Sacrificial Poets revive the art of oral verse
Chapel Hill’s Sacrificial Poets breathe new life into an ancient art form.
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Chapel Hill’s Sacrificial Poets breathe new life into an ancient art form.
The reopening of the Playmakers Theatre was nothing short of poetic.
After four years of collecting dust, the Historic Playmakers Theatre will reopen tonight — temporarily.
On Sept. 28, 1798 — just three weeks after arriving at the University — 19-year-old George Clarke, of Bertie County, died. His body now rests in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery.
It’s a scene straight out of elementary school. Huddled around a table, children craft and color paper plate jack-o’-lanterns.
Contortionists, yogis and modern dancers will take the stage of Memorial Hall tonight—all within the confines of a 15-person ballet company.
DURHAM — The music room at Durham’s Holton Career and Resource Center buzzed with excitement on Saturday.
Winnie is stuck in more ways than one.
Art is meant to be admired. It hangs in galleries and is performed in concert halls. But two campus groups aim to challenge students to engage directly with artistic works.
“Curtain!” yelled an actor from the stage, prompting a deafening and incoherent clamor of numbered requests from the audience.
After three days of auditions, five weeks of rehearsals and countless hours of preparation, students at the American Dance Festival School will make their debut Monday night in the “Past/Forward” performance.
At the Summer Youth Conservatory, the students aren’t just playing. They’re performing.
Just 10 days after celebrating its own nation’s Independence Day, Toots & Magoo boutique and gallery will host a celebration of the Independence Day of its owners’ home away from home — France.
Uniquely and outlandishly decorated brassieres dangle on clotheslines in the display window of a storefront.
In an afternoon of flexibility, agility and a few anxious jitters, students in the American Dance Festival School auditioned Saturday for the festival’s “Past/Forward” program.And it was only their second day at the school. The weekend marked the first few days of the six-week intensive program during which students previewed classes and auditioned for performances.“You jump from teacher to teacher, which is an really overwhelming experience because you are constantly having to switch gears and switch focus,” said Mallory Markham, an American Dance Festival student from Jackson, Miss. “Then at the end of the day, you have to go audition.”Markham is participating in the American Dance Festival to prepare for her professional career, which begins in the fall at Columbus Dance Theatre, a contemporary ballet company in Ohio.Donna Faye Burchfield, dean of the school, spoke to the students prior to their auditions, encouraging them to try everything the school offers, from the preview classes to each audition.“It’s kind of like a relationship. It has to start to see how it will work out,” Burchfield said.The “Past/Forward” program will premiere toward the end of the season, July 19 through July 21.Under Ryan Ghysels’ direction, students will perform a reconstruction of “West Side Story Suite,” based on the original choreography of Jerome Robbins.Jean Freebury, of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, will reconstruct Cunningham’s original work, “Inlets 2.”The final piece will be a world premiere choreographed by Tatiana Baganova of Russia. “You get to decide which piece you would like to be in if you are chosen by more than one choreographer,” Burchfield told students.Markham, like many students, auditioned for all three ensembles in the “Past/Forward” lineup.Callbacks were Sunday afternoon, when the field of hopeful hundreds was narrowed to several dozen. Markham received callbacks for two performances. While eventually cut from the “West Side Story Suite,” she was offered a role in “Inlets 2.”“I felt like my ballet background and my new sense of awareness in modern dance really helped me do well in that particular style,” Markham said of the Freebury reconstruction.Offering a wide range of styles and approaches, the school attracts students from all backgrounds.“It’s like a little cultural melting pot for dance,” said Markham.But not all the learning goes on in the classroom. Markham and a friend offered ballet lessons in return for help with their hip-hop dancing.“I’ve always been a classical ballet dancer, and coming here, you are given so many avenues of dance and so many different ways of moving,” she said.Contact the Arts Editor at arts.dth@gmail.com.
Celebrating its 77th anniversary and entering into its 33rd season in Durham, the American Dance Festival poses a question as this year’s theme, “What is Dance Theater?”“We want to leave it as a question mark for the audience,” said Jodee Nimerichter, co-director of the festival. “We are not necessarily going to answer the question.”This year’s festival begins today and runs through July 24. Performances — featuring eight world premieres, one U.S. premiere and five American Dance Festival Company debuts — are split between the Durham Performing Arts Center and Duke University’s Reynolds Industries Theater.
The caption beneath “The Karen State” painting, which begins the N.C. Art Therapy Institute’s exhibit in the Student Union Gallery, reads, “This is the story of the people who lived in Burma.”“But now it’s gone,” continues the artist, E.K.P.S. Wah, a fifth-grader at Frank Porter Graham Elementary School. “It was a great place. But then the people had to run away. Ever since I’ve come to America, I’ve remembered that place.”“Journeys to a Different Landscape”, which will close today, displays work by refugee students. Most of them are from Myanmar, also known as Burma, but the Refugee Art Therapy Project also includes students from Thailand, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Bhutan.The art displayed in the exhibit explores different aspects of refugee life and personal experiences from the untrained, but nonetheless profound, hands of elementary- and middle-school-aged children.One of the most dynamic pieces, made by two other Frank Porter Graham Elementary students, is a cardboard box boat, “The Nightmare Boat,” hanging from the ceiling.Although the boat embodies the treacherous journey taken by many refugee families, the artists also connected a positive meaning to their project. Evie Runberg, an intern with the institute, described the boy’s creative process.“It was a way to connect to their culture,” Runberg said. “Their cousins were boat builders, so they thought of them while building it.”Because most of the children are new arrivals in the U.S., their use of English is limited, so art gives them a way to express themselves.“Communication is a huge goal,” said Ilene Sperling, clinical director for the institute. “Art is a springboard to express their feelings.”One piece above all others attracted a lot of attention: a graphic painting of a decapitated man. Below the picture, fifth-grade artist Ta De Htoo explained his frustration with expressing himself.When he was a baby, the statement reads, his parents feared that if he cried, their location would be revealed and they would be killed.“But I didn’t cry,” he wrote. “I still don’t cry. I only did once. It was when some people made fun of me for how I speak.”“I want to tell them, I speak four languages. I want to tell them, when I first got here, I didn’t know how to ask the teachers for anything. Now, I do.”The institute considers art therapy effective for the refugees as it transcends languages, addresses the children’s post-traumatic stress symptoms and assimilation, and helps them build relationships.The final piece in the display is a collage called the “Peace Flag.” At Chapel Hill High School’s Newcomer Center, a district-wide English as a Second Language program, students pasted versions of the Burmese flag and images of peace onto a canvas.Executive Director Kristin Linton led the group therapy session. She said tensions arose among the students working on the flag, since they were of two different ethnic descents with a long history of conflict.But the disputes were eventually resolved.“We talked about a past history and the ability to create a new history together,” Linton said.
The ArtsCenter’s presentation of “Eurydice” is an unexpected and whimsical answer to the usual woes of Greek tragedies.Written by acclaimed playwright Sarah Ruhl, the play retells the Greek myth of Orpheus from a modern Eurydice’s point of view. “Sarah Ruhl uses an incredible childlike language,” said Emily Ranii, artistic director of ArtsCenter Stage. “It makes the show uniquely whimsical.” “Eurydice,” which opened last week, will unfold again today through Sunday, May 23, at the ArtsCenter in Carrboro.Ruhl’s comedic version follows the lover’s myth closely, with two notable exceptions. In Greek mythology, Eurydice dies from a venomous snakebite, while in Ruhl’s play she falls down a flight of 600 stairs, landing her in the underworld.In the play, she is kept company in the underworld by some interesting characters, including her father, who is not featured in the original.“Ruhl wrote the play in response to her father passing away,” said Jeri Lynn Schulke, who plays Eurydice. “So she included the character of the father in the myth.”Schulke leads the cast with her tempestuous portrayal of Eurydice, a naive and vivacious girl, who seems out of touch with reality until the bittersweet end of the play. Her final minutes on stage were the most heartfelt and convincing of the play. Cast in a dual role, John Allore delivered two strangely fascinating portrayals.First, he plays the Nasty Interesting Man (the name says it all), sporting a suit and tie made of synthetic, shiny green AstroTurf.Then, he returns as the Lord of the Underworld; in military tailored coveralls and a hard hat, Allore’s quirky mannerisms and boisterous speech were riveting. Upon first entering the theater, audience members see a humble stage, with two patches of grass on the stage floor, a twine and mesh canopy hoisted above and paper strewn about it.As the play progresses however, the stage is transformed into a type of purgatory: not quite the land of the living, not the underworld, but something in between — a land of lost letters and memories. “The stage directing and design were really creative,” said audience member Thomas Kirk. “Like a window into another world.”In the underworld, things in the world of the living are forgotten but can be relearned. In the play, Eurydice’s father acts as a tutor, teaching his daughter how to speak, read and write.But with these harmless memories come painful others, like those of her husband, who is still in the land of the living, searching for her. “Eurydice” explores this world of the in-between.Contact the Arts Editor at arts.dth@gmail.com.
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