Music/Performativity/Politics: Writing at the Intersections

with recent alumni Katherine Steele Brokaw and Jennifer Solheim

Tuesday, March 26, 5:00 pm
3222 Angell Hall


"Tudor Musical Theater: Nicholas Udall's Respublica"
Katherine Steele Brokaw
Assistant Professor  - School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts
University of California-Merced

In 1553, the Catholic Queen Mary had just taken the throne in England, and no one know to what extent she would restore the old musical church rites that had been expunged under her Protestant brother (King Edward VI). This same year, Nicholas Udall's political morality play Respublica was performed at court by a group of choirboys. While most critics have seen this play as deliberately avoiding religious controversy, I argue that the play's music obliquely addresses matters of church politics and doctrine. Udall's strategy is one of dissimulation: characters, actors, and playwright are all cloaked in various disguises, making the play's religious messages multivocal and thus able to appeal variously to audience members of mixed religious sympathies. The play thus uses the tools of music and theater to urge the Queen towards compromise on such ecclesiastical matters. While she ultimately ignored this suggestion (thus earning her nickname "Bloody Mary" for her prosecution of Protestants) Respublica reveals the extent to which the first year of her reign offered the possibility of social concord, thereby complicating received notions of this period.

“Beirut Calling: Lebanese Avant Jazz in Global and French Mediterranean Contexts”
Jennifer Solheim
Visiting Scholar, Department of French and Francophone Studies
University of Illinois—Chicago

On the night of July 15-16, 2006, avant jazz trumpeter Mazen Kerbaj set up his recording equipment on the balcony of his apartment in Ras Beirut, Lebanon, and began to record an improvised piece, using the sights and sounds of Israeli bombs as accompaniment. The resulting composition, which can be found on Kerbaj’s blog (kerblog.com), is a recording called “Starry Night.”

In this presentation, I analyze “Starry Night” through two contexts. First, I read the piece itself as an urgent call to the global community to take action against the Israeli bombings of Lebanon in the summer of 2006. Second, I look at the translation of Kerbaj’s blog into French for a print edition published by the Paris-based graphic novel publishers L’Association in 2007. With this second reading, I address the ways that “Starry Night” serves to oppose social assumptions of Arab masculinity as inherently violent.

Sponsored by the Drama Interest Group
a Rackham Interdisciplinary Workshop
based in the Department of English Language and Literature
For information contact EJ Westlake - jewestla@umich.edu

The Drama Interest Group presents a workshop with U of M alumni

Katherine Steele Brokaw
U of California-Merced
and 
Jennifer Solheim
U of Illinois-Chicago

Everyone at every stage of Dissertation writing (and even if you aren't anywhere near it yet) is welcome

Monday, March 25, 2013
1:30 pm
3222 Angell Hall

Please RSVP to EJ Westlake - jewestla@umich.edu
Sponsored by the Drama Interest Group
a Rackham Interdisciplinary Workshop
based in the Department of English Language and Literature

DIG Workshops with Uruguayan dancer Carolina Guerra!

The Drama Interest Group sponsored two afternoon workshops and a morning masterclass with Carolina Guerra. Here are some photos from the sessions:

Get Your Dissertation On!

Every year, the Drama Interest Group hosts dissertation chapter writing workshops for graduate students. These involve short sessions where graduate students and faculty gather to discuss previously distributed chapters in an informal setting.

Several graduate students have participated and have found the feedback helpful.

We will be continuing the practice this year and are seeking interested participants. The workshops can happen anywhere between January and May and should involve one chapter for which you would like feedback. Please contact the DIG graduate coordinator, Lucía Naser  lunaser@umich.edu for more information.

The Drama Interest Group is a Rackham Interdisciplinary Workshop.

Conversation with Grupo Krapp

Conversation with Grupo Krapp (Dance company from Argentina) at residency at University of Michigan
Oct 12th, 12 - 1.30 pm
MLB - Room 2112

* The conversation will focus on translation procedures in creative processes, interdisciplinary work, arts and its (in)disciplinary boundaries and other topics which may arise along the dialogue. You are ALL very welcomed!

Sponsored by Drama Interest Group and moderated by Lucía Naser
http://dramainterestgroup.blogspot.com/
Refreshments will be served


about Grupo Krapp <

Grupo Krapp was created in 1998 by Luciana Acuña, Luis Biasotto, and Gabriela Caretti, three young choreographers who received their training at the prestigious Contemporary Dance Workshop of the National University of Córdoba. They also pursued studies in the Contemporary Dance Workshop of the San Martín Theater in Córdoba and at the Theater School of the National University of Córdoba. In 1999, Argentina¹s Antorchas Foundation and National Arts Fund awarded individual dance and theater training grants to Acuña, Biasotto, and Caretti. The ensemble¹s five members include critically acclaimed Argentinean actors and musicians Gabriel Almendros, Edgardo Castro, and Fernando Tur.

Grupo Krapp will be in residence at University of Michigan from October 10-19 for classes in Dance, Theatre, Romance Languages, and Latin American Cultural Studies culminating in a performance of their recent work Lado B at the Arthur Miller Theater on Friday Oct 19, 8pm. The Institute of the Humanities will sponsor a panel on Wednesday Oct. 17, 6:30-8pm. Lado B brings original video, movement, language, music and set design together in an explosion of multi-media imagery, cross cultural concepts and performance energy. Buenos Aires based and award winning video and film artist, Alejo Moguillansky created the video concepts and material. He was the 2009 Jury Prize winner in the Buenos Aires Festival Internacional del Cine Independiente (Best Argentine Film).

The foundation of their work draws on political themes that transcend national boundaries. Their performances illuminate injustices and inequities with a deft theatrical touch using a finely crafted blend of music, theater and dance. They are known for their straightforward delivery of controversial themes, leavened by outrageous humor and physical daring. Grupo Krapp investigates and translates a range of themes and ideas through music, video, staging, movement, text and spectacle in an unforgettable way. Since the premiere of their widely acclaimed work Mendiolaza at The American Dance Festival at Duke University in summer 2005, they have returned to the U.S for successful engagement presented by Cal Performances at UC Berkeley and La Guardia Community College /CUNY. Gia Kourlos, writing in the New York Times describes Grupo Krapp as using rich imagery and heightened abstraction to convey feelings of isolation, otherness, profound loneliness, marginalization, and desperation in a surreal environment. Underscoring a tense interplay of sensations, images and actions which ultimately, attest to the fragile condition of the human soul.² These are themes that resonate throughout our lives and our art making more than ever.² New York Times, August 4, 2006

The company name Krapp derives from Samuel Beckett¹s play, Krapp¹s Last Tape, popularthroughout Latin America. Grupo Krapp often constructs their work around absurdist themes, but depicts them in a more hopeful, humane lens than many of Beckett¹s positions.

http://vimeo.com/28305901
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWNuGVGyIFo
http://www.teatroargentino.gba.gov.ar/2011/tacec2011/grupokrapp.html

* The company will offer a community master class in improvisation and composition through movement and text on Sat. Oct 13, 11-1-- Betty Pease Studio A, Dance bldg. 1310 North University Ct. Ann Arbor, 48109.

DIG´s (3)SOLO Performance Night

DIG´s (3)SOLO Performance Night
31th March. 7pm. Walgreen Drama Center. Studio 2.
http://uuis.umich.edu/cic/buildingproject/index.cfm?buildingid=526 <http://uuis.umich.edu/cic/buildingproject/index.cfm?buildingid=526>
Free Entrance and Exit

REMNANT HIT/ FIX (2012)
Choreography and performance: Amy Chavasse
Costume and set: Amy Chavasse
Text: Amy Chavasse, and one verse from Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs-- The One You Really Love
Music: Bartholomaus Traubek- Years; Jon Brion- DMI Thing from Synecdoche New York; Fanfare Savalle and Vladimire Mayakovsky- Rumba La George/ I Know the Power of Words; Petty Booka- We’ll Sing in the Sunshine


DISCONTINUOS ANIMALITY (2012)

ntinuous animality disco
tinuous animality discon
inuous animality discont
nuous animality disconti
uous animality discontin
this performance is a bodily exploration of difference.
departing from experience and from philosophy contamination i delve into the possibility of dissolving some oppositions that neutralizes difference, imprisoning within dichotomist categories such as man - animal / male - female / death - living / presence - absence / body - mind - etc. the performance will present open ongoing questions related to these through choreographic inquiry

Creation and performance: Lucía Naser
Artistic Collaboration: Mary Beth Carolan
Text: Poem “Dead Body” by Harold Pinter, 2005.
Voice: Gabriel Horowitz


STONE SOUP

Stone Soup is an interactive performance piece. The audience will participate as co-creators and collaborators. The final outcome will be a synthesis of the poetry and emotions that are all tossed in the pot. Through movement and words, stillness and silence we will create our own aroma, taste our own flavor and perhaps scald our very throats that sing the world into being.

Performance by David Brown


ARTISTS BIOS

Amy Chavasse, choreographer, performer, educator, improviser, storyteller and Artistic Director of ChavasseDance&Performance joined the faculty at University of Michigan in 2006 after six years as Artist in Residence at Middlebury College. She has been a guest artist/ faculty member at numerous institutions, including Arizona State, Virginia Commonwealth, UNC-Greensboro, NC School of the Arts, George Washington, Bennington College, University of Calgary and Cornish College of the Arts. As a choreographer and performer, she has collaborated and worked with many notable artists, including Peter Schmitz, Lisa Gonzales, Grupo Krapp, Sue Rees, Rodger Belman, Xan Burley, Alex Springer, Caroline Chavasse and Paul Matteson. As Artistic Director of ChavasseDance&Performance, her work has been presented throughout the U.S. NYC, (Dance New Amsterdam, Dixon Place, 100 Grand, Judson Church, WaxWorks, Triskelion, BAAD Ass! Women’s Fesitval); Jacob’s Pillow Inside/Out (2010); the American Dance Festival- Acts to Follow and Fast Forward. In fall of 2006, she premiered All I Ask of My Enemies at Dance New Amsterdam in NYC, and then first brought ChavasseDance&Performance in I Sleep with Ann Coulter and Other Impossibly True Stories to the Duderstadt Video and Performance Studio in 2007. Internationally, she has taught and her work has been produced in Trinidad, Cienfuegos and Havana- Cuba, Kaunus and Vilnius, Lithuania, Vienna, Austria, Cali, Colombia and Buenos Aires. She has been on the faculty at Florence Summer Dance since 2006 and taught at ProDanza Italia from 2006-2010. In June 2010 she taught and performed with ResExtensa in Bari, Italy. She will return to teach at Florence Summer Dance for a 6th summer, and will be on the faculty of the Beijing Dance Festival in summer 2012. ChavasseDance&Performance premiered Hunger for the Longing (a biased history of seduction) during a residency in Bari, Italy in July 2011, with performances at Teatro Saschall in Florence and Teatro Traetta in Bitonto. She danced in the companies of Laura Dean Dancers and Musicians, Bill Young and Dancers and in many independent projects in NYC. She received her BFA from the University of NC School of the Arts and her MFA from the University of Michigan.

Lucía Naser is researcher and artist of contemporary dance and performance. Sociologist by the UDELAR, MA in Performing Arts in PPGAC -UFBA. Graduate student in Romance Languages and Literatures (UM). My research line involves dance from a political perspective; the intersemiotic relations between dance and other languages and knowledge, and an exploration of the intersections between the post-structuralist and Derrida's philosophy with the cognitive and discursive practices of the dancing body.

David Brown is a performance artist. His work is always infused with the immediacy of improvisation. He may use elements of dance, poetry, music, painting, or meditation in achieving the goals of any particular performance. He has a great interest in the interactive nature of audience and performer. He holds a BA from Oberlin College in Expanding Consciousness Through Creativity.


The Drama Interest Group is a Rackham Interdisciplinary Workshop.
http://dramainterestgroup.blogspot.com/ <http://dramainterestgroup.blogspot.com/>

contact: lunaser@gmail.com <http://gmail.com/>

DIG Workshops for Winter 2012

DIG Dissertation/Writing Workshops

Every year, the Drama Interest Group hosts dissertation chapter writing workshops for graduate students. These involve short sessions where graduate students and faculty gather to discuss previously distributed chapters in an informal setting. Several graduate students have participated and have found the feedback helpful.

We will be continuing the practice this year and invite you all to participate:

February 7th, 4.30. Conference Room, 4420 MLB (near the elevators)

A Drama of the Southwest, an unpublished play by Harlem Renaissance luminary Jean Toomer, challenges the prevailing assumption that Toomer's work after Cane is derivative, didactic and disappointing. Come out and see a late Toomer whose work is still insightful, intriguing and beautiful!

The dissertation chapter under discussion entitles “Green World or None: Jean Toomer's Pastoral Vision for a Nuclear Age”.

Carolyn Dekker is a fifth-year in English Language and Literature at work on a dissertation called Nuclear Wishes. The piece we're workshopping is part of the larger chapter, "Green World or None: Jean Toomer's Pastoral Vision for a Nuclear Age."

February 15, 4.30pm. RLL Commons. 4th floor, MLB.

Sara Jackson will workshop sections from her dissertation chapter: "Feminist femmes fatales. Performing Judith and Salome." Responding to recent scholarship that has primarily assigned women a passive role in the production history of the femme fatale, this chapter investigates how fin-de-siècle actresses staged active interventions in the male fantasy, which appeared not only in aesthetic works, but also in scientific discourse. Critically reading stage performances of the iconic femmes fatales Judith and Salome alongside constructions of the deadly seductress in scientific texts, the chapter examines the ways in which actresses at the turn of the century enacted feminist challenges from within this culturally pervasive, and fundamentally misogynist male fantasy.

Sara Jackson is a doctoral candidate in German Studies. Her dissertation, Temptresses and Murderesses: Text, Body and Performance [working title], examines stage performances of deadly women in early 20th-century Germany, and interrogates the ways in which these performances contributed to a larger discourse complex surrounding the construction of normal and deviant femininity and female sexuality in the period. The dissertation contends that actresses were active participants in a matrix comprising artistic production, emerging scientific fields (criminology, sexology, psychology), and turn-of-the-century feminisms, which shared convergent and competing interests in the pervading socio-cultural concern with the so-called Frauenfrage [Woman Question]

Please confirm your participation to lunaser@gmail.com. so we send you the chapter under discussion for your previous reading. Please also contact us for any question or suggestion.