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UMBC: A True Inter-Arts Experience

A True Inter-Arts Experience

Known throughout Maryland as a beacon for innovation, avant-garde collaboration and local outreach, Baltimore Dance Project provokes and enraptures new and loyal audiences each season. Founded in 1982 and originally known as the Phoenix Repertory Dance Company, the ensemble now celebrates its 30th anniversary on the stage of UMBC’s new Performing Arts and Humanities Building Theatre.

Co-directed by UMBC’s Carol Hess and Doug Hamby (associate professors, Dance), Baltimore Dance Project features interdisciplinary collaborative works with other faculty at UMBC, as well as with a broad range of artists throughout the greater Baltimore/Washington region.

As its name suggests, the Phoenix Repertory Dance Company was dedicated to the re-creation and performance of modern dance choreography already in the canon. Unlike similar repertory troupes however, the company focused not on preserving the choreography as it was originally tooled: along with co-founder Elizabeth Walton (associate professor, Dance), Hamby and Hess used the language of known works to inspire and challenge the traditional presentation of dances, laying the foundation for the completely original works they present today.

The company moved quickly into the types of interdisciplinary works it is known for today, commissioning original music and video for its performances—even working with Tony Farquhar (associate professor, Mechanical Engineering) to build a dancing robot. Audiences began to heartily applaud collaborative pieces “that demonstrated all the diverse forms contemporary dance can take,” and company premieres such as Hamby’s Quintet (1991) and Hess’ Unknown Territory/Credo in US (1993) began to define a changing aesthetic. The pieces integrated live music with spoken word, and traversed complex boundaries between disparate art forms, and by 2005 the company had rebranded itself as Baltimore Dance Project. Hess and Hamby continue to work this way today, and their success can be attributed to their extensive, diverse backgrounds in dance.

Baltimore Dance Project maintains its freshness each year, challenging its own choreography to improve by reworking pieces over seasons. The upcoming 2013 performances will be no exception as the company revisits old repertoire and presents two premieres. The lineup also features two dances featuring UMBC’s Sandra Lacy, and various works featuring some of Baltimore Dance Project’s most celebrated UMBC alumni. Tom Goldstein (associate professor, Music) will lead a percussion ensemble performance of John Cage’s Second Construction, and Tim Nohe (associate professor, Visual Arts) will collaborate on Common Axis, which blends movement with video images of past company works.

The complete program includes:
If I Told Him (premiere), in which a dancer creates a compelling and theatrical event as he dances, recites poetry by Gertrude Stein and manipulates a rope stretched across the stage.

Common Axis (premiere), created in collaboration with artist Timothy Nohe. In celebration of the company’s 30th anniversary, Hamby, Hess and Nohe blend movement with video images of notable Baltimore Dance Project works of the past.

Construction #2, re-created by Hamby in honor of American composer John Cage’s centennial year, is a dance set to the music of Cage, performed live by percussionist Tom Goldstein and UMBC Department of Music alumni.

Hamby’s Past/Forward, a visually stunning work in which today’s dancers perform with beautiful, silent dance films from the 1950s, originally created by choreographer Helen McGehee.

Once Again, in which Sandra Lacy shares the stage with 50 white balloons. A surreal journey into the haunting interior life of a performer, Once Again is performed in three sections—“Driven,” “On Display” and “Downward Spiral”—set to the music of Elvis Presley and Tom Waits.

Out to Play, choreographed and performed by Sandra Lacy and Adrienne Clancy. A fanciful and fun-loving duet that celebrates the ability to play, take risks and indulge in whimsy, with music composed and performed by Hazmat Modine.

Baltimore Dance Project performs Thursday through Saturday, February 7, 8 and 9 in the Performing Arts and Humanities Building Theatre. Admission is $20 general, $10 for students and seniors, and $7 for UMBC students. More information is available on UMBC’s Arts and Culture Calendar.

(2/7/13)

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Lisa Moren, Visual Arts, a Distinguished Speaker for Hexagram-Concordia

Lisa Moren, Associate Professor of Visual Arts will be speaking as part of a distinguished speaker lecture series for Hexagram-Concordia, a “center for research-creation in media arts and technology,” affiliated with Concordia University in Montreal.

“Moren will present several projects that intersect technologies, phenomena and compelling narratives.” Her lecture and seminar titled “Phenomena, Ecology and Technology” and “Ecology and Economy: The Outback Stock Exchange” respectively, will discuss her personal art projects and works in progress, and their relation to current ecological issues including the health of the Australian Outback, the Chesapeake Bay and the BP Deep Water Horizon oil spill.

Learn more about the presentations, at Hexagram-Concordia’s website.

Manil Suri, Mathematics, in the News

thecityofdeviMathematics Professor Manil Suri has been in the news recently, as his latest novel, “The City of Devi,” hits bookstore shelves.

On Wednesday, February 6, the Baltimore City Paper published a review of the book, saying that it “is “streamlined and cinematically purified… by narrowing his focus and heightening the emotional tenor of the city, he manages to give it a mythological quality.”

Suri also spoke with the Baltimore Sun for a February 3 interview entitled “UMBC mathematician Manil Suri publishes his third novel.”  This novel completes a trilogy about hindu dieties that Suri began with his 2001 book, “The Death of Vishnu.”  Speaking of this book, Suri said, “When I first started thinking about the trilogy, I always had an arc in my mind of the past, the present and the future… But my book about the future was an evolution. It took me 12 years to write. Even when I got to the midpoint, I didn’t know if it was going to be about Brahma or about Devi. Every story needs a creator. As the most well-known, Brahma was the most logical face to put there. But when you dig deeper, the true Hindu trinity really is Vishnu, Shiva and Devi, who represent the three different strands of Hinduism. Brahma was a later addition. He came in during the post-Vedic period, when people tried to tie those strands together. Because Devi has nine incarnations, she can be anything: the destroyer, the creator and the symbol of art. But, Brahma’s mythology is such that he doesn’t get activated until you’re at the end of a cycle. If I had been writing a post-apocalyptic novel, he might have been the right person.”

Suri also spoke to NPR’s Weekend Edition, where he talked about how leaving India has affected his writing about the country. “I grew up in like one room of a large apartment, and we were kind of the only Hindu family in an apartment that had three families of Muslims, so you know, that’s why I think the Hindu-Muslim thing keeps coming up in my novels. I don’t think I would have had the space or the quiet to actually concentrate on fiction. I do think that coming here I can sort of see the country much more — much more like a globe, like you would see the moon from the Earth or vice versa. And I think especially with this novel, I can see these relations like, OK, [India is] sitting there next to Pakistan and China, you know, all three of which are armed with nuclear weapons. So that’s one of the advantages,” he said.

Finally, on February 6, Suri spoke with WYPR’s “Maryland Morning” for a segment called “When a Mathematician Turns Novelist.”  Host Tom Hall pointed out that the theme of a trinity appears often throughout the book, and Suri admitted that even he didn’t pick up on the theme until late in his writing process. “I actually gave up this novel, and I started a new novel, and I told my agent ‘This is not going to work.’ I even had a mathematical proof that this novel could not be completed. .. and then when I saw the number three, I realized that these three characters have to somehow come together,” Suri said.

Brian Neller Named America East Player of the Week

Cambridge, Mass.- UMBC senior guard Brian Neller has been named America East Conference Men’s Basketball Player of the Week for games ending Feb. 3, 2013.

Neller netted a heavily-contested 25-footer with 0.5 seconds to play to propel the Retrievers to a thrilling 68-67 victory over Maine at the RAC Arena on Sat., Feb. 2.

He shook off a difficult first half and hit 3-of-6 from behind the arc in the second half to finish with 12 points. On Wednesday, Neller scored a season-high 18 points, hitting 6-of-13 from behind the arc in the Retrievers’ 61-58 victory at Binghamton on Wed., Jan. 30.

Neller, who moved into fifth place on UMBC’s all-time 3-point field goal list (now 228) with six at Binghamton on Wednesday, has 25 treys in his last six outings. He needs four more treys to move past Skip Saunders (1990-94) and into fourth place. He leads America East in treys per game (now 3.6) in league play and is fifth in 3-point percentage at 39.5.

Inaugural Grants from the Hrabowski Fund for Innovation

FROM: Freeman Hrabowski, President
Philip Rous, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs

We are delighted to announce the projects receiving inaugural grants from this fund. These projects build on our faculty’s strong track record of, and commitment to, reimagining what it means to teach and learn. We received a large number of outstanding applications and, unfortunately, could not fund all of the projects. Those selected for awards represent each of our colleges and a wide range of disciplines, and many of them take an interdisciplinary approach to their work.

Implementation and research grants

  • The Math Gym – A team led by Nagaraj Neerchal, professor and chair of mathematics and statistics, will develop The Math Gym, which will feature “conditioning coaches” and “personal trainers” who will help students keep their foundational math skills in good working order. Moreover, the gym will promote healthy math habits among all our students, drawing a clear analogy between the regular work outs and conditioning needed to maintain both athletic and mathematical skill.
  • Active Computing Teaching and InnoVation Environment – A team led by Marie desJardins, professor of computer science and electrical engineering, will create ACTIVE, a dynamic “laptop laboratory.” The lab will support innovation in computing courses – with a particular focus on improving the retention and success of women, underrepresented minorities and transfer students. The laboratory will extend active-learning environments, such as CASTLE and the new English writing labs, to a new area of the university.

Seed grants

  • The Wisdom Institute – A team led by Craig Saper, professor and director of UMBC’s language, literacy, and culture program, will create an institute to expand the role for emeritus professors at UMBC.
  • Putting Students’ Language Skills to Work – A team led by Susanne Sutton, lecturer in modern languages, linguistics, and intercultural communication, will develop new experiential and service-learning course requirements for undergraduates studying German, with a particular focus on connecting students to Baltimore’s German community.
  • Service-Learning in Statics – A team led by Anne Spence, professor of the practice in mechanical engineering, will develop new service-learning requirements for undergraduates studying mechanical engineering, with a particular focus on identifying components that increase retention and student success.
  • EHS – Bruce Walz, professor and chair of emergency health services, will lead a project to integrate individual cameras into EHS exercises, so that students can receive more personalized and immediate feedback on their performance.

Begun with major grants from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Heinz Awards, the Innovation Fund has benefited from substantial support from alumni and friends, the local community and businesses, and State and national leaders. That support is a testament to the work we’ve already done and a vote of confidence for the national model we’re continuing to build. Projects supported by the Innovation Fund will complement the many other creative and enterprising initiatives already underway at UMBC – from the STEM Transfer Student Success Initiative to composition course redesign in English – and will build on our strong history of finding novel approaches to teaching and scholarship.

The competition for the next round of Innovation Fund grants is underway, with proposals due by Friday, February 8. For more information on how to apply, click here. We want to thank everyone who has submitted a proposal, and encourage those whose proposals could not be funded in the first round to apply again.

We are truly inspired by the creative ideas we hear each day and are delighted to be able to support more of them through this fund.

Maricel Kann, Translational Bioinformatics

Maricel Kann, assistant professor in the department of biological sciences, recently published a new online book, Translational Bioinformatics on PLOS-CB (first open access book in PLOS.)  

This is a great resource for our students, the textbook is a good introduction to many of the topics in the emerging field of Translational Bioinformatics, and it is free to all, says Kann.

The e-pub file is downloadable from the collection page:

www.ploscollections.org/translationalbioinformatics

It’s also in mobi format for Kindle users. If you don’t have an ipad/tablet/ereader to view the epub or mobi file on, you should be able to view it on Firefox if you download this add-on:  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/epubreader/

For All the World to Hear is NEH’s Featured Project

Robert_HoustonFor All the World to Hear sponsor, the National Endowment for the Humanities, has selected the CADVC outreach program as its “Featured Project”. The NEH’s website describes the program, and discusses its connection the exhibition currently on display in the CADVC, For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights.

Learn more about For All the World to Hear at foralltheworldtohear.org.

Arbutus Patch Highlights Upcoming Baltimore Dance Project Performances

This week the Arbutus Patch highlighted Baltimore Dance Project’s upcoming 30th anniversary performances as the first concerts to be held in the Performing Arts and Humanities Building Theatre. The article also mentions UMBC Dance faculty and company directors, Carol Hess and Doug Hamby, as well as dances to be performed by UMBC Department of Dance Instructor and Baltimore Dance Project principle dancer, Sandra Lacy.

Read “Dance Performances to Celebrate Baltimore Dance Project Anniversary”.

Baltimore Dance Project is a dance company that focuses on visually stunning and complex inter-disciplinary and collaborative works. Performances will be held February 7-9 at 8pm each evening. Find out more information about the program and the company through the Arts and Culture Calendar.

Joan Shin and Jodi Crandall Publish Book Chapters

Joan Shin, clinical assistant professor of education, recently published a chapter in the 4th edition of “Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language.”   Jodi Crandall, professor emerita of Language Literacy and Culture, also has a chapter in the book. “Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language” is the most widely used TESOL Methods book in the world.

“The City of Devi” Reviewed in the Washington Post

thecityofdeviOn January 29, the Washington Post praised “The City of Devi” by Manil Suri, professor of mathematics, in a review by Ron Charles.

Proclaiming it “the best sex comedy of the year about nuclear war between India and Pakistan,” Charles commends the book for the fact that it “never dips toward cynicism, never loses its essential sweetness, no matter how cruel or kooky the action… the whole story manages to keep hurtling along toward a surprisingly tender ending.”

“Even amid the wondrous variety of contemporary Indian fiction, Suri’s work stands apart, mingling comedy and death, eroticism and politics, godhood and Bollywood like no one else,” he wrote.

The full review can be read here.

John Nelson and Tymofey Wowk, Education, in the Washington Post

“Since it arrived a year ago at Politics & Prose, ‘Opus,’ Washington’s first print-on-demand Espresso book machine, has helped hundreds of area scribblers realize their publishing dreams,” writes the Washington Post.

Two such authors are John Nelson, Co-Director of the ESOL M.A. program, and his student Tymofey Wowk. The two used Opus to create their dream textbook, “Making English Grammar Meaningful and Useful,” which they read from at an “open-mike” night at the bookstore on January 26.

The paper wrote about the reading in a January 29 story entitled “Open-mike night for self-published authors.”

Manil Suri, Mathematics, in Baltimore Magazine

thecityofdeviBaltimore magazine reviewed Manil Suri’s latest book, The City of Devi, in the February 2013 issue.  Calling the book “a preculiar love story that’s both tawdry and hopeful,” the magazine says that it is “super-charged by religion, sexuality, and the overarching political conflict.”

The magazine also posted a Q and A with the mathematics and statistics professor on their website, where they asked Suri about teaching a math class for non-math majors.  “It taught me that without at least some basic motivation on the part of the learner, it’s simply impossible to engage people in mathematics, no matter how interesting or fun you make it. The subject is difficult, and for the students who were genuinely curious (and were ready to put in the effort), it was a great class. I’ve now taught a bunch of such courses, and they’ve been essential experience for a ‘math novel’ I’m working on,” he said.

Suri will read from The City of Devi on Febraury 6 at 7 p.m. in the Library Gallery.

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