Maybe you’ve been taking studio art classes in the Residential College, or maybe you have friends (such as yours truly) who have, or maybe you’ll be around East Quad at some point this month with art on the mind. Maybe you’ve been itching to see student photography, ceramics, drawing, printmaking, and sculpture all in the same little space.
Lucky for you, the RC Art Gallery will be full of student work from various RCARTS courses from the 13th-27th of April, completely free to browse. The gallery and student exhibition will open with a reception on Friday, the 13th of April from 4-6pm — also free and with refreshments! The gallery is just to the right of the East University entrance when you first walk in and is usually open M-F 10am-5pm, special exception for this event.
Date: Friday, April 13th, 2018 Time: 4-6pm Location: East Quad’s RC Art Gallery
On Saturday night, two housemates and myself journeyed to the Arthur Miller Theater on north campus to see Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. Sitting down in our general admission seats we were a little wary and a little intimidated by the supposed run-time of the play: 3 hours and 30 minutes, plus two 15 minute intermissions— for a total of 4 hours. Despite our apprehensions, it was an energetic, moving, and thoroughly engaging 4 hours. What seemed daunting actually never had a dull moment, and left us wishing for Part 2— just maybe not that same night.
An example of the minimalist set of Angels in America. (Photo Credit: So Jung)
Staying true to Kushner’s wishes and the play’s stage directions, the set was minimalist and scenes transitioned without blackouts. Instead the Music, Theater, and Dance cast had drums beating in the background and furniture whirled around. Projections stated the dates but with the changing of scenes happening with actors pushing, twirling, and wheeling the set around, we saw the time pass before our eyes. The whole performance used the space and lighting very well. Two places could be represented at once on the stage by their expert use of lightening, allowing key scenes with both couples arguing to be powerful moments. If actors weren’t in scenes, they watched in chairs lined along the back of the stage, so the presence and intensity of the scenes was never lost.
The physical presence of all the actors was amazing to watch. While Sam Dubin embodied a spitting-with-rage Roy Cohn, and the show lacked nothing in passion, the cast didn’t shy away from moments of silence. The silence after Harper Pitt’s line to her husband, “You should want to be married to me”, gave me goosebumps. It seemed like a long silence but I was on the edge of my seat wondering what the response would be through every suspenseful moment. Savanna Crosby’s performance of Harper Amaty Pitt through the whole show was riveting; her first scene saw her shaking and shivering as one with the character. It must have been a tiring action but was just as an amazing work of physicality.
The entire cast fit together, creating intimate and meaningful relationships seemingly from the air. Together they crafted a great adaptation of this award winning play. Angels in America deals with important but difficult issues and they tackled it’s complicated themes, ultimately creating a memorable theater going experience.
On Sunday afternoon, puppets came alive and fools came about.
It was another cold day, but luckily the sun came out to be foolish with everybody. I had been with the FestiFools class (housed by Lloyd Hall Scholars Program) earlier that day — so I rode from the studio to Main Street with the puppets and their makers and then helped them unload those massive papier-mache sculptures. Seeing all them all lining the side road gave them a new element of livelihood an hour later when they took to the stage.
Many puppets this year were politically-charged, which also added a layer of humor to the already-foolish theme. One such sculpture completed in part by the event’s founder, Mark Tucker, was a “scary go-round” featuring giant caricatures of Putin, Trump, and Kim Jong-un. Their realistic facial resemblances added to the scare factor of the piece. It was surrounded by several fish- and Nile-themed sculptures: fantastical underwater creatures, a jellyfish umbrella, a large pyramid, a Sphinx featuring another head of Trump as well as hieroglyph-esque political cartoons of his presidency, and more.
Scary Go-RoundSphinx with head and presidency of Trump (one of its makers and director of LHSP pictured)
I’d like to think the politically-charged pieces were crowd favorites, given the laughs and supportive comments from onlookers around me. The mayor of Ann Arbor also had a puppet head resembling him, which another person wore while he escorted him around the stage (up and down Main Street).
Mayor of Ann Arbor next to mayor of Ann Arbor
Alongside puppets, marching bands (ones with real brass instruments and more FestiFools-esque ones with buckets as drums) add music to the scene; dance groups and jokesters perform and interact with the crowd. A group of belly dancers in particular were fascinating, especially when following a large praying mantis led by several people at once.
Maybe I’m biased after having seen several of these puppets in the studio the week before when they were unfinished, but they all turned out incredible. While yes, some parts fell off during the procession, that’s what they’re made to do.
Hundreds of Ann Arbor fools with and without families lined Main Street for that hour on Sunday afternoon. In fact, they gathered on the sidewalks at least a half-hour before it began and stuck around during the half-hour following, eager and excited for the foolish energy that lingered.
During the event, several puppets also interacted with the crowd — particularly children. I jumped in to assist a friend’s Lego Princess Leia puppet, which had a sad face on one side of the head and a happy face on the other. When Leia got high-fives from kids to her U-shaped lego hands, her happy face would greet them.
Princess Leia as a happy Lego
One of my favorite parts of FestiFools is the last five minutes: all of the puppets and their makers gather in the intersection nearest the trucks in which they came, dancing and smiling as though the catharsis of the event. If FestiFools was a musical, this would be the final number with all cast members present, where any plot issues get resolved. The drummers and musicians don’t necessarily battle but instead give the stage one last, large energetic push, and then the crowd parts to let them dance their way back to the side street.
I highly recommend going to the next FestiFools! It takes place right on Main Street once every April. While a great chance to be your true foolish selves, consider letting that foolishness shine other days of the year, too.
Ready Player One, is a movie based on a book of the same name, by Ernest Cline. The story takes place in 2045 where everyone spends most of their time in the virtual reality world known as the Oasis. 5 years ago, the creator of the Oasis died and inside his virtual reality he hid an Easter egg.; and whoever found that egg would win the rights to the Oasis and the sizeable fortune that he left behind. The movie focuses on Wade Watts and his search for the egg against large odds.
I was cautiously optimistic that this movie would be able to follow in the book’s footsteps (I very much enjoyed the book). With Spielberg getting back to his roots of directing fun popcorn flicks and reading about all the IP that they had gotten the rights to, I thought that it was very much a possibility. My expectations were far from exceeded.
I understood going in that it was completely impossible for them to capture the same story as the book in all its detail; but I was disappointed with where they cut elements from. The movie rushed the relationships of many of the main characters. We briefly saw an empathetic side to both Wade and Art3mis, but their backgrounds were fairly sparse; as was the basis for the relationship they began to form. Aech, one of the best characters from the book, didn’t have any depth, which sucked a lot of the excitement out of her big reveal in person. Dato and Shoto had no background at all, and yet we were still supposed to root for them and their plight. Unfortunately for the story, most of these main characters were very undeveloped and their relationships felt rushed and shallow; which made caring about them and the events a lot more difficult.
Furthermore, the movie takes a lot away from the hunt for the egg. In the movie, the challenges aren’t terribly difficult and it doesn’t seem very realistic that no progress had been made in the hunt in over 5 years, with puzzles that were so easy to solve. In contrast, the book spends a ton of time in this part of the story and shows the immense difficulty of the hunt; even for people as experienced and as well-studied as Parzival. The hunt in the movie seemed more elementary and really lowered the stakes in the eyes of the audience.
Where I think this movie succeeds is in its ability to be a movie accessible to many. Where the book was very niche and for a very specific kind of geek (me in a lot of ways) the movie does a good job of making it more mainstream. The references are toned down and the plot doesn’t rely on having knowledge of these pop culture references as much as the book does.
All in all, I think that my default response to people who have seen this movie would be “read the book”. If you liked the movie, then you would love the book; and if you didn’t like the movie (especially if that was because you felt it was thin in some parts) then there is a very good chance you would like the book as well. The exposition and world-building are necessary for a movie like this, but in the end it took time away from some of the best elements of the story.
I stopped dancing some time around the second grade. As a child, I was interested in anything and everything. From piano lessons to writing camps to basketball, my parents had to draw the line somewhere, so dance was the first to be cut out of a long list of disparate activities. It has always been something that I wish I had continued though. To this day, I am in awe of dancers’ grace, poise, and flexibility. Every movement of the body seems purposeful, practiced . . . perfected.
Admittedly, after I attend dance performances, I find myself imitating their movements. (Side note: there should really be a “do not try this at home” warning on show pamphlets. I’ll confess to a couple of pulled muscles).
Nevertheless, I LOVE watching dance programs. On Friday evening, I had the opportunity to check out “Impact,” a student-run dance company on campus. Their show consisted of over a dozen numbers in varying styles of dance. The performers were adept and composed. Their movements were synchronous and their limbs shifted and swayed in really elegant ways.
One of my favorite numbers, “River,” was an up-tempo piece performed with attitude and intention. Their sharp gestures exuded confidence and passion.
The show was well organized and moved swiftly from number to number. There was a variety of solos, duets, a guest performance from both The Michigan G-Men and Ballroom Dance Team, and it concluded with a full number as all 18 women united for one final time on stage.
Be sure to check out Impact next semester on campus! They are a hardworking and talented team and deserve recognition!
As much as I love words, they can only do so much. When I am speechless, when words escape me, I turn to music to express what I cannot put into words. The Michigan Pops Orchestra have combined my two favorite modes of communication, putting on a night full of literature, ranging from childhood favorites to modern classic, all in the form of music.
Disney made a beautiful showing through Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin, and movie and musical soundtracks had their fair share of representation through powerful, emotional performances of Forrest Gump, Jane Eyre,The Godfather,Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera, Fantastic Beasts, Romeo and Juliet, and The Sound of Music. All of these selections gave the Pops a chance to shine.
The break from literature was found in Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concert in D Major. Katie Sesi was the winner of the 2018 MPO Concerto Competition and performed this beautiful masterpiece with breathtaking precision and tackled the incredibly intimidating technical difficulty with poise. I’m excited to see all the talent she has to bring to the music scene at University of Michigan when she attends in the fall, as she already received a standing ovation with her debut performance with the Michigan Pops Orchestra.
The night featured soloists Kevin Starnes, who shook the jungle with his silky baritone rendition of “Bare Necessities,” and Allison Prost and Michael Floriano as they took on the classic love duet, “All I Ask Of You.”
It wouldn’t be a Pops concert without a hilarious video narrative and a trivia game. This time we followed the story of a princess, stand partners, and the inferior Harvard Pops Orchestra as music director Rotem Weinberg read the story of the PrinPop Bride from “Scheherazade” for a sick boy. The battle of the bookworm consisted of naming a classic book based on amusing summaries (my favorite was “teenage boy fights noseless alum”).
Overall, it was a pretty standard Pops concert, which means it was phenomenal, full of the usual amount of laughter and engagement and amazing music you find at a Pops concert. I can’t wait to see what the Michigan Pops Orchestra has to present next year!
