the streets.
In a world of boy bands, teen pop stars, and manufactured rock groups, it's easy to see how mainstream music has become commercialized. Instead of the plaintive voice of Joan Baez calling for peace and equality, we have Britney Spears calling to "party, party!" If you've grown tired of the MTV scene, head out to the World Folk Festival this Saturday in Bryan Park to experience something completely different.
Just a few weeks ago, the Jazz Fables celebrated its 12th anniversary. This week, its celebrating another birthday. Tonight, the weekly jazz series at Bear's Place, 1316 E. Third St., will celebrate the 75th anniversary of the birth of jazz legend John Coltrane. The saxophonist, who was born Sept. 23, 1926, and died when he was 40, will be remembered in a special concert featuring assistant music professor Tom Walsh on saxophone, associated music professor Pat Harbison on trumpet and visiting assistant music professor Luke Gillespie on piano. "Coltrane's music is some of the most powerful and most popular jazz from small groups of the 1950s," said David Miller, trumpet player and founder of Jazz Fables. "It continues to be a part of the idiom that all jazz players must come to grips with."
While traditional Middle Eastern music is still fairly obscure in this country, there are a few dedicated musicians striving to introduce the United States to a musical tradition that goes back several centuries. The Bloomington-based Middle Eastern music group Salaam consists of such musicians, who have educated and entertained the area for the past eight years.
A symphonic world premiere, as well as new traditional and modern choreography, was brought to the Musical Arts Center Friday and Saturday during performances of the Fall Ballet. The evening showcased several IU performers, including associate music professor Emile Naoumoff, the IU Wind Ensemble and the String Academy Chamber Orchestra.
In September 1996, Daniel Ponce worked with a few other students to assemble a group of guys with one mission in mind: to form a men's singing ensemble that would put the Hoosiers on the a cappella map. "I looked around at other universities and saw many a cappella groups," Ponce said. "Then when I came to IU, I noticed that they did not have any a cappella groups, and I wanted to do something about that."
Students see fliers on kiosks around campus or in store windows, and may never think anything of them. But to many people, promotional fliers for local rock bands are a fine art. Eric Weddle, a local aficionado of Bloomington's musical history, has collected some of those fliers for a gallery exhibit at the John Waldron Arts Center. He's calling it "Post No Bills," and through it he said he hopes to share his enthusiasm for the music of Bloomington's past and present. "There's so much history here," said Weddle of the fliers he's collected for the show.
The Allman Brothers Band and Phil Lesh and Friends combined summer tours Saturday at Verizon Wireless Music Center in Noblesville, Ind. for a nostalgic blend of classic Southern Rock and Grateful Dead jams. While these two bands split the bill, tickets should have read "A Day of Warren Haynes" as he shared his musical gifts between both groups and the show's opener, his own band, Government Mule.
POTIGRAFU, Romania -- The mayor of this drought-stricken village has never seen a movie with Nicole Kidman, but he'd like to make her an honorary citizen. Mayor Gheorghe Voicu calls it "a hand from heaven for the locals" that "Cold Mountain," a big-budget movie starring Kidman and Jude Law and adapted from Charles Frazier's Civil War novel, is being filmed in the village of 1,300 people.
A little boy in an oversized football jersey eyes the tables full of scrumptious-looking, award-winning desserts. Being teased too long with the displays, he decides to make a break for one of the chocolate-dipped biscottis, only to have his mom reign him back in to wait his turn for the real chocolate samples up ahead.
Solutions by The State News