Center for the Arts

Wesleyan University's Center for the Arts announces highlights of 2021 spring season

Middletown, Conn.—Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts announces the highlights of their 2021 spring season, including virtual performances, artist talks and demonstrations, workshops, radio broadcasts, an exhibition featuring photographs, multimedia installations and video, and an outdoor performance of dance set to film.

"The Center for the Arts is proud to present a dynamic spring season of virtual programming that includes performances, conversations, and workshops centering the voices of extraordinary artist activists," said Fiona Coffey, Associate Director for Programming and Performing Arts. "The season spans urgent sociopolitical issues ranging from civic activism and feminist rage and healing to racial and social justice, labor and class, and Black Lives Matter. Through a partnership with WESU Middletown 88.1FM, we continue to offer robust radio programming which includes a re-airing of Laurie Anderson’s bespoke radio show for Wesleyan, 'Party in the Bardo,' a radio play version of 'The Masses are Asses' by Petro Pietri directed by Miranda Haymon ’16, and programming from our Music Department. This season asks our audiences to center the artist’s voice and lived experiences as a way to engage with larger national discussions regarding politics, race, class, gender, and more."

“We’re honored to present ​the exhibition 'Flames of My Homeland: The Cultural Revolution and Modern Tibet’ as a co-production of the Center for the Arts and the College of East Asian Studies," said Benjamin Chaffee, Associate Director of Visual Arts. "The exhibition is co-curated by Ian Boyden ‘95, William Frucht, and Associate Professor of Religion and East Asian Studies Andrew Quintman. 'Flames of My Homeland' revolves around the work of the artist, poet, and activist Tsering Woeser. Woeser’s voice will literally echo through the gallery through recordings of her reading aloud some of her poems, speaking through the video collaboration with co-curator, artist, and translator Ian Boyden and through other audio installations in the gallery. Woeser’s recent images of Lhasa, Tibet are included in the exhibition. Boyden’s translations of Woeser’s poetry will be available for visitors and several new site-responsive sculptural installations by Boyden are included. Historic images of Lhasa from the Pitt Rivers Museum and the Rubin Museum will help contextualize the historic photography of Woeser’s own father, Tsering Dorje, whose own photographs of the Cultural Revolution in Tibet will be installed in the gallery. 'Flames of My Homeland' will help share the felt experience of the ongoing cultural genocide and the ​continuing call for justice in Tibet."

Please see below for more information.

Reservations for spring events at the Center for the Arts are available online at https://www.wesleyan.edu/boxoffice. Programs, artists, and dates are subject to change without notice.

Performing Arts Series
The tenth annual Performing Arts Series at the Center for the Arts features a wide array of world-class musicians, cutting-edge choreography, and groundbreaking theater performances and discussions.

Kristina Wong: “Sweatshop Overlord”
Thursday, February 18, 2021 at 8pm
FREE! RSVP required for access to virtual event.

Written and performed by the Auntie Sewing Squad

"[Kristina Wong] built a massive free mask operation for people the 'government didn't care about.'"
--NBC News

Global crises require innovation. In a new show born from the COVID-19 pandemic, comedian and writer Kristina Wong details her trajectory from out-of-work performance artist to “Sweatshop Overlord” (2020) of a homemade face mask empire, deploying 800 Facebook volunteers--the Auntie Sewing Squad--to make and deliver more than 70,000 masks to at-risk communities while in quarantine. The work re-examines the significance of Asian American women and women of color performing this historically gendered and racialized invisible labor.

Followed by a moderated conversation with the artist.

“Party in the Bardo: Conversations with Laurie Anderson”
Thursday, February 18 through Thursday, May 6, 2021 at 10pm
WESU Middletown 88.1FM
FREE!

"The evening felt like a cross between story time and some kind of ritual."
—NPR Music

Wesleyan University’s WESU Middletown 88.1FM will rebroadcast all episodes of the radio show “Party in the Bardo: Conversations with Laurie Anderson,” created and hosted by writer, director, visual artist, and vocalist Laurie Anderson. The radio show features 24 hours of extended, intimate conversations with ten of her close friends and colleagues who share Anderson’s zeal to ask questions, explore, and understand the world: writers Jonathan Cott and Don Shewey, poet Paul Muldoon, artist Marina Abramović, and musicians Bruce Odland, Arto Lindsay, ANOHNI, Jason Moran, Kevin Hearn, and Christian McBride. Each guest supplies songs that fascinate, delight, and move them, and provide a jumping-off point for their wide ranging, free form conversations. For more information about this series, please refer to the full press release.

"Baldwin and Buckley at Cambridge:" A Conversation about History and Process with Elevator Repair Service
Thursday, March 4, 2021 at 8pm
FREE! RSVP required for access to virtual event.

“Boisterously entertaining.”
—Entertainment Weekly

Actors Greig Sargeant and Ben Williams and director and Elevator Repair Service founder John Collins will discuss the development and process of creating their new theater work in progress “Baldwin and Buckley at Cambridge.”

In February 1965, writers James Baldwin and William F. Buckley, Jr. were invited to the Cambridge University Union in England to debate the proposition “The American Dream is at the expense of the American Negro." Sargeant and Williams will perform short excerpts from the show, which is a verbatim re-enactment of the debate, and talk with Collins about the origins of the work, how the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the development process, and how Black Lives Matter has heightened the lens through which audiences will now experience the production.

The members of Elevator Repair Service will also speak about their ensemble-based development process, which includes a broad range of both high- and low-tech design, literary and found text, and innovative choreography. The discussion will be moderated by Assistant Professor of Theater Katie Pearl.

Feminist Rage and Healing: Movement Workshop with Ananya Chatterjea
Wednesday, March 10, 2021 at 8pm
FREE! RSVP required for access to virtual event.

“Ananya Chatterjea made it clear the performance was not just entertainment—it was a call to arms.”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune

In this movement workshop, Ananya Chatterjea, Artistic Director of the contemporary Indian dance company Ananya Dance Theatre in Minneapolis, will explore some of the emotional range of recent times. There will be space for feminist rage, for meditations on justice warriorship, and for regulating your nervous system through healing movement. Participants will work with dance movement, but no specific training is required. Workshop requires bare feet so participants can be in contact with the ground on which they stand. Bring your energy, mindful presence, breath, and dance.

A Conversation with Artist in Residence Miranda Haymon
Thursday, March 18, 2021 at 8pm
FREE! RSVP required for access to virtual event.

“Haymon is interested in inclusive, multi-voiced theatre that sparks dialogue.”
—American Theatre

Writer, director, and curator Miranda Haymon ’16 will discuss their artistic process, forging a theater career, and their radio play version of Pedro Pietri's "The Masses are Asses" (1974), which will be aired on WESU Middletown 88.1FM on both Thursday, May 13 and Thursday, May 20, 2021 at 10pm. Haymon is the inaugural Breaking New Ground Theater Artist in Residence during the 2020–2021 academic year, a new residency co-hosted by the Theater Department and the Center for the Arts which brings early career BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) theater artists to campus.

Originally from Boston, Haymon is a Princess Grace Award/Honoraria recipient whose recent projects include “Everybody” at Sarah Lawrence College, “In the Penal Colony” at Next Door at New York Theatre Workshop, “Mondo Tragic” at the National Black Theatre, “Erotophobia” at Fordham University, and “Eclipsed” at Dartmouth College. At Wesleyan, Haymon double majored in German Studies and Theater, and was awarded the Rachel Henderson Theater Prize in Directing. Haymon was also an Assistant Director of the world premiere of The Assembly’s “Seagullmachine” at La MaMa in April 2018.

"A Body in Fukushima:" Film and Performance
Friday, May 28, 2021 at 8:30pm
Outdoors on the Wesleyan University campus
FREE!

Raindate: Saturday, May 29, 2021 at 8:30pm

“Ms. Otake...often goes where death has been, attuned to the histories, however painful, of her chosen place.”
—The New York Times

Eiko Otake, Visiting Artist in Residence in Dance, debuts a newly updated, 75 minute rendering of "A Body in Fukushima," edited over the course of 2020 during her virtual creative residency at Wesleyan. The film includes hundreds of photographs taken by John E. Andrus Professor of History and Professor of East Asian Studies, Science in Society, and Environmental Studies William Johnston of Eiko in the surreal, irradiated landscapes of post-nuclear meltdown Fukushima, Japan. Marking ten years since the earthquake and tsunami disaster in March 2011, the work traces their five trips to the evacuated, desolate environment, and includes never before seen images captured during their December 2019 visit which reveal the ongoing nature of this nuclear disaster and how Fukushima's landscape has been further altered. This special outdoor screening, the United States premiere of the work, will include a live performance by Eiko with an original score by violinist David Harrington, founder and artistic director of the Kronos Quartet.

The book "A Body in Fukushima" by Eiko Otake and William Johnston, a photographic account of the extended solo performance in irradiated Fukushima between 2014 and 2019, will be published by Wesleyan University Press on June 1, 2021.

In the Galleries

Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery
Benjamin Chaffee, Associate Director of Visual Arts
Tuesday through Sunday, Noon–5pm
www.wesleyan.edu/cfa/zilkha

"Flames of My Homeland: The Cultural Revolution and Modern Tibet - Works by Tsering Dorje, Tsering Woeser, and Ian Boyden"
Tuesday, February 23 though Thursday, April 1, 2021
Curated by Ian Boyden ’95, William Frucht, and Associate Professor of Religion and East Asian Studies Andrew Quintman
FREE! Gallery open to Wesleyan students, faculty, and staff.

The exhibition “Flames of My Homeland” brings together for the first time the work of the extraordinary father and daughter Tsering Dorje and Woeser which documents the ravages of Tibetan society brought by the Cultural Revolution and their ongoing effects in Lhasa today. For more information about this exhibition and related events, please refer to the full press release.

Related Online Events
FREE! Registration required for each of these Zoom webinars.

"Flames of My Homeland" Talk: Ian Boyden and William Frucht
Tuesday, February 23, 2021 at 4:30pm

Burning for Buddhism: Art, Memory and Resistance in Tibet - Robert Barnett and Barbara Demick
Tuesday, March 30, 2021 at 4:30pm

Photography and Tibet: Widening the Frame with Clare Harris
Tuesday, April 20, 2021 at 4:30pm

Opening Reception: 40th annual Middletown Public Schools Art Exhibition
Saturday, March 13, 2021 at 5pm
Online
FREE!

The virtual opening reception for the 40th annual Middletown Public Schools Art Exhibition will take place from 5pm to 7pm. This event is sponsored by the Middletown Board of Education, Middletown Public Schools Cultural Council, and Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts.

Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance

"Let ‘im Move You: This Is an Invitation"
Thursday, February 25, 2021 at 8pm
Zoom webinar
FREE! RSVP required for access to virtual event.

"This Is an Invitation" is the latest project in jumatatu m. poe and Jermone Donte Beacham’s "Let ‘im Move You" decade-spanning series of performance and installation projects. "Invitation" juggles between two choreographed duets, both filmed at dawn in outdoor locations in Mississippi (Jackson and Hazlehurst) and Bahia (Salvador and Itaparica). The two duets--jumatatu and Donte in Mississippi, and Sebastião Abreu and Uoston Alcântara in Bahia—-are both performed and auto-documented by the respective pairs, each framing self and environment as a means to create the terms for being seen. The project is choreographed by jumatatu and Donte and directed by jumatatu.

"This Is an Invitation" will be screened along with a lecture demonstration and a conversation between jumatatu m. poe and Jermone Donte Beacham moderated by Deborah Goffe MA '19.

This performance is part of the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance’s Performing Artist Case Studies, funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

Theater Department

Thesis Theater Production: "Othello"
Friday, April 9 through Sunday, April 11, 2021 at 8pm
FREE!

The Braided Project, an experiment in creating a radically inclusive theatrical space, presents the classic play "Othello" by Willam Shakespeare and highlights forgotten voices. Directed by Isabel Algrant '21, the theatrical film shows the tragedies of racial isolation and the dangers of poor communication, while also incorporating experiences from students who have experienced similar feelings of isolation. This film is a culmination of the work of countless thinkers exploring race and multiculturalism together.

Engage in the process by sharing your thoughts and reactions at @thebraidedproject on Facebook or thebraidedproject@gmail.com.

Incarcerated Stories
Monday, May 3, 2021 at 8pm
FREE!

Wesleyan students in the course THEA114-01 “Incarcerated Stories: Documenting In/Justice” taught by Chair and Professor of Theater Ronald S. Jenkins will collaborate with formerly incarcerated individuals and their families to create performances of theater and music based on interviews, trial transcripts, prison memoirs, and other texts related to mass incarceration and the Attica Prison uprising. The guest MC will be rap artist and activist BL Shirelle.

"She Kills Monsters: Virtual Realms"
Friday, May 7, 2021 at 8pm
Saturday, May 8, 2021 at 2pm and 8pm
FREE!

Designed specifically for online performances, the virtual production of "She Kills Monsters" (2011) is a dramatic comedy romp into the world of fantasy role-playing games. The high-octane work written by acclaimed playwright Qui Nguyen is laden with homicidal fairies, nasty ogres, and ’90s pop culture--a heart-pounding homage to the geek and warrior within us all. Agnes Evans leaves her childhood home in Ohio following the death of her teenage sister Tilly. When Agnes finds Tilly’s Dungeons & Dragons notebook, however, she stumbles into a journey of discovery and action-packed adventure in the imaginary world that was Tilly’s refuge. Directed by Assistant Professor of the Practice in Theater Edward Torres.

Dance Department

Dance Alumni Chat Series: Anyone Can Dance!
Friday, February 26, 2021 at Noon
FREE!

The Dance Department’s inaugural Alumni Chat Series event features four Wesleyan alumni discussing the benefits of a dance degree and how their dance education at Wesleyan transformed their lives beyond the University. Featuring Ellen Gerdes ’05, Eury German ’16, Chloe Jones ’15, and Nik Owens ’12.

Spring Senior Thesis Dance Concert
Thursday, April 8 through Saturday, April 10, 2021 at 7pm
FREE!

Four senior choreographers will present a collection of new virtual works as the culminating project of the dance major. Thursday and Friday night will each feature works by different seniors, concluding with a rich conversation and exploration of their topics during the final evening’s talkback on Saturday.

Cynthia Novack Lecture in Memoriam: "Aristocratic Posturing: Presenting the ‘Other’ in French Baroque Ballet” with Patricia Beaman
Thursday, April 22, 2021 at 2:50pm
FREE!

This year's Cynthia Novack Lecture in Memoriam, “Aristocratic Posturing: Presenting the ‘Other’ in French Baroque Ballet,” will feature speaker Patricia Beaman, Wesleyan Artist in Residence in Dance, and celebrate her book “World Dance Cultures: From Ritual to Spectacle.” Signed copies of the book will be available to order during the virtual event.

Spring Faculty Dance Concert
Saturday, May 1, 2021 at 7pm
FREE!

The Spring Faculty Dance Virtual Concert will feature a double-bill evening of world premieres: "Letting Go to Move On," a haunting biographical solo by Assistant Professor of Dance Iddi Saaka; and "Putting the Whores Before Descartes!" - an idiosyncratic, zany ensemble work by Visiting Associate Professor of Dance Doug Elkins. The concert will include both faculty and student performers from Wesleyan’s Dance Department.

Music Department

Wesleyan University Jazz Ensemble
Thursday, February 25, 2021 at 4pm
WESU Middletown 88.1FM
FREE!

The Wesleyan University Jazz Ensemble, directed by Noah Baerman, offers a program of modern, small-group jazz, recorded remotely after a semester of in person rehearsals in fall 2020. Selections include a standard ballad, one composition each by jazz giants Freddie Hubbard, Kenny Barron, and Eddie Harris, a Christmas favorite, and three tunes by the great saxophonist Sonny Rollins, who celebrated his 90th birthday during the fall semester. Featuring Noah Lilienthal '22 on tenor saxophone, Elijah Baldwin '24 on trombone, Max Shatan '22 on guitar, and keyboardists Hudson Christie '23 and Jack Canavan-Gosselin '22. This program will be available to stream from WESU's show archives for two weeks following the broadcast.

Wesleyan Gamelan Ensemble Virtual Mini-Concerts and Demonstrations
While COVID-19 is still with us this semester, the Wesleyan Gamelan Ensemble, under the direction of University Professor of Music I. Harjito and Winslow-Kaplan Professor of Music Sumarsam, offers a series of three biweekly 30-minute virtual mini-concerts and demonstrations.

Wesleyan Gamelan Ensemble Virtual Mini-Concert and Demonstration: Gadhon
Thursday, April 8, 2021 at 8pm
FREE!

This week's concert features Gadhon, a small ensemble featuring soft sounding instruments, especially a two-string bowed lute (rebab) and thirteen-key metallophone (gendèr), playing elaborate forms of melodies.

Wesleyan Gamelan Ensemble Virtual Mini-Concert and Demonstration: Traditional Music of Java
Thursday, April 22, 2021 at 8pm
FREE!

This week’s concert features the traditional music of Java.

Wesleyan Gamelan Ensemble Mini-Concert and Demonstration: Wayang Shadow Puppet Play
Thursday, May 6, 2021 at 8pm
FREE!

This week’s concert features an excerpt of Javanese shadow puppet performance (wayang) by puppet master Sumarsam.

African Pop Music Concert
Thursday, May 13, 2021 at 7pm
FREE!

Wesleyan’s new African Pop Music Band, directed by Assistant Professor of Music John Dankwa, presents an invigorating performance of contemporary African music and dance. Genres to be performed include highlife, reggae, hiplife, and gospel highlife, among others.

West African Drumming and Dance Concert
Friday, May 14, 2021 at 7pm
FREE!

An invigorating virtual performance filled with the rhythms of West Africa, featuring Assistant Professor of Music John Dankwa and Assistant Professor of Dance Iddi Saaka, joined by students in West African music and dance classes.