Arts and entertainment  |  UW and the community

May 16, 2013

Arts Roundup: Dance, poetry, art, music — and slapstick ballet

Dance and drama talents combine for the annual MFA Dance Concert, which leads a busy week of UW arts events. The week also features exhibits, visiting performers and the 50^th annual Theodore Roethke Poetry Reading.

Also, the Ethnomusicology Program winds up its own half-century celebration with a visiting artists concert and the Henry Art Gallery offers the alluringly titled presentation “Off with the Corset!”

All this, and dudes who look like ladies in Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, described by the New York Times as “pancaked, bewigged ladies” trying and failing “mightily — to sustain poses, falling on their rumps, showboating and knocking into one another.”

Roethke Memorial Poetry Reading: Kay Ryan, 8 p.m., May 16. This 50^th annual Roethke reading will be in 130 Kane Hall, the Roethke Auditorium. Ryan has written several poetry collections, including “The Best of It: New and Selected Poems,” which won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Her poems and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Yale Review and many other journals and anthologies. Free. Doors open at 7 p.m.

MFA Dance Concert 2013, 7:30 p.m., through May 19. The UW Dance Program’s annual event includes choreography by seven master’s of fine arts candidates, in collaboration with masters students from the School of Drama and professional artists from the community. Advanced undergraduate dancers perform. In the Meany Studio Theater. Learn more online. Tickets are $10-$16, $2 more if purchased at the door. 206-543-4880.

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, 8 p.m., May 16-18. This popular all-male professional dance troupe performs the full range of the ballet and modern dance repertoire, but for laughs. Advance notes state, “The fact that men dance all the parts — heavy bodies delicately balancing on toes as swans, sylphs, water sprites, romantic princesses or angst-ridden Victorian ladies — enhances, rather than mocks, the spirit of dance as an art form.” In Meany Hall. Tickets are $51-$55 ($20 for students). Presented by the UW World Series. 206-543-4880.

Symposium: “The Mechanics of Beauty: A Question of Representation,” 10 a.m.-8 p.m., May 17. This year’s art history symposium theme springs from a Henry Art Gallery exhibition and carries it to other media and perspectives. There will be morning and afternoon sessions at the gallery, each with multiple presentations. Reception 6-8 p.m. in Molly’s Café. Free and open to the public.

The Brink Bash, 6-9 p.m., May 17. The Henry Art Gallery celebrates the six finalists for its 2013 Brink Award at the Hilliard’s Beer Taproom, 1550 NW 49^th St., Seattle. The winner will be announced on June 7. Tickets are $15.

Voice Division Recital, 7:30 p.m., May 20. UW voice students perform their spring quarter recital, including songs and arias by Handel, Mozart, Bernstein, Brahms, Schubert, Donizetti, Wolf, Debussy and others. Tickets are $5, cash or check at the door. Brechemin Auditorium. 206-685-8384.

Ethnomusicology visiting artists recital, 7:30 p.m., May 21. The Ethnomusicology program wraps up its 50^th anniversary celebration with this concert in Meany Hall featuring performances by Srivani Jade, a Hindustani singer who specializes in the North Indian classical form of Khayal; and Thione Diope, a percussionist from Senegal, West Africa. Jade will be accompanied by Aarshin Karande (harmonium), Ravi Albright (tabla) and Priya Bondre (tanpura). Tickets are $20 ($12 for students). 206-543-4880.

Henry Art Gallery, “Off with the Corset!” 7-8:30 p.m., May 23. One of the museum’s periodic “Collection in Focus” events, a presentation by art history doctoral candidate Kimberly Hereford, who will discuss Victorian-era aesthetic dress using garments and historic photographs from the Henry’s collections. At the Henry’s Reed Collection Study Center. Free but RSVP is requested.

School of Art graduation exhibits:

• Several School of Art students will participate in the 2013 Undergraduate Research Symposium, 11 a.m.-5:45 p.m. May 17, in Mary Gates Hall. Free and open to the public.
• Painting and drawing students receiving master’s of fine arts degrees exhibit work in the Sand Point Gallery May 21-25. Reception 6-8 p.m., May 20.
• Three Dimensional Forum master’s of fine arts student Lacy Draper exhibits at the Ceramic and Metal Arts Building May 21-25. Reception 6 p.m., May 21.

• Coming next week: Tennessee Williams one-act plays from the School of Drama.