Layla and Majnun is an “opera” based on a Persian poem about lovers who will never be allowed to unite. Alim Qasinov and Fargana Qasimova, singers from Azerbaijan, will be showcasing their majestic voices accompanied by the Silk Road Ensemble and Mark Morris Dance Group as they tell this emotional story.
Just looking at the photos and sneak-peek videos make me happy. There are so many colors, emotions, movements, and art.
Photo by Susana Miller
Layla and Majnun, to me, seems like the epitome of performing arts: a skillful combination of poetry, dances, fashion design, visual art, and of course, music — both improvised and composed. And that’s what excites me about it. Collaboration among different art forms is something that I’m striving to achieve in my final year of undergraduate degrees, and I can’t think of a better example than Layla and Majnun.
The show will be on Thursday October 13 at 7:30pm, and Friday & Saturday October 14 & 15 at 8pm. Tickets are running out, so get yours ASAP from the Michigan League Ticket Office or ums.org/students.
This week’s guest of the Zell Visiting Writers Series is C. Dale Young. Mr. Young is not only the author of numerous books and the recipient of numerous literary prizes and fellowships, but also a fully licensed physician.
I invite you to his web site to view a sample of his poetry, or here to read a sample of his prose.
Much of his work revolves around love and nature, and each poem of his that I have read is simple, yet pleasant and enriching.
Thursday, October 13th
5:30 PM in Helmut Stern Auditorium (basement of UMMA)
Students of Lloyd Hall Scholars Program’s art instructor, Mark Tucker, may theorize from past experience that rain often comes with luminary showcases. This year’s pop-up parade in Grand Rapids proved that theory wrong.
These students are LHSP student assistants and some Ypsilanti high schoolers who devoted the past month to creating luminary puppets: three-dimensional wire sculptures wrapped in papier-mâché with lights strung inside. The theme this year intersected space with sea – Emily Miu’s blowfish comet and Anna Minnebo’s full-body NASA/sea explorer costume were among whales and jellyfish, for examples.
Emily Miu’s blowfish comet luminary in lower right corner
On Saturday, October 8th, these students and some LHSP alumni (including yours truly) took a trip to Grand Rapids’ Art Prize to enjoy the public art and to create a pop-up parade of these luminaries at sunset around the city’s center. Last year’s debut parade day was rainy, which made for a very small audience and short-lived march. Last Saturday was graciously clear as the students prepared to carry their month’s worth of work around the busy downtown at night. The current LHSP student assistants carried their new puppets and others either carried older works brought along for the ride or drummed on metal and plastic buckets to draw more attention. Being a pop-up parade, nobody other than us from Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti knew what this was. As hoped for, this only made for a more intrigued audience.
We marched around the city center as sunlight dissipated, across bridges with lit-up puppets, eccentric drum rhythms, and excited energy. Passersby on foot and in cars looked on in awe (and some confusion), shouting and honking their approval toward us. It went on for about an hour with high energy building and lasting throughout. It was a great opportunity to surprise an artful city with even more art from across the state, making its people smile and wonder what prompted it all.
The next time you’re in Alice Lloyd Residence Hall, take a look in the art studio to see what wild art they’re creating next. Maybe you’ll be the next member of a surprise audience.
Waiting for the sun to set; students getting ready to march
For a conversation between a writer and an English professor, China Mievelle’s conversation with Joshua Miller was surprisingly unwriterly. Typically, conversations with writers focus on the details of the book and the writing and research process employed, and while China of course discussed his work, the discussion seemed more focused on the ideas contained within the work and not the work itself. China shied away from the more writerly aspects, the questions about what it is like to write and what it is like to be a writer, the questions that all writers are asked all the time. He does not seem to care for such questions and would rather talk about the things he thinks about.
The conversation started, of course, with a discussion about genre and experimentalism. For those unfamiliar with China’s work, he writes within a genre called “New Weird,” which combines aspects of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. On this subject, China talked about how he has had this fascination with monsters since he was a kid. He explored this fascination with the monsters he created in Perdido Street Station, named Remades. These monsters allowed him to work with “impossible specificity,” combining humans with all sorts of bits and scraps of animals, each more unorthodox than the last. After all, a monster according to China is something non-human implanted in the human. The discussion then veered to the sociological, since Remades aren’t just any humans mixed with animal parts, but criminals. He described them as “sadistic imagining of the criminal’s body,” after first discussing how people are obsessed with the bodies of criminals, how we see them as less than human.
From there, the conversation shifted to how China utilizes language (as a concept) in his work, particularly in his novel Embassytown. China has an interest in sociolinguistics and how language shapes the way we think and act. He describes his interest in language as more abstract than specific, as in unlike Tolkien, he doesn’t desire to create his own language, merely work with the theories behind it. In fact, in this book, he plays with Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, which states the grammatical structure of our language shapes how we see the world. Though he acknowledges that this theory is defunct, he still enjoyed exploring its application.
One of the more interesting parts about the conversation for me, was China discussing science-fiction’s obsession with aliens. After all, no matter how they choose to depict them, science-fiction can never truly depict aliens, for “definitionally, the alien cannot be depicted.” Since we are not alien, we are native to our own ways of thinking, we cannot truly imagine an alien being, let alone an alien thought process. In the same way that we cannot say the unsayable definitionally, we cannot show an alien creature.
The last question of the night was asked by a member of the audience and it was “how do you think Brexit will affect the writers and artists living in England (China is British). Though we were long out of time, China could not help but go on a bit of rant about Brexit, which he characterized as the “butchers versus racists” and said that “the EU is as much as a war fetishist as Donald Trump.” As a socialist, China is not particularly attached to either side in the Brexit debate, which allowed him to call out both sides for their hypocrisy. It was great.
One of the many wonderful things about new technology is that it can lead to entirely new genres of art. Performance animation is one of those genres.
First, we were introduced to two blank screens. Then, a flash of light and color as animated landscapes splashed across the screens. A silhouette stepped into view, and we watched it interact with the buildings and plants and animals that appeared. At times the message was a clear narrative, while at others it was more of a series of dreams transposed on top of one another. If that makes the show sound trippy in any way, then good, because it absolutely was trippy.
Miwa Matreyek is a multi-talented artist currently on tour performing the two pieces that formed this week’s Penny Stamps event. “This World Made Itself” seemed to be more of a love story, although love was by no means the only theme. The juxtaposition of her gigantic form with a city skyline, and her interaction with a tiny animated figure, had strong allusions to King Kong.
Her second piece, “Myth + Infrastructure,” dealt with the biggest themes possible: the birth and death of the world, modernization, death, life, and the interaction of mankind with the natural world.
Time and again we watched Miwa swirl through bodies of water, capture and free flying insects, blend in and become one with the Earth.
Several times it was like a magic show. The audience and I reacted with awe when Miwa sprouted wings out of thin air and her arm melted away into a swarm of white petals. “How did she do that?!” the people next to me exclaimed as they recorded the performance for their Snapchat stories. I wondered the same thing as I too recorded a clip for my story.
Shows like this are rare opportunities, and I strongly encourage you to see the show in Ypsilanti on Friday, October 7 if you can.
You can get a small taste of the performance in this TED video here.
“Dear Friends” as a collective work of art is astounding. I’ve only been able to skim through a small portion of it so far, but after attending tonight’s launch party I can barely put it down. It is so inspiring to me simply because it’s a visual representation of a completely diverse group of people coming together to create. Paul Barron sums that up very well near the end of his introductory note: “Whatever our contributors study or work at, they have made a space in their lives to see closely, to experience deeply, and to show us the world through their eyes.” That in itself is why “Dear Friends” is so powerful, and the launch party was no different.
Natalie Burr was the first reader, electing to share her piece of fiction called Making Room. It told a story about how a living person can fade away, leaving their loved ones to grieve about how they used to be. The imagery in Making Room was so vivid that at one point, the narrator was describing running her tongue around her teeth, and I noticed the person sitting to my right doing the same.
The second reader was Christina Khouri with her poem, Untitled. It was a short poem about how hardships can make instability seem normal.
Following Khouri, Asritha Vinnakota first read a short story titled Bells Chime. The story is told throughout the duration of a grandfather clock tolling twelve times. The narration pauses every now and again to let the reader know that, for instance, the fifth bell is chiming. She then read her poem called Bullet Freedom. It seemed to reflect the artfulness of fragmented thoughts.
Next, Sharon Shen read her poem, A Toast. It was a powerful piece comparing the human mind to a garden, likening intrusive thoughts to weeds overtaking daisies. The narrator tells an inspiring tale of survival, realizing “how much power courses through these fragile bones.”
Haley Winkle, a Caldwell finalist, then read Don’t Tell Me, a poem criticizing getting drunk at frat parties. One of the more striking stanzas was: “Don’t tell me how great it is / until he’s getting you to forget / how to spell your own last name”.
After that, Nikole Davtyan read her poem called Used Cars. It told the story of a girl taught at a young age never to have sex. Her mother, giving her “the talk,” compared girls who have sex to cars at the junkyard. The ending of the poem implied the narrator’s resentment towards her mother.
The last reader was Rebecca Polinsky with a nonfiction piece entitled Stinky Feet. It was a narrative discussing how a friend’s eating disorder impacted Polinsky’s life. Although at times horrific, the essay ended with the narrator realizing she was losing her identity as a confident woman by allowing herself to be so negatively influenced. Despite the overall theme of the piece, Polinsky’s conclusions were empowering in the sense that she rediscovered her confidence.
In the words of Megan Knittel, the Editor-in-Chief of “Dear Friends”, “…the core of LHSP philosophy [is] that creative expression can connect us and teach us about ourselves. This year’s journal is about discovering ourselves through others.” I am proud to have a poem included in this amazing collection, and to have been a part of LHSP last year. “Dear Friends” is a magazine containing boundless ideas, limitless new perspectives, and incredible artwork.
