April is Earth Month so get ready to reduce, reuse, and recycle! This Wednesday (April 20th) from 5-6 pm in the Graham Sustainability Institute create your own upclycled flowers from zippers. This event is a great way to learn how to make art more sustainable by using discarded materials. Be sure to register at this RSVP Form before all the spots fill up!
This weekend, I attended That Brown Show 2022. It is an event put together by a team made up of different members of brown cultural groups. These groups include a classical music team, classical dance groups, contemporary fusion groups and many more. Every year they come together to put One. Grand. Show.
This year was the first That Brown
Show since 2019 and the excitement was unreal. The event was in Michigan Theatre and the grand venue suited the level of the show very well. The line to enter the show extended out of the theatre because so many people wanted in! The audience was super engaged and it consisted of college students but also parents. The show had emcees who introduced the performances and we were taken on a ride.
The event began with a very skilled and tasteful performance of Indian classical music. They played instruments I had never seen in real life before and they played them masterfully. The auditorium was saturated with the unique tones and sounds of music. The singing was very good too. Theirvoices were powerful when needed and sweet when needed. It was a beautiful performance and for sure an amazing way to introduce the audience to the show.
After the mesmerizing opening act, the show went into dance performances. The classical dance performances were all stirring and the technique of the performers was great. Their outfits were very traditional and they commanded audiences’ attention well. There were also more modern, fusion dance styles. They had a ton of energy and the dancers were excited to perform.
They were really creative too! They had
funny gags in them (that I don’t want to spoil in case they happen next year) and
really fun story telling elements. The dancers were so energetic and their presence so commanding that it was hard to look away!
The teams also had videos of them to introduce themselves be
fore each performance and I thought it was so cool. The videos had their own story sometimes and it made the event that much more interesting.I am happy to see so many groups on campus with members that are excited to perform. In every groups’ video it was apparent that the members were frie
nds and enjoyed the whole process of putting together a show. I applaud all of them for their commitment to their art-be it dance, or classical music or singing. Their hardwork and skills were apparent. Hats off to Michigan Manzaat, Maize Mirchi, Michigan Mayuri, WolveRAAS, Michigan Taal, Michigan Sahānā Music & Dance!
Stepping out of the theater after watching this movie was something else. It was a fresh take on existential movies and featured a lot of contemporary art. It’s hard to describe what Everything Everywhere All at Once is about because… it is about a lot of things. It was about family, the meaninglessness of life, adulthood, regrets, people with sausage fingers, and much more.
This movie was a sophisticated one. It delivered strong messages in a more ‘universal’ way. By that I mean, existential movies usually fall into contemplative, somber genres like film noir and the others but Everything Everywhere All at Once delivers these more complex thoughts about human existence through a family comedy of sorts.
It is funny, it is emotional, it gives serious takeaways without taking itself too seriously and it does that through a careful display of techniques. This movie capitalizes on a lot of pop art and editing. It does not rely on a lot of cliches and uses unique art styles to deliver difficult to portray feelings like the kind a sci-fi movie about metaverses deals with.
I believe what sets this movie, a sci-fi about metaverse, apart from other sci-fi metaverse movies is how wholesome it is. Sci-fi movies tend to be very plot-driven. The question they tackle is usually so many magnitudes above everyday life problems that they enter a league of their own where you can’t relate to the movie. It becomes more of an action movie at times. But Everything Everywhere All at Once takes a more delicate approach.
The choice of a middle-aged Asian immigrant parent in America as a protagonist is strong enough to begin with. Her problems are realistic and she isn’t immediately thrown into the task of saving the world. She works through problems in human ways and overcomes problems like having a better relationship with her queer teen daughter. It’s a really fresh take on sci-fi and what all movies like this can offer. At times the warm family-oriented message can hold the movie back by becoming a little preachy but it is overall a good subversion of the genre.
I loved this movie because of its creativity and how funny it was. It is the funniest sci-fi movie I’ve ever seen and I highly recommend everyone watches it to get a taste of what cool movies of our time look like!
The Department of Musical Theatre’s production of Hair was two and a half hours of some of the highest-caliber performance I have ever seen. The revolutionary “tribal love-rock musical” Hair is a powerhouse of a musical, anti-war and counterculture sentiment in its bones, filled with unapologetic depictions of drug use, sexuality, and even nudity.
As an audience member, I was enthralled from the first moment all the way until the end. Every moment of the performance was perfectly crafted, the movement on the stage always dynamic and exciting. Each vocal performance was special in its own right, and I found myself with chills from the power of the cast’s collective voices multiple times, especially in the compelling final reprise, “Let the Sunshine In.” It’s hard to pick a favorite moment, but one fun visual that stood out to me was the song “Air,” performed flawlessly by Maggie Kuntz as Jeanie, while members of the Hair Tribe surrounded her with a cloud of bubbles from bubble guns. The majority of the second act, which centers on the visions of Claude’s hallucinogenic trip, was a stunning showcase of choreography, costuming, and striking lighting design.
Hair, in my opinion, is an important musical. The director’s note at the beginning of the program asks audience members to consider, in response to questions about the “shocking” nature of the show, why the language and brief nudity on stage draws more attention and challenge than the thought of sending young people to war. Hair asks us to reconsider what we are told is “normal.” The Department of Musical Theatre worked in collaboration with a cultural sensitivity specialist, an intimacy director, and other experts to create this show, building an understanding of the musical and the topics it tackles, connecting it to today’s context and conversations.
My only wish is that I could have seen this more than once. This was an incredible last musical to see at the University of Michigan as a student supporting my peers. I could not be filled with more love for live theatre and the incredible talent and energy in the student productions here at this university.
Read more about SMTD’s production process for Hair in this Michigan Muse article.
Musical ‘Hair’, the classic rock musical, is being presented by the School of Music, Theatre&Dance’s Department of Musical Theater until this Sunday! This musical has history: based on a novel by Gerome Ragni and James Rado, the original performance opened on Broadway in April 1968 after its off-broadway debut in 1967. It did a revival in 2009 and won the Tony Award and Drama Desk Award for Best Revival of a Musical. The musical will take place in New York City as it follows the Bohemian lifestyle/politically active group. Several of its songs were used in the anti-Vietnam War peace movement.
As its history suggests, this musical will explore concepts of “identity, community, global responsibility, and peace”. I am really excited to find out how university students’ youthful energy will make synergy with this classic discussing the ideas that never got outdated. It’s also amazing that we can see a revival of the Tony Award-winning musical on campus. Don’t miss your chance to check this out!
+) Content warning – contains references to sexuality, war, racism, and drug use, may contain nudity. Recommended for Ages 17+
Festifools has established its place in Ann Arbor’s Art scene.
Even before the official starting time of the festival, the east side of UMMA was filled with Trucks, student artists, puppets, and fascinatingly dressed volunteers. There was a call for volunteers to gather 1 hour early before the start of the festival, and many had risen to the call. It looked almost like Halloween, but a more jolly version-I saw at least a handful of red queens, Alice, clowns, and people dressed in colorful gowns, sashes, and laces. People should definitely have more change to dress in those cool clothes. What a waste that they were stuck in the drawers throughout the whole year! I was also one of the people who volunteered to help carry the puppets. Student artists and Mark Tucker, the founder of the Festival and the instructor of the Michigan Learning Community(MLC) course at U of M where students create the puppets throughout the semester for this festival, were busy bringing the puppets to life with cable ties, bamboo poles, and iron bars. Student artists explained how they wanted the puppets to move, and some volunteers embraced themselves for the big march with drums in hand. Then the game was on!
The festival took place starting in front of State street in front of Angell Hall until the diag. The crowd was lined up on either side of the street. I was honestly surprised at how many people had shown up – there were triple lines of people on either side of the street from the starting point of the march to the end. Toddlers, children, adolescents, grown-ups, and elders all gathered to have fun, laugh at the jolly movements of puppets, and especially the youngsters had the privileges of occasional high-fives with the puppets. Although the puppets were certainly a grandeur, they were not the only thing to see at the Festival. Student organizations and local communities have come to join the fun! There were people marching while playing percussion(Groove-y!), an actual marching band, people dressed up as clowns that played tricks in the march, a cool belly-dance club dressed in red and black, and other amazing people. The march went on for about an hour. I and the person behind me who were helping the carry different parts of the puppet came to a consensus-it was a workout, but definitely a fun one.
I really enjoyed how the whole community, whether they took the role of the audience, artists from the university, or performers outside the university, came together to have a festive afternoon. The festival was truly a community event in the sense that it could not have been as festive without any of the groups. Also, I really appreciated the atmosphere of the day where a father and daughter can casually wear jocker hats, matching rainbow ties, and banana Hawaiian shirts together and take part in a festival in a local area. It’s not a scene that can be found everywhere, but something that a lot of people can benefit from having in their lives at some point. So thank you, Mark Tucker, for founding this lovely community event!
