Highlighted Events at Bennington, Spring 2010

The list below presents a selection of highlighted events taking place at Bennington College this term. It is not a comprehensive catalog of all spring term events and dates, times, and locations are subject to change. For a complete schedule of events and the most up-to-date information, please visit our web calendar.

All events are open to the public. Events are free unless otherwise noted.

February | March | April | May

JEFF The Brotherhood
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY, 24, 2010 | 9:00 PM | DOWNSTAIRS CAFÉ, STUDENT CENTER

Jake and Jamin Orrall are JEFF The Brotherhood, a guitar-and-drum duo whose sound has been called “kraut punk,”“psychedelic grunge,” and “noise pop,” drawing comparisons to bands like Hawkwind, Wipers, and early Sonic Youth. 

George Lopez plays Chopin
MONDAY, MARCH 1, 2010 | 8:00 PM | DEANE CARRIAGE BARN

Bennington Music Faculty member George Lopez will perform a piano recital of the complete 27 Chopin etudes.

New York–based media artist Marina Zurkow presents “Crossing the Waters,” seven animated works created between 2007 and 2009. These works comprise part of a series whose theme circulates around speculative fictions of the deluge and climate change; of water, ice, animals, and people. The pieces embody a tension between their cartoon forms, the natural sciences, eco-activism, and apocalyptic fantasy. The exhibition will be accompanied by an essay by curator Michael Connor. Usdan Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 1:00 to 5:00.

Border Towns
FRIDAY, MARCH 5 | 8:00 and 10:00 PM
SATURDAY, MARCH 6, 2010 | 8:00 PM
MARGOT TENNEY THEATER, VAPA

The performance explores how recordings have reengineered the psychological landscape of the United States. Seven performers lip-sync, sing, and move precisely with a dense map of song fragments, ambient sounds, and border broadcasts. Along the way, musical Americana is reconstructed into a surreal theatrical collage. Directed by faculty members Nick Brooke and Jenny Rohn, and composed by Nick Brooke. Lighting design by Michael Giannitti. Reservations: 802-440-4572.

Delos M. Cosgrove
Four College Issues Forum
FRIDAY, MARCH 5, 2010 | 8:00 PM | CHURCH STREET CENTER (at the corner of Church and Porter Streets), NORTH ADAMS, MASSACHUSETTS

The 2010 Four College Issues Forum is sponsored by Williams College, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, Southern Vermont College and Bennington College. Delos M. Cosgrove, MD, President and chief executive officer of Cleveland Clinic, will speak about Developing a Health Care System for the 21st Century. This event is free and open to the public. For more information, please contact: Ashley Berridge at 413-662-5185.

FRIDAY, MARCH 5, 2010 | 9:00 PM | STUDENT CENTER

Brookly-based Guignol blends “punk rock energy and Eastern Bloc flutter.” When the group teams up with Philadelphia’s gypsy-crusters Mischief Brew, you get what The Village Voice calls “an unrelenting burst that includes the occasional raspy pop song next to their usual annihilating klezmercore.”

Again
SATURDAY, MARCH 6, 2010 | 7:00 PM | MARTHA HILL DANCE THEATER, VAPA

A tale of courtship, love, and its aftermath performed through dance and the griot tradition of storytelling. Again is a collaboration between Nora Chipaumire and Souleymane Badolo tracing the personal story of their journey as husband and wife. Within the context of two very different African countries and two distinct artistic styles, Again relays the search for and willingness to wait for love, dedication to one’s homeland, and optimism for family and togetherness.

Dãm-Funk
SATURDAY, MARCH 6, 2010 | 9:00 PM | STUDENT CENTER

Known as Los Angeles’ “Ambassador of Boogie Funk,” Dãm-Funk represents the citizens of the Funkmosphere. Headquartered in the Leimert Park section of L.A., Dãm spent the last few years cultivating a musical renaissance rooted in the early-’80s styles known as Boogie, Modern Soul, and Electro-Funk.

Michael Bisio
MONDAY, MARCH 8, 2010 | 8:00 PM | DEANE CARRIAGE BARN

Faculty member Michael Bisio plays compositions and improvisations for solo acoustic bass. “His playing appears to be produced by sorcery,” lauds Cadence Magazine; “a fearsome soloist and potent composer,” says All About Jazz.

Shalalae Jamil ’01
Visual Arts Lecture Series
TUESDAY, MARCH 9, 2010 | 7:30 PM | TISHMAN LECTURE HALL

Shalalae Jamil ’01 was born and raised in Karachi. Using photography, film, video, installation, and elements of performance, her works target home as a region consumed by the collisions between religion, tradition, and modernity. Exploring these overlapping and indistinct measures of identity within a global culture that depends on reductive binaries to understand and classify is a political act. She has exhibited work in Pakistan, the United States, and the U.K. Her work is in numerous private collections including the Arts Council, Pakistan.

Community-scale Wood Energy: An Overview of Technology, Systems, Fuel Supply, and Challenges
Environmental Studies Colloquium
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 10, 2010 | 7:00 PM | BARN 100

Adam Sherman, program director at the Biomass Energy Resource Center, will speak about the efficacy of biomass energy and current initiatives in the state of Vermont.

Paved Paradise Redux: The Art of Joni Mitchell
FRIDAY, MARCH 12, 2010 | 9:00 PM | MARTHA HILL DANCE THEATER, VAPA

Two-time Obie Award-winning artist John Kelly inhabits the persona of Joni Mitchell in an evening of songs and stories. Kelly’s performance is a musical and visual homage to the great Canadian singer/songwriter. His countertenor uncannily evokes Mitchell’s own smoky soprano as he sings songs from the various stages of her career in their original key. Kelly is accompanied on keyboard by musical director Zecca Esquibel. Directed by Kevin Malony.

Songs and Piano Music Inspired by the Poetry of Charles Baudelaire
FRIDAY, MARCH 12, 2010 | 7:00 PM | DEANE CARRIAGE BARN

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Richard Howard's 1982 translation of Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal received the American Book Award. Howard will read his critically acclaimed translations of the poems before they are sung and he will construct a narrative thread, using the letters and writings of Baudelaire. Rachel Rosales, soprano, Robert Osborne, bass-baritone, and Todd Crow, pianist. Music by Debussy, Fauré, Hindemith, and others.

Flamenco Dance Project
Multicultural Arts and Performance Series
SATURDAY, MARCH 13, 2010 | 8:00 PM | GREENWALL AUDITORIUM, VAPA

The Massachusetts-based dance company Flamenco Dance Project will present an evening of Flamenco.

Black Maria Film + Video Festival
TUESDAY, MARCH 16, 2010 | 7:30 PM | TISHMAN LECTURE HALL

Since 1981, the annual Black Maria Film + Video Festival, which takes its name from the world's first motion picture studio built by Thomas Edison, has been an international juried competition and award tour, fulfilling its mission to advocate, exhibit, and reward works from independent filmmakers and videographers. The festival is known for its national public exhibition program, which features a variety of bold contemporary works drawn from the annual collection of 50 or more award-winning films and videos.

Nick Tobier
Visual Arts Lecture Series
TUESDAY, MARCH 23, 2010 | 7:30 PM | TISHMAN LECTURE HALL

Nick Tobier is a lifelong participant-observer of street life and the social life of public places. These inherently layered scenarios are at the core of his work as artist and educator, and Tobier's practice and pedagogy reflect his belief in the power of social dynamism and the fundamental role of artist as catalyst and conduit in this relationship.

Award-winning composers Pozzi Escot and Robert Cogan, professors of music at New England Conservatory and co-authors of the highly-acclaimed book Sonic Design, have had their music performed by celebrated orchestras and artists worldwide. This concert will include pianists, singers, slide projectors, and a string quartet.

A scholar of American and international history, Eileen Scully is the author of Bargaining with the State from Afar: American Citizenship in Treaty Port China. Her most recent work, “The U.S. and International Affairs, 1789–1919,” was commissioned for The Cambridge History of Law in America. She has taught at Bennington since 2000. Her talk is the first on this term’s theme, “Persons, Groups, and Environments,” which explores the relationships between these entities and the effects each has on the others.

Odaiko New England
Multicultural Arts and Performance Series
SATURDAY, APRIL 3, 2010 | 8:00 PM | GREENWALL AUDITORIUM, VAPA

The taiko drumming group Odaiko New England will be performing on campus.

Motivation in a Connected Age
MONDAY, APRIL 5, 2010 | 7:00 PM | TISHMAN LECTURE HALL

Clay Shirky is a writer, consultant, and teacher on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies. He teaches new media as an associate teacher at New York University's graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program.

Psychology and Environmental Challenges
Social Science Colloquium
MONDAY, APRIL 5, 2010 | 7:00 PM | BARN 100

Susan Clayton is the Whitmore-Williams professor of psychology and chair of environmental studies at Wooster College in Ohio. She has served as a member of the American Psychological Association’s 2008 Task Force on Psychology and Global Climate Change.

Carl Fudge uses digital technology to open geometric patterns of line and planes of striking color. Fudge draws on sources such as images from Japanese animation then uses digital technology to manipulate the source material rendering the original images abstract and often unrecognizable.

Opportunities for Enhancing Forest Carbon Storage in Northern New England
Environmental Studies Colloquium
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 7, 2010 | 7:00 PM | BARN 100

Dr. William Keeton, associate professor of forest ecology and forestry at University of Vermont, will speak about carbon dynamics in old-growth forests and sustainable forest management.

Rick Ostfeld
FRIDAY, APRIL 9, 2010 | 1:00 PM | DICKINSON 225

Dr. Rick Ostfeld, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, is an authority on the ecology of emerging diseases and particularly on Lyme Disease in the northeast. He will speak about Biodiversity Loss and the Rise of Emerging Infectious Diseases.

Meet the Artist Series
SATURDAY, APRIL 10, 2010 | 8:00 PM | MARTHA HILL DANCE THEATER, VAPA

Choreographer and dance guest artist at Bennington, Lindsey Dietz Marchant will be joined by company members Elena Demyanenko, Jason Dietz Marchant, and Darrin Wright to show current work-in-progress.

John Lovett and Alessandro Codagnone
Visual Arts Lecture Series
TUESDAY, APRIL 20, 2010 | 7:30 PM | TISHMAN LECTURE HALL

Lovett and Codagnone explore power relations in their work through explicit cultural, and often sexual, practices. For their performances they often distill complex human relationship dynamics into single poses which they hold with intensity and endurance.

Kuku
Multicultural Arts and Performance Series
SATURDAY, APRIL 24, 2010 | 9:00 PM | STUDENT CENTER

Nigerian Yoruba singer-songwriter KUKU will be performing his latest work on campus.

Justice and Mitigation: U.S. Policy and the Copenhagen Accord
Social Science Colloquium
MONDAY, APRIL 26, 2010 | 7:00 PM | BARN 100

Darrel Moellendorf is professor of philosophy and director of the Institute for Ethics and Public Affairs at San Diego State University. He is the author of Global Inequality Matters as well as articles on justice, equality, climate change, and the relations among them.

Dr. Miguel Pinedo-Vasquez, director of international programs and associate research scientist at the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation at Columbia University, is a native of the Peruvian Amazon and a leading scholar on integrated conservation and resource management.

Urban Residence, Rural Employment, and the Future of Amazonian Forests
Robert H. Woodworth Lecture
FRIDAY, APRIL 30, 2010 | 1:00 PM | DEANE CARRIAGE BARN

Dr. Christine Padoch, the Matthew Calbraith Perry curator of economic botany at the New York Botanical Garden, has been conducting research in the tropics of Latin America for three decades and is internationally recognized for her work.

Sunfest
SATURDAY, MAY 1, 2010 | ALL DAY | STUDENT CENTER

Sunfest is Bennington’s annual all-day music festival. It’s part outdoor concert, part campus tradition, and part holiday. Twelve hours of live music, games, food, and fun!

Thinking Like a Holon: A Post-Systems Approach to a Social Ecology
Social Science Colloquium
MONDAY, MAY 3, 2010 | 7:00 PM | BARN 100

Michael Bell is professor of community and environmental sociology at the University of Wisconsin. The third edition of his book An Invitation to Environmental Sociology was published in 2009.

R.H. Quaytman
Visual Arts Lecture Series: Adams–Tillim Lecture
TUESDAY, MAY 4, 2010 | 7:30 PM | TISHMAN LECTURE HALL

 Rebecca H. Quaytman, a member of the faculty of the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College, will present Bennington College’s 2010 Adams–Tillim lecture entitled Allegorical Decoys.

FRIDAY, MAY 7–SUNDAY, MAY 9, 2010 | 8:00 PM | LESTER MARTIN THEATER, VAPA

Bennington College drama and music present the fabled 1927 song cycle Songspiel Mahagonny, a groundbreaking experiment to inject modernity into traditional forms. The work marks the first collaboration between Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. Reservations: 440-4572.

Martha Hill Dance Concert
FRIDAY, MAY 14–SATURDAY, MAY 15, 2010 | 8:00 PM | MARTHA HILL DANCE THEATER, VAPA

The Martha Hill Dance concert showcases new works by current Bennington College students.

A scholar of moral and political philosophy, Paul Voice is the author of Rawls Explained, published this year, as well as numerous other works. He has taught at Bennington since 2000.

Carnaval, a course taught by Bennington College faulty Bruce Williamson, Danny Michaelson, and visiting artists, will culminate in a campus-wide parade and celebration with music, dance, and costumes. All are invited to participate. 

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