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July 2009: Where the Arts Go in Summer

The lights are dimmed for summer in Emory’s performance spaces, but the arts faculty is hard at work on local and international creative projects. Here are some examples of where the arts go in summer:

THEATER

Leslie Taylor , Executive Director, Center for Creativity & Arts, and Chair, Theater Studies, was named Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Creative Loafing “2008 Best of Atlanta” for set design. In addition to recently re-designing Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris for the Alliance Theater, Taylor also designed Fugard’s Blood Knot starring Kenny Leon and Tom Key now playing at Theatrical Outfit from July 10 – August 2, 2009. For tickets and information click here.

Pat Miller, Senior Lecturer, is teaching Modern British Theater to a group of Emory summer study abroad students living in University College at Oxford University from July 6 – August 15. The group travels to see many productions both in Oxford and in London. Highlights of these excursions include taking the group to Stratford on Avon to see the Royal Shakespeare Company perform As You Like It, The Globe to see Troilus and Cressida, and to the National Theatre to see Ted Hughes’ version of Racine’s Phedre with Helen Mirren in the title role. The group will also visit Blenheim palace to see the landscape design by Capability Brown as the restoration of such a park is the setting for Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, which the group will read during the course. Miller will also be doing some independent travel in England to research the work of Sir Philip Ben Greet, an actor manager from England who toured the United States extensively from the early 1900s – 1930s.

Timothy McDonough, Associate Professor, is juggling three different roles with the acting company of Georgia Shakespeare this summer. He will play Egeus and Snout in Shakespeare’s famous romantic comedy AMidsummer Night's Dream (closing July 31), Big Daddy in Tennessee Williams’ classic Southern drama Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (closing August 1), and Marcus Andronicus in Shakespeare’s chilling Titus Andronicus (closing August 2). For tickets and information click here.

MUSIC

Gary Motley, Director of Jazz Studies, will perform with his trio in Callanwolde’s Jazz on the Lawn Series on Friday, July 31 at 7:30 p.m. Audiences can enjoy the relaxing natural beauty of Callanwolde’s lush grounds as Motley, piano, with Paul Keller, acoustic bass, and Pete Siers, drums, perform under the stars. Tickets are sold at the door: $15 General; $12 Students/Seniors/Members. For more information call 404-872-5338.

William Ransom, Mary Emerson Professor of Piano, doubles as Artistic Director of the Highlands-Cashiers Chamber Music Festival (July 5 – Aug. 9, 2009). For its 28 th season the festival features the Eroica Trio, Biava Quartet and Vega String Quartet. Ransom says, “I look forward every summer to the HCCMF, and not just for the music - the mountains are incredibly beautiful, there are great restaurants, film series, galleries, golf...paradise! I encourage everyone to come up to the area for a weekend or the whole summer!"

Richard Prior, Director, Orchestral Studies, premiered an original composition, Fanfare, and a new chamber ensemble transcription of Kabalevsky's The Comediennes in June at the Amelia Chamber Music Festival. As Music Director and Conductor of the Rome Symphony Orchestra (GA), Prior led the orchestra in a concert featuring Emory Artist Affiliate and world-renowned euphonium soloist, Adam Frey. He travelled to Odessa, Ukraine to conduct the Odessa Philharmonic Orchestra in recording several works including Nicola Resanovic's Collateral Damage, a concerto for clarinet and orchestra dedicated to civilian victims of war. Finally, he travelled to Oporto, Portugal to hear a performance of his work The Darkening Land that was selected for the International Clarinet Association's international conference.

DANCE

Greg Catellier, Lecturer, spent May working with five male dancers on a fifteen-minute quintet to Bach’s Chaconne from Partita No. 5 in D minor, which will be presented in January 2010 at 7 Stages Theater in Atlanta along with two other new pieces and three new works choreographed by fellow dance faculty member George Staib.From July 3 -August 10 Catellier travels to Lewiston, Maine where he will be the lighting supervisor for the Bates Dance Festival, one of the country’s most influential modern dance festivals.

Anna Leo, Director, is staying local this summer working in the Schwartz Center Dance Studio on restaging three previously choreographed works, and creating a new trio for her concert in the fall, …me so much nearer home, September 25-27. For information on the performance, click here.

George Staib, Senior Lecturer, traveled with his company StaibDance to Houston this June to perform in the 7 th annual Big Range Dance Festival at the Barnevelder Theatre. Staib was interviewed on KUHF, Houston’s NPR affiliate. Neil Ellis Orts, Dance Source Houston, wrote “the company proved to be highly skilled dancers…and showed a strong command of a diverse movement vocabulary.” Staib traveled to San Francisco for the American College Dance Festival Association’s national board meeting. He will also perform in New York with Atlanta’s Gathering Wild Dance Company. Upon his return to Atlanta he will begin rehearsals for three new pieces with StaibDance for a January 2010 premiere at 7 Stages Theater, Atlanta.

Sally Radell, Professor, had her paper on ballet dancers and body image accepted for presentation at the International Association for Dance Medicine & Science conference at The Hague, Netherlands for next October. This summer she will be developing the manuscript and sending it off for publication peer review. She also taught Introduction to Dance in Emory summer school and is continuing to develop and evolve that course as well.

Lori Teague, Associate Professor , volunteered to be Tour Coordinator for Moving in the Spirit's Apprentice Corporation. Moving in the Spirit is a nationally recognized youth development program that integrates high quality dance instruction with performance, leadership and mentor opportunities for young people in Atlanta. Teague has served as the Program Chair on their Board for the past three years. The Apprentice Corporation will perform in Durham and Winston-Salem, NC, as well as take classes from artists in those communities. Teague spent May and June organizing and planning the itinerary, along with many other wonderful volunteers in these cities. The tour includes staying on college campuses, rock-climbing, a lecture/demonstration at a Pilates studio, a tour of the American Dance Festival, and seeing a performance by Pilobolus.Teague was also in the studio with her colleagues, George Staib and Anna Leo. After two amazing performances in Houston, TX with Staibdance in early June, she rehearsed throughout the summer for Leo's concert,…me so much nearer home, in September. In addition, the Emory dance faculty will collaborate this fall to create an evening-length work about memory. Teague is investigating photographic memory, with a twist. She is interested in interpreting relationships found in photographs. Her mind and body have already started; now she waits on the Emory students to return.

VISUAL ARTS

Linda Armstrong , Senior Lecturer (Sculpture), participated in a residency at Takt Kunstprojektraum in Berlin before traveling to the opening of the 53rd Venice Biennale. The main goal of the residency program is to provide artists visiting Berlin access to an environment that will foster their creative energies. Participating artists are invited and expected to explore their creative paths. Armstrong's work is a reflection on "urban green and the relationship between art and nature."

Julia Kjelgaard , Senior Lecturer (Drawing & Painting), hasbeen in France since September 2008 taking language class three hours per day at the Alliance Francaise in Montpellier. “Being a student of language is something I haven’t done seriously for more than 25 years. It has been challenging. The classes include students from many places, and the mixture of Central and South Americans, Russians, Chinese, Spanish, German, Arabic, and English speakers, leads to amusing interactions and a genuinely wide range of pronunciation problems,” says Kjelgaard. She has also beenworking on a book that she proposed for her Fulbright in 2007 in India, which started as a documentary book about small storefronts in Bangalore, and has turned into a book of short stories about her time in India and images. Kjelgaard has also been doing some writing and working on a video project that is funded by the Center for Creativity & Arts.

Bill Brown, Senior Lecturer (Film/Video/Photography), is using Woodruff faculty research funding to develop a new, extended version of Light Corner, a film he first made in 1981 that was one of his most successful experimental films, shown at prestigious festivals all over the world including the Obenhauser Film Festival in Germany, which is considered the premier showcase for short films in the world. This project will incorporate footage from the original work in addition to new HD footage to be shot in collaboration with local musician Klimchak. Brown is also scheduled to complete the video segments for a new media website collaboration with Mary Odem of the History Department. Over the past nine years Brown has worked with Odem, with support from the Race and Difference Initiative, filming Latino immigrants in Atlanta and in Guatemala and Mexico. Brown’s HD video program of Richard Prior’s (Music department) original Stabat Mater symphony is undergoing final preparations for broadcast on PBS this September. A short version of this program was shown to the Emory Board of Trustees this June to an overwhelmingly enthusiastic response. This program was funded by the College Office, the Center for Creativity & Arts, and the University Arts Initiative. Brown is also completing a draft of a new photography book based on his Proposals for Photo-Sculptures still photography.

In addition to teaching two summer courses in photography at Stanford University, Jason Francisco, Associate Professor of Photography, is continuing to work on his book A Germantown Document, which he describes as "bringing to legibility an old and important American urban geography, and its relation to core American political ideas that are both livened and depleted by its history." He is also working on his book A Land of Shadows, which focuses on the nearly-forgotten nineteenth Chinese migrant laborers in rural California, as well as After the American Century, a long sequence of photographs and texts that is a reflection on the cultural predicaments that 20 th century American life has left in its wake.  Finally, Francisco has been invited to contribute photographs and curatorial direction to an exhibition about new practices in contemporary documentary photography being developed by Anthony Lee, Associate Professor of Art History and Chair of the American Studies Program at Mount Holyoke College.

Diane Kempler, Senior Lecturer, Visual Arts Department, participated in a two-and-a-half-month residency at Guldagergaard, the International Ceramic Research Center, Denmark, with 10-15 international ceramicists at work on individual projects in a communal setting. Kempler’s work concentrates on her impressions from her recent research in India. She has traveled to Copenhagen several times for museum visits and spends non-working hours taking tai chi and meditation classes, walking and eating chocolate.

Photos:
1. Leslie Taylor - courtesy of artist
2. Tim McDonough as Big Daddy from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - credit Jennifer Hofstetter
3. Richard Prior with the Odessa Philharmonic Orchestra - courtesy of artist
4. Lori Teague, Bridget Roosa, and George Staib of StaibDance - credit Kathleen Wessel
5. Montepellier, France - credit Julia Kjelgaard
6. Image from Empire of Photography: Proposals for Photo-Sculptures - credit Bill Brown
7. Diane Kempler - courtesy of artist

Edited by Jessica Moore
Communications Coordinator
Arts at Emory

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