Center for the Arts

Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts announces highlights of 2022 fall season

Middletown, Conn.—Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts announces the highlights of their 2022 fall season, including the 46th annual Navaratri Festival celebrating the diversity of Indian music and dance, a work in progress showing by artist in residence Toshi Reagon, the East Coast premiere of “Queer Horror: Gravest Hits,” and five exhibitions featuring installations, drawings, video, photography, film, animation, and printmaking.

“Sparks start flying:” Joshua Lubin-Levy ’06 on building relationships as the new Director of the Center for the Arts. Read more on The Wesleyan Connection.

Ticket sales and reservations for fall events at the Center for the Arts are are on sale now online at https://www.wesleyan.edu/boxoffice. Tickets are also available by phone at 860-685-3355, or in person at the Wesleyan University Box Office, located in the Usdan University Center, 45 Wyllys Avenue, Middletown. Tickets may also be purchased at the door beginning one hour prior to each ticketed performance during the season, subject to availability. The Center for the Arts accepts cash, checks written to “Wesleyan University,” and all major credit cards. Groups of ten or more may receive a discount to select performances – please call (860) 685-3355 for details. No refunds, cancellations, or exchanges. Programs, artists, and dates are subject to change without notice.

46th annual Navaratri Festival
Wednesday, September 28 through Sunday, October 2, 2022
Navaratri, one of India’s major festival celebrations, is a time to see family and friends, enjoy music and dance, and seek blessings for new endeavors. Wesleyan’s 46th annual festival celebrates the diversity of Indian music and dance.

Music Department Colloquium: Lara Pearson—Interacting with Melody Through Movement: Co-singing Gesture in Karnatak Vocal Performance
Wednesday, September 28, 2022 at 4:30pm
Zoom
FREE! Reservations required.

Lara Pearson is a musicologist and researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics (Frankfurt am Main, Germany). Her paper will reflect on the relationship between gesture and melody in the South Indian style known as Karnāṭaka Saṅgīta (Karnatak music). The colloquium is organized by Assistant Professor of Music John Dankwa and Assistant Professor of Music and Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies Saida Daukeyeva as part of the Music Department Colloquium Series.

“Kinetic Visualities” Exhibition Opens
Thursday, September 29, 2022 from Noon to 7pm
Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, South Gallery
FREE!

The exhibition “Kinetic Visualities” will present art processes by the members of SAEDA (South Asian Experimental Dance Artists), a United States-based collective which explores shared and divergent artistic processes and disrupts representations of South Asian bodies in the diaspora.

Featuring works of video, installation, and drawings by Parijat Desai (New York), Meena Murugesan (Los Angeles), Lionel Popkin (Los Angeles), and Pramila Vasudevan (St. Paul, Minnestota), the exhibition is co-curated by SAEDA, including co-founder Hari Krishnan, Professor and Chair of the Dance Department and Professor of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

Exhibition on display from Thursday, September 29 through Sunday, October 2, 2022. Gallery hours are Thursday through Saturday, Noon to 7pm; Sunday Noon to 5pm. Funding for SAEDA is provided by the Mellon Foundation.

Film Screening: “The Other Song”
Thursday, September 29, 2022 at 7pm
Powell Family Cinema, The Jeanine Basinger Center for Film Studies, 301 Washington Terrace, Middletown, Connecticut
$12 general public; $10 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff/alumni, and non-Wesleyan students; $8 Wesleyan students and youth under age 18.

The Connecticut premiere screening of the documentary “The Other Song” will be followed by a Zoom conversation with Director Saba Dewan based in India, and moderated by Assistant Professor of Film Studies Anuja Jain.

Dance in the Round with Parijat Desai
Friday, September 30, 2022 at 12:15pm
Labyrinth Tent (east of World Music Hall, 40 Wyllys Avenue, Middletown, Connecticut)
FREE!

India-born, U.S.-raised choreographer/dancer Parijat Desai leads an inclusive workshop based on the “garba” circle dance from Gujarat, India. No experience necessary. Visual elements of Desai's performance project “How Do I Become WE” are featured in the SAEDA (South Asian Experimental Dance Artists) exhibition “Kinetic Visualities.”

B. Balasubrahmaniyan: Vocal Music of South India
Friday, September 30, 2022 at 7pm
Crowell Concert Hall, 50 Wyllys Avenue, Middletown, Connecticut 
$12 general public; $10 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff/alumni, and non-Wesleyan students; $8 Wesleyan students and youth under age 18.

Vocalist and Adjunct Associate Professor of Music B. Balasubrahmaniyan will be joined by Adjunct Associate Professor of Music David Nelson on mridangam.

Master Class with Sujata Goel: Bollywood Dance—A Globalized Body
Saturday, October 1, 2022 at 11am
Bessie Schönberg Dance Studio, 247 Pine Street, Middletown, Connecticut
FREE!

This Master Class, led by Indian-American choreographer and dancer Sujata Goel, is an introduction to Bollywood dance. Originating in the 1930s, Bollywood dance is a hybrid form that fuses eastern and western dance styles. In this class, participants will look at the history of Bollywood through its different styles spanning the 1940s to present day. The class is open to all, no previous experience or training is required. Sujata Goel is part of SAEDA (South Asian Experimental Dance Artists).

Ustad Shahid Parvez Khan
Saturday, October 1, 2022 at 7pm
Crowell Concert Hall, 50 Wyllys Avenue, Middletown, Connecticut 
$25 general public; $20 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff/alumni, and non-Wesleyan students; $8 Wesleyan students and youth under age 18.

“Ustad Shahid Parvez was at his melodious best…with harmonised phrases of intertwined melody and intricate rhythmic patterns.”
—The Hindu (India)

World-renowned sitar virtuoso Ustad Shahid Parvez Khan belongs to the seventh generation of an influential musical lineage. His playing focuses on exploring and expanding the possibilities of the melodic framework for improvisation in North Indian classical music, or raag, often to mind-blowing effect.

Saraswati Puja (Hindu Ceremony)
Sunday, October 2, 2022 at 11am
World Music Hall, 40 Wyllys Avenue, Middletown, Connecticut
FREE!

This religious service, led by Joseph Getter MA ’99, marks the most auspicious day of the year for beginning new endeavors. The audience may participate and bring instruments, manuscripts, and other items for blessing.

Dance Performance: Nrithya Pillai
Sunday, October 2, 2022 at 2pm
Crowell Concert Hall, 50 Wyllys Avenue, Middletown, Connecticut 
$15 general public; $12 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff/alumni, and non-Wesleyan students; $8 Wesleyan students and youth under age 18.

Nrithya Pillai is an acclaimed performer and activist from the hereditary community of South India’s former courtesan artists. She presents her dance in the context of critical perspectives on the form, and her New England debut performance will be accompanied by live musicians. A talk-back moderated by Professor and Chair of the Dance Department and Professor of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Hari Krishnan will follow the performance.

Navaratri Festival Subscription
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Navaratri Festival Packages include all four ticketed performances and are available for $50 for the general public; $40 for senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff/alumni, and non-Wesleyan students; and $20 for Wesleyan students and youth under age 18.

Offer ends Thursday, September 29, 2022 at 7pm.

Presented by the Center for the Arts, Music Department, Dance Department, and the Department of Film Studies, with leadership support from the Madhu Reddy Endowed Fund for Indian Music and Dance at Wesleyan University, and additional support from the Jon B. Higgins Memorial Fund.

Work in Progress with Toshi Reagon: “You're Having Too Much Fun So We're Gonna Have to Kill You”
Friday, October 7, 2022 at 8pm
CFA Theater, 271 Washington Terrace, Middletown, Connecticut 
FREE! Reservations required.

Get a special first glimpse into the creative process of singer, composer, musician, curator, activist, producer, and storyteller Toshi Reagon as she concludes her year-long artist residency at Wesleyan’s Center for the Arts developing a new production. She will be joined for this work-in-progress showing by vocalists Be Steadwell, Josette Newsam, and Carla Duren, keyboard player Kim Jordan, bassist Fred Cash Jr., drummer Matt Graff, and multi-instrumentalist Adam Widoff on guitar.

Reagon is creating the work “You're Having Too Much Fun So We're Gonna Have to Kill You” (formerly referred to as the “Disco Project.”) Through her original songs, her characters have an intergenerational conversation that surfaces how much our creativity fuels our living, even in the worst of circumstances. Reagon also explores the musical roots that led to disco, how the genre was later appropriated by pop music, and how its demise intersected with the AIDS crisis.

“Hard to resist the joy of a heartbeat pounding, hard to hide when somebody’s calling your name. Hard to take cover when you are bathed in beautiful light. Hard to be alone when everyone is moving together,” Reagon said. “Spend 24 hours a day with your soul activated and let the vibrations your body can make be your conductor and your collective salvation on Earth.”

“This is a rare opportunity for our campus and Middletown communities to engage with one of the most significant storytellers of our time,” said Fiona Coffey, Associate Director for Programming and Performing Arts, and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Theater at Wesleyan.

The work-in-progress showing will be followed by an outdoor disco party with artist manager, producer, remixer, music supervisor, performer, recording artist, writer, and DJ Bill Coleman. Collaborating disco choreographers and performers will include Madrone Cochran ’23, Mika Foguel ’25, Sabine Geary ’23, Amaal Ladha ’23, Charissa Lee ’23, Halle Newman ’23, and Rebeca Trevino ’24; with guidance from Assistant Professor of the Practice in Dance and Visiting Assistant Professor of African American Studies Joya Powell.

Reagon’s artist residency at Wesleyan University is supported by the Mellon Foundation, as well as the Association of Performing Arts Professionals as part of their new program APAP ArtsForward, which supports the performing arts field’s safe, vibrant, and equitable reopening and recovery.

Toshi Reagon will also be presenting a second work-in-progress showing of “You're Having Too Much Fun So We're Gonna Have to Kill You” at Symphony Space in New York City on Thursday, November 10, 2022.

“Queer Horror: Gravest Hits”
Saturday, October 15, 2022 at 7pm
Goldsmith Family Cinema, The Jeanine Basinger Center for Film Studies, 301 Washington Terrace, Middletown, Connecticut
$25 general public; $20 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff/alumni, and non-Wesleyan students; $8 Wesleyan students and youth under age 18

“Actively unites the horror genre with the LGBTQ community.”
—Willamette Week

“Queer Horror,” the only LGBTQ+ feature-length horror screening series in the United States, started as a short film festival in 2015 at the historic Hollywood Theatre in Portland, Oregon incorporating live drag and burlesque acts in a riotous multimedia program asking what it means to identify with the monster. The East Coast premiere of “Queer Horror: Gravest Hits” presents the silliest and most ghoulish international horror shorts by, starring, and about queers culled from "Queer Horror"'s short film nights. Featured titles include “Goat Witch” by James Sizemore, “In Satan’s Closet” by Stacie Ponder, “Don’t Wake the Baby” by Gula Delgatto, “Pizza Sluts” by Sign of the Beast Burlesque, and “The Susan and Denise Halloween Special” by Susan and Denise. Hosted by Portland’s premiere drag clown and “Queer Horror” programmer Carla Rossi, and opening with a live one-act drag play performed by Rossi and Pepper Pepper, plus additional performances in between the films, “Queer Horror: Gravest Hits” will leave the audience shook, slain, and screaming for more.

In the Galleries

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

Nick Raffel: “airfoil”
Now through Sunday, October 16, 2022
Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, North Gallery
FREE!

Nick Raffel’s (b. Portland, Maine, 1982) work in sculpture, installation, and digital modeling considers architectural and infrastructural systems which facilitate the flow of air, water, and gas. Recent works intervene in pre-existing mechanical systems, questioning their efficiency, sustainability, adaptability, and healthfulness. Raffel considers passive solutions to energy production and the ways designed objects, including his sculptures, are situated within and relative to natural forms of energy.

For the “airfoil” installation in the North Gallery of the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, Raffel researched the temperature and humidity distribution across the gallery, working to create a three-dimensional map of the space. His research also included the function and maintenance of the gallery’s current heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system and the architectural history of the building designed by Roche-Dinkaloo and opened in 1973. The aesthetic ideals of this historic design and the aesthetics of the utilities specifically express historic understandings of energy usage. Raffel’s installation will exist at the junction of these concerns and offer a speculative proposal for the future of this space in the 21st century.

Recent exhibitions include Pied-à-Terre, San Francisco; Regards, Chicago; Kunstverein Nürnberg, Germany; Colgate University, Hamilton, New York; and JOAN, Los Angeles.

UPCOMING RELATED EVENTS

Artist Talk by Nick Raffel
Wednesday, October 5, 2022 at 4:30pm
Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery
FREE!

Renee Gladman: “THE DREAMS OF SENTENCES”
Now through Sunday, October 16, 2022
Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, Main Gallery
FREE!

Renee Gladman (b. Atlanta, Georgia, 1971) is a writer and artist preoccupied with crossings, thresholds, and geographies as they play out at the intersections of poetry, prose, drawing, and architecture. Her visual work regards the drawing space as a kind of laboratory for thinking about writing: how writing emerges from the body, how narrative moves and takes shape below the semantic level. She is the author of three collections of drawing-writing—“Prose Architectures” (2017), “One Long Black Sentence” (2020), and “Plans for Sentences” (2022)—as well as many works of fiction, essay, and poetry, including Calamities and the Ravicka series.

This exhibition is the largest solo presentation of Gladman’s drawings to date bringing together many larger-scale works which she has developed alongside recent publications.

Gladman has been awarded fellowships, artist grants, and residencies from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Lannan Foundation, and the Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin), and is a 2021 Windham-Campbell Prize winner in fiction.

Co-sponsored by Writing at Wesleyan.

“fron/terra incognita + Hostile Terrain (HT94)”
Tuesday, November 1 through Sunday, December 11, 2022
Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, Main Gallery
FREE!

“fron/terra incognita + Hostile Terrain (HT94)” is an exhibition comprising a series of lectures, performances, readings, and art installations on the broad theme of borders, migration, displacement, and violence. Programming will provoke reflections on the territorial dimensions of borders and their consequential effects.

The exhibition will be anchored by the “Hostile Terrain (HT94)” installation in the gallery. “HT94” has been installed at many institutions both nationally and globally in 2021 and throughout 2022. The work of forensic anthropologist and MacArthur Fellow Jason de León (University of California, Los Angeles), “HT94” is a visceral and visual documentation of migrant deaths along the United States / Mexico border. ​The exhibition is composed of over 3,200 handwritten toe tags that represent migrants who have died trying to cross the Sonoran Desert of Arizona between the mid-1990s and 2019. The installation will be created by Wesleyan student volunteers, who record identifying details of each person and then pin the toe tags to a map of the border region.

“HT94” will be installed in the gallery along with other artworks in dialogue with de León's work. Ranging from video and photography to sound installation and film, artwork includes a photo series about potential migrants departing from markets for enslaved persons in Cameroon by POLOFREE, and video work by Yto Barrada, Denise Ferreira de Silva and Arjuna Neuman, Randa Maroufi, and Ghita Skali. Alongside the installations, the exhibition will include a series of invited special guest experts who will speak on the theme of border/lands and displacement. A non-lending reading room with related texts on the core concepts of the exhibition will also be included in the gallery installation. Wesleyan University is a hosting partner of “HT94.”

The exhibition and related programming is provided by Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life, the College of the Environment, the Anthropology Department, the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, African Studies, and CT Humanities.

UPCOMING RELATED EVENTS

Talk by Miriam Ticktin
Thursday, October 13, 2022 at 5pm
The Russell House, 350 High Street, Middletown, Connecticut
FREE!

Miriam Ticktin is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Eugene Lang College and co-director of the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility at The New School for Social Research in New York whose research has focused in the broadest sense on what it means to make political claims in the name of a universal humanity.

Talk by Author Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
Thursday, October 27, 2022 at 4:30pm
Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, Room 202, 283 Washington Terrace, Middletown, Connecticut
FREE!

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s debut book was “The Undocumented Americans.” She has written about immigration, music, beauty, and mental illness for The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New Republic, This American Life, Glamour, Elle, and Vogue, among others. The graduate of Harvard University and doctoral candidate in the American Studies program at Yale currently lives in New Haven. This talk is co-sponsored by Wesleyan’s Department of Romance Languages and Literatures.

Talk by Saida Hodžić
Wednesday, November 2, 2022 at 4:30pm
Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, Room 202, 283 Washington Terrace, Middletown, Connecticut
FREE!

Saida Hodžić is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Cornell University. She studies women’s rights activism, NGO advocacy, humanitarianism, and civic environmental activism. Her first book was “The Twilight of Cutting: African Activism and Life after NGOs” (University of California Press, 2017). She is currently working on two book manuscripts, “Affective Encounters: Humanitarian Afterlives of War and Violence” and “For Whom is Africa Rising? Unsettling Transnational Feminism in the 21st Century.”

Talk by Jason De León, Undocumented Migration Project and creator of Hostile Terrain 94—“The Land of Open Graves: Raising Awareness about Migrant Life and Death along the US/Mexico Border”
Wednesday, November 9, 2022 at 4:30pm
Zoom
FREE! Reservations required.

Jason De León is Executive Director of the Undocumented Migration Project and the Colibri Center for Human Rights. He is Professor of Anthropology and Chicana, Chicano, and Central American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles and Head Curator of the ongoing global exhibition “Hostile Terrain 94.” He is the author of the award-winning book “The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail” and a 2017 MacArthur Fellow.

In this talk, Jason De León will discuss the politics of migrant death in Arizona, describe the exhibition that seeks to raise awareness about this issue, and highlight the new collaboration between the Undocumented Migration Project and the Colibri Center for Human Rights.

College of East Asian Studies Gallery at Mansfield Freeman Center
343 Washington Terrace, Middletown, Connecticut
Benjamin Chaffee, Associate Director of Visual Arts
Tuesday-Friday, Noon-4pm
www.wesleyan.edu/ceas/exhibitions

Karen Xu: "Massive Power Ball"
Now through Friday, December 9, 2022
The gallery will also be open on Saturday, November 5, 2022 from Noon to 4pm for Wesleyan’s Homecoming and Family Weekend.
FREE!

The recent work by Karen Xu ’22 is rooted in a close relationship to basketball. Growing up in China, Xu regularly played the game and watched broadcasts of the NBA. The past few years living in the U.S. have enabled Xu to gain a more complex understanding of her favorite pastime. In “Massive Power Ball,” Xu has created a character who may simultaneously be a surrogate for the artist, a basketball star, or the crowd of fans. Through animation and printmaking, Xu places that character in scenes that incorporate both communist propaganda and screenshots of basketball games. She inquires how basketball can be an arena for the clash and meditation of individual desire and collective force, extending the thrill of the game into her consideration of the dynamics of the China-U.S. relationship and Chinese Communist Party ideals. Xu’s playful criticality manifests in many different media including printmaking, collage, and video, embodying her basketball world of lighthearted fantasy within an uncompromising reality. This presentation marks the artist’s first institutional solo exhibition.

The College of East Asian Studies Gallery at Mansfield Freeman Center is curated by Associate Director of Visual Arts Benjamin Chaffee and Exhibitions Manager Rosemary Lennox.

UPCOMING RELATED EVENTS

Talk by Seth Berkman
Thursday, November 3, 2022 at 4:30pm
College of East Asian Studies Seminar Room at Mansfield Freeman Center
FREE!

Seth Berkman is a journalist based in New York. Since 2012, he has been a regular contributor to The New York Times Sports section, while also occasionally covering business and investigative news. His book “A Team of Their Own: How an International Sisterhood Made Olympic History” was published in 2019. The book tells the story of the Unified Korean women's hockey team from the 2018 PyeongChang Games.

COVID-19 Safety Guidelines
The general public is welcome to attend events at the Center for the Arts and to view exhibitions in both the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery and the College of East Asian Studies Gallery at Mansfield Freeman Center. All patrons must adhere to and follow the University COVID-19 safety guidelines. Wesleyan requires all visitors to be fully vaccinated including booster shots. All visitors will need to provide proof of having been fully vaccinated. All patrons are required to wears masks while visiting indoor Center for the Arts exhibitions and during the entirety of any performance. By purchasing a ticket or making a reservation, patrons confirm that they are fully vaccinated for COVID-19 and will be able to provide proof of vaccination at the event. Due to current CDC age limits on vaccinations, individuals under the age of six months will not be permitted at indoor events or in the galleries.