Arts at Michigan
Virtual Passport
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Wang Zheng: Revealing Erasures — Visual Representation of Women of China: 1949–2009
Tuesday, November 17, 2009 — 12pm–1pm
1636 School of Social Work Building, 1080 South University
Examining the covers of the official magazine Women of China over the span of 60 years, this presentation traces diverse interplays and contentions between the male–dominated central power, state feminists, and women of diverse social locations in the socialist period, and transformations of their relations in the market economy. The research is part of a large project on a history of the PRC from gender perspective. WANG Zheng is associate professor of Women’s Studies and History and associate research scientist of the Institute for Research on Women and Gender. A long–term academic activist promoting gender studies in China, she is the director of the UM-China Gender Studies Project, and founder and co–director of the UM–Fudan Joint Institute for Gender Studies at Fudan University, Shanghai. Her English publications concern changing gender discourses and relations in China’s socioeconomic, political and cultural transformations of the past century, and feminism in China, both in terms of its historical development and its contemporary activism in the context of globalization. She is the author of Women in the Chinese Enlightenment: Oral and Textual Histories (UC Press, 1999). Her current project is a gender history of the People’s Republic of China, exploring the relationship between gender and the socialist state formation, and gender and capitalist transformation. She has edited volumes (both in English and Chinese) on a variety of topics: the constructions of feminist subjectivity in socialist China, the politics and effects of translating feminisms in China throughout the twentieth century, and significance of introducing “gender” into the study of Chinese history as well as into the discursive contentions in contemporary China.
ArtsBreak
Tuesday, November 17, 2009 — 7pm–11pm
Ground Floor, Michigan Union
Arts Break is FREE — supplies provided — arts and crafts every Tuesday night at the MUG (Michigan Union Ground floor). Some crafts we will do or have done are painting pumpkins; decorating small canvas tote bags for your cell phone, keys, money, M-card, and more; flip flops quarter banks, wire photo holders, polar fleece scarves; and more!
Phoebe Gloeckner: Through a Glass Darkly
Thursday, November 19, 2009 — 5:10pm
Michigan Theater
Writer and visual artist Phoebe Gloeckner is the author of A Child’s Life and Other Stories (1998) and The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2002), called “one of the most brutally honest, shocking, tender and beautiful portrayals of growing up female in America.” A Guggenheim Fellowship recipient, Gloeckner is currently working on a novel based on the lives of several families in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Gloeckner is an assistant professor at the University of Michigan.
BFA Dance Performance: happenchance on a blank body
Thursday, November 19, 2009 — 8:00pm
Betty Pease Studio Theatre, University of Michigan Dance Building, 1310 N University Court
An evening–length performance featuring the works of four senior dance majors, Betsy Busald, Catherine Coury, Elizabeth Dugas & Nadia Tykulsker with original music, poetry and text. General Admission $5, tickets on sale at the door at 7pm.
ArtsBreak
Tuesday, November 24, 2009 — 7pm–11pm
Ground Floor, Michigan Union
Arts Break is FREE — supplies provided — arts and crafts every Tuesday night at the MUG (Michigan Union Ground floor). Some crafts we will do or have done are painting pumpkins; decorating small canvas tote bags for your cell phone, keys, money, M-card, and more; flip flops quarter banks, wire photo holders, polar fleece scarves; and more!
Past Events
ArtsBreak
Tuesday, November 03, 2009 — 7pm–11pm
Ground Floor, Michigan Union
Arts Break is FREE — supplies provided — arts and crafts every Tuesday night at the MUG (Michigan Union Ground floor). Some crafts we will do or have done are painting pumpkins; decorating small canvas tote bags for your cell phone, keys, money, M-card, and more; flip flops quarter banks, wire photo holders, polar fleece scarves; and more!
Contemporary Art in China: Where has it come from and where is it heading?
Wednesday, November 4, 2009 — 6:30pm
University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA)
Many assume that Chinese contemporary art emerged five years ago when the market was established through record–breaking auctions but this belies a much longer history. Melissa Chiu’s lecture is designed to shed light on the early experimental developments in the Chinese art world through an analysis of the past three decades with specific attention on how these artists responded to local conditions while also keenly aware of their international audiences.
Jamy Ian Swiss: Sleight of Hand — How Bodies Fool Minds
Thursday, November 5, 2009 — 5:10pm
Michigan Theater
“Jamy Ian Swiss is like seeing Yo–Yo Ma practicing scales at Carnegie Hall.” Swiss explodes some of the commonplace myths about illusion–making, and provides a view of the real work of the magician. He examines the role of body language in deception, considers why psychology is more important than speed and discusses and demonstrates magic that is done with the human body itself, both as a property of performance, and as a tool of the secret workings of magic.
Dead Man’s Cell Phone, Directed by Roman Micevic
Thursday, November 5, 2009 — 7pm
Walgreen Drama Center
An incessantly ringing cell phone in a quiet café. A stranger at the next table who has had enough. And a dead man — with a lot of loose ends. So begins Dead Man’s Cell Phone, a wildly imaginative new comedy by MacArthur “Genius” Grant recipient and Pulitzer Prize finalist, Sarah Ruhl, author of The Clean House and Eurydice. A work about how we memorialize the dead–and how that remembering changes us — it is the odyssey of a woman forced to confront her own assumptions about morality, redemption, and the need to connect in a technologically obsessed world. Runs November 5–7.
Patricia Hampl Nonfiction Reading
Thursday, November 5, 2009 &mdash 5:15pm
Helmut Stern Auditorium, University of Michigan Museum of Art
Patricia Hampl’s most recent book is The Florist’s Daughter, winner of numerous “best” and “year end” awards, including the New York Times “100 Notable Books of the Year” and the 2008 Minnesota Book Award for Memoir and Creative Nonfiction. Blue Arabesque: A Search for the Sublime, published in 2006 and now in paperback, was also one of the Times Notable Books; a portion was chosen for The Best Spiritual Writing 2005. Patricia Hampl first won recognition for A Romantic Education, her memoir about her Czech heritage, awarded a Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship. This book and subsequent works have established her as an influential figure in the rise of autobiographical writing in the past 25 years. She is the author as well of two collections of poetry, Woman before an Aquarium, and Resort and Other Poems. And she has published Spillville, a meditation on Antonin Dvorak's 1893 summer in Iowa, with engravings by Steven Sorman.
ZELL VISITING WRITERS SERIES
These events are primarily sponsored by the Department of English and the Office of the Provost of the University of Michigan. All events are free and open to the public. The Helmut Stern Auditorium is located on the ground floor of the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) at 525 South State Street. Addresses for other venues will be listed below those particular events.
Keith Terry and Slammin All–Body Band Concert
Friday, November 6, 2009 — 7:00pm
Hill Auditorium
A percussionist/rhythm dancer whose work encompasses music, dance, theater, and performance art, Keith Terry brings together an artistic vision that defies easy categorization. As a trained percussionist and self–defined “body musician,” Terry explores, blends, and bends traditional and contemporary rhythmic, percussive, and movement possibilities. This special performance for families will leave every member of the audience creatively exploring new sounds that they can generate with the oldest instrument in the world — the human body. Family concert 7:00–8:00 pm, $10.00 and under!
Allan Garganus Fiction Reading
Monday, November 9, 2009 — 5pm
Helmut Stern Auditorium, University of Michigan Museum of Art
Allan Gurganus, a North Carolina native, is the author of Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy) White People (Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Pen–Faulkner Finalist), Plays Well with Others and The Practical Heart: Four Novellas (Lambda Literary Award). His stories have won the National Magazine Prize and the O’Henry Award. They are seen in “Best American Stories” and “The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction.” His political editorials frequently appear in “The New York Times.” His leftward politics have made him a commentator on the “Lehrer News Hour” and NPR’s “All Things Considered.“ Gurganus recently appeared in the PBS “American Masters” series as a scholar–reader for “Walt Whitman, An American.” Gurganus has taught literature and fiction writing at Duke, The Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Stanford and Sarah Lawrence. John Cheever wrote, “I consider Allan Gurganus the most technically gifted and morally responsive writer of his generation.”
ZELL VISITING WRITERS SERIES
These events are primarily sponsored by the Department of English and the Office of the Provost of the University of Michigan. All events are free and open to the public. The Helmut Stern Auditorium is located on the ground floor of the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) at 525 South State Street. Addresses for other venues will be listed below those particular events.
Lucille Chia: A Sea Change in Chinese Printing and Book Culture: Chinese Books and Printing in Early Spanish Philippines
Tuesday, November 10, 2009 — 12pm–1pm
1636 School of Social Work Bulding, 1080 South University
This talk concerns the diffusion of printing in Chinese across the sea in Southeast Asia in the early modern period. Given the vital involvement of the Chinese settlers and sojourners in the commerce and service industries of the Spanish Philippines, it is no surprise that some of them were instrumental in developing the earliest printing and publishing enterprises of the colony in the late sixteenth century. They produced books in Chinese, Japanese, Tagalog, Spanish, and Latin, including religious works published under the auspices of Catholic missionary institutions. Furthermore, books were printed in China and Japan, sometimes specifically for different groups in the Philippines. In particular, the export of popular works published in Fujian and other parts of southern China represents a significant extension of the dissemination of Chinese books that followed the first large–scale overseas Chinese diaspora. By looking at Chinese works printed in or for readers in the Spanish Philippines, we can begin to understand how Chinese book culture adapted to and developed in the presence of other very different non–Chinese cultures and religions. Lucille Chia is Associate Professor of History at the University of California at Riverside. Her research interests include book culture and printing in imperial China, and the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia in the early modern period and its impact on China.
ArtsBreak
Tuesday, November 10, 2009 — 7pm–11pm
Ground Floor, Michigan Union
Arts Break is FREE — supplies provided — arts and crafts every Tuesday night at the MUG (Michigan Union Ground floor). Some crafts we will do or have done are painting pumpkins; decorating small canvas tote bags for your cell phone, keys, money, M-card, and more; flip flops quarter banks, wire photo holders, polar fleece scarves; and more!
Robert & Shana Parke Harrison: Intent
Thursday, November 12, 2009 — 5:10pm
Michigan Theater
Photographers Robert and Shana Parke Harrison continue to pursue, with absorbing psychological and sensory effect, the ever–bleakening relationship linking humans, technology, and nature. At once formally arresting and immeasurably loaded with sensations — the work has a powerful impact both visually and viscerally. The Parke Harrison’s Stamps lecture is complemented by an exhibition of their work in the School of Art & Design’s Slusser Gallery October 16–November 13.
The Marriage of Figaro (Le Nozze di Figaro)
Thursday–Sunday, November 12–15, 2009
Power Center
Called “the world’s most perfect opera,” The Marriage of Figaro has delighted audiences since its premiere in 1786. The first collaboration between Mozart and librettist da Ponte, Figaro is one the successful sequel to The Barber of Seville. Da Ponte’s witty libretto melds humor with humanity and is paired with Mozart’s groundbreaking score in a true marriage of music and drama. From the instantly recognizable overture to the rousing ensemble finale, the opera is filled with one brilliant melody after another. A celebrated operatic tour de force, The Marriage of Figaro sparkles with genius.
The Ark at UMMA: Student Songwriter Showcase
Friday, November 13, 2009 — 5:10pm
Sculpture Plaza, UMMA
The first of two performance showcases featuring the best student singer–songwriters competing for an opportunity for promotion through the Ark, one of the nation’s premier music venues.
Yasmin Levy
Saturday, November 14, 2009 — 8pm
Hill Auditorium
“Here surely is the next world music superstar.” (The Guardian) “Aside from her stunning looks, Levy’s biggest asset is her voice, which is versatile, sensuous, and brimming with emotion.” (The Independent) Yasmin Levy was born in Jerusalem in 1975 and was introduced to Ladino singing and culture from a very young age. Her father, who passed away when she was only a year old, was the leading figure in the world of research into and preservation of the Judeo–Spanish culture, dating back to the 15th century in Spain. Today, it remains one of the most moving and romantic traditions of all time. In her deep, spiritual, and moving style of singing, Yasmin preserves and revives the beautiful songs from the Ladino/Judeo–Spanish heritage, mixing it with Andalucian Flamenco. This US debut tour follows her highly acclaimed appearances at the World Music Expo (WOMEX) and at World of Music, Arts, and Dance (WOMAD) festivals throughout the world. “[Yasmin Levy’s CD] Mano Suave blends her mixture of flamenco, Middle Eastern, Mediterranean, and Sephardic Jewish Ladino traditions to somewhere near perfection. If you’re looking to plunge into a deep pool of exquisite yearning and heartbreak, then just dust off your trunks and dive right in.” (fRootsmag.com)
