Current Events

The Olimpias: Cripple Poetics

presented by Petra Kuppers and Neil Marcus

In this presentation, Petra and Neil share Olimpias disability culture work, woven around poetry and dance. The Olimpias is an international project-based artist collective led by Petra Kuppers, and focused on disability culture work, community arts and performance research (www.olimpias.org).

The book Cripple Poetics: A Love Story (2008, Homofactus Press) is a collaboration between performance artists Neil Marcus and Petra Kuppers and photographer Lisa Steichmann. In 2008/9, Petra and Neil went on long tours in Australia and Europe, engaging disability artists, and discussing (and shaping) the contemporary shapes of international disability culture(s). In this performance, they will share some of Cripple Poetics together with award-winning Olimpias videos, including the Butoh piece 'water burns sun' and the dance/poetry/video Tiresias.

Petra Kuppers is an Associate Professor of English Language and Literature, Women's Studies in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts as well as an Associate Professor of Theater and Drama in the School of Music, Theatre & Dance

Tobin Siebers “Disability Aesthetics”

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First Tuesdays

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Suzanne Farrell Lecture

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Arts & Bodies Poetry Reading organized by Linda Gregerson

Linda Gregerson is the Caroline Walker Bynum Distinguished University Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan, where she teaches creative writing and Renaissance literature. She will be organizing a poetry reading about bodies.

Robert and Shana Parke-Harrison Show

She's a painter and he's a photographer. They work as a creative team.

More to come from Kate West

Their Website

Jerry Schwiebert, “Everything is Moving”

As thoroughly as they study their instruments or lines, top performing artists study how to use their bodies to heighten the audience's experience of their art.  This lecture-demonstration takes you "behind the scenes" to learn some of the basics of body movement for performing artists.  Willing audience members will join the instructor onstage for body manipulation, partner with other audience members in exercises, view themselves on live video, and participate in entire-audience explorations.  Taught by Jerry Schweibert, faculty in movement in U-M's School of Music, Theatre & Dance, and author of the forthcoming book, Everything Is Moving.

“The Red Shoes” Daniel Herwitz

Daniel Herwitz screens "The Red Shoes"

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“The Two Journeys of Jacques LeCoq” Film Screening and Discussion

Malcolm Tulip, Department of Theatre & Drama, will introduce two short documentaries about the influential theatre teacher Jacques Lecoq. Two 45-minute films, entitled « Les deux voyages de Jacques Lecoq » (The Two Journeys of Jacques Lecoq) filmed by Jean Noel Roy for the French television La sept ARTE. Lecoq talks of his work and inspiration and there are scenes with him working with his students. There are also interviews with actors and directors such as Dario Fo (Accidental Death of an Anarchist), Arianne Mnouchkine (Theatre du Soleil), Luc Bondy (Opera and stage Director), Simon McBurney (Complicité) and many others.  There will be a question & answer/discussion after the screenings.

The film is in French with English subtitles.

Nicholas Delbanco Lecture, “Lastingness: The Art of Old Age”

We take for granted, mostly, that youth is an advantage for basketball players and ballerinas; it's not so clear, however, that artistic prowess need lessen in old age. Those painters, musicians, and writers who pursue their craft in "sunset years" have something to report on that the prodigy cannot address. Late style is Delbanco's subject, its losses and gains, and how in a world where more artists live long we chart the arc of time. If "Bodily decrepitude is wisdom," as William Butler Yeats suggests, of what does that wisdom consist?

Nicholas Delbanco is the Robert Frost Distinguished University Professor of English Language and Literature and Professor of English at U-M.

India - A Light Within Performance

Through dance, photographs, prose, and poetry, India – A Light Within takes the viewer into India's rich culture exploring life and the body as it relates to traditions and contemporary interpretations. A highlight of the exhibition, entitled The Dance of Hands, explores the expressive range of hand mudras through the art of Sreyashi Dey, an Odissi dancer, Zilka Joseph, a writer, and Charlee Brodsky, a photographer. In addition, on view are Charlee Brodsky's photographs that she made of Kolkata street life in 2007 with responses by writers Zilka Joseph and Neema Bilpin Avashi, both of Indian descent.

A featured event is an Indian dance performance by Sreyashi Dey and a reading by Zilka Joseph on October 30.

Body Music Festival

The Body Music Festival celebrates body music traditions from around the world by bringing together local, regional, and campus groups to perform, teach, tell the history of their body music tradition.  This year's Arts on Earth theme is Arts & Bodies, a big component of which is a Body Music residency with renowned "body musician" Keith Terry  who is participating in and emceeing the show.  Body music traditions involved include Hambone, Step, Indian Dance and others! 

Student groups are encouraged to get involved as well, by auditioning to be in the show.  More about auditions to come!

"Lady Chatterly's Dream" & "The Night Harry Stopped Smoking,"

Chamber Music by Jon Deak, "Lady Chatterly's Dream" performed faculty and students from the School of Music, Theatre & Dance and
Operetta by John Davies, "The Night Harry Stopped Smoking," performed by School of Music, Theatre & Dance students, directed by Robert Swedberg.

Richard Meyer Symposium

Wednesday, November 4, Time & Location TBD
Richard Meyer Symposium

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Arts & Bodies ArtsLab

The ArtsLab is an intensive, experimental, experiential  exploration of the interrelationships between human arts and human bodies worldwide.   Faculty and students from Architecture; Art & Design; Engineering; English; Kinesiology; Music, Theatre & Dance; and Psychiatry have collaborated using disciplines as diverse as robotics, movement "fingerprint" analysis, and charcoal drawing to create a set of unforgettable experiences.   Free and open to the public, the ArtsLab takes full advantage of the sophisticated multi-media capacity of the black-box Video Studio.
Space is limited: register early.

For more information on each session: ArtsLab

Sleight of Hand: How Bodies Fool Minds

Penny Stamps Lecture Series: Jamy Ian Swiss

"Magic" is a performance art in which the body's role is often underappreciated. "Sleight of hand," "legerdemain," and "prestidigitation" — all terms for performance magic — point to the role of the hand in fooling the mind. And in fact, mastery of sleight of hand requires relentless physical practice comparable to that required to master a musical instrument. But like all performance artists, magicians use their full bodies, both as a property of performance, and in the service of deception and illusion.
According to Penn and Teller, master magician Jamy Ian Swiss "makes one understand what a terrifying art form pure sleight of hand can be." But in this original and surprise-laden presentation, Swiss provides a behind-the-scenes view of the ways in which the magician employs the entire body electric to determine what we see.

For more information about this speaker and others, visit the Penny Stamps Distinguished Vistor Series site.

Keith Terry and the Slammin' All-Body Band Concert

Using any surface for its rhythmic possibilities, Keith Terry "claps his hands, rubs his palms, finger-pops, stamps his feet, brushes his soles, slaps his butt and belly, pops his cheek, whomps his chest, skips and slides, sings and babbles and coughs, building his music out of a surprisingly varied register of sounds and clever rhythmic variations." (Village Voice) 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 kids creatively exploring new sounds that they control with the oldest instrument in the world — the human body.

Kids' concert 10:00am
Family concert 7:00pm

Presented in Collaboration with the University Musical Society and The University of Michigan's Center for Educational Outreach.