Call and Response

Saturday, November 14 – Thursday, December 10
Central Gallery

The title of this exhibition is borrowed from the musical terminology relating to a style of singing in which the melody sung by one singer is responded to or echoed by another. The purpose of this project is to facilitate an exchange between art and writing based on the same fundamental idea of call and response. In this project, artists respond to writing and writers respond to art. Each participant contributes two works for the exhibition–the first being for the Call component and the second being for the Response. Over a dozen talented painters, poets, printmakers, fiction writers, sculptors, installation and video artists are participating including visual artist Angela Zammerelli, video artist Marcus DeMaio, poet Noah Eli Gordon, poet Alex Phillips, painter Rachel Ouilette, fiction writer Jason Daniel Schwartz, painter Harry Swartz-Turfle, fiction writer/sound artist Daniel Presnell, and others.

Free and open to the public

Bollywood Masala

Saturday, November 7
Concert Hall 8:00 pm
$25, $20, $15; Five College/GCC/STCC students/17 & under $10
Experience Washington DC’s hottest Bollywood band whose repertoire ranges from Bollywood oldies to current sizzling hits from popular Hindi movies and more. Kehkashaan is an extraordinary eight member band with male/ female vocalists, guitars, keyboards and drums from around the world that deliver a high energy rocking good time. Performing with legendary bands such as the B-52’s and Styx this band has made huge waves on the music circuit around the country.
the Pioneer Valley Hotel Group–Comfort Inn and Hampton Inn

Birdhouse Factory

Tuesday, November 10
Concert Hall
$6 students, $8 adults

SOLD OUT

When world-renowned circus stars dream up a factory, it is no ordinary industrial plant. It’s a wild and wonderful workshop where the machines are circus props and the workers are acrobats, dancers, contortionists, and clowns. It’s Birdhouse Factory by Cirque Mechanics, an extraordinary troupe of Cirque du Soleil, Pickle Family Circus, and Moscow Circus veterans who transform the mundane into the magnificent. Don’t miss a performance that’s perfect for audiences of all ages: mesmerizing, passionate and joyous! Recommended for all ages.
Curriculum Connections: Circus Arts, Physics, Diego Rivera, the Great Depression, American Industry

If you were one of the lucky ones to have gotten tickets, what did you think of it?

Romeo and Juliet

Wednesday, November 4
Bowker Auditorium
$6 students, $8 adults

Reserve Tickets Online

Dance, athleticism, and swordplay share the stage with sonnets, bawdy wit, and soul-searching speeches in this profoundly human and always surprising masterpiece. The American Shakespeare Center recovers the joys and accessibility of Shakespeare’s theatre and gives its audiences some of the pleasures that an Elizabethan playgoer would have enjoyed: universal lighting, doubling of parts, fun with gender confusion, minimal sets, familiar costumes and the use of music throughout.Co-presented with the Massachusetts Center for Renaissance Studies Recommended for grades. 7 – 12.
This is a 2 hour performance.

Curriculum Connections: Shakespeare, Elizabethan Theatre, Love, Fate, Revenge, Social and Familial Expectations

Cirque Mechanics in a Birdhouse Factory

When world-renowned circus stars dream up a factory, it is no ordinary industrial plant. It’s a wild and wonderful workshop where the machines are circus props and the workers are acrobats, dancers, contortionists, and clowns. It’s Birdhouse Factory by Cirque Mechanics, an extraordinary troupe of Cirque du Soleil, Pickle Family Circus, and Moscow Circus veterans who transform the mundane into the magnificent.

Funded in part by the Expeditions program of the New England Foundation for the Arts, made possible with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, with additional support from the six New England state arts agencies.

Tuesday, November 10
Concert Hall 7:30 PM
$35, $25, $15, Five College/GCC/STCC and Youth 17 and under: $15

Inside the Outside/Paintings by Three Outsider Artists: Jay Dickens, Arnold Nelson, & Floyd Nelson

Monday, November 2 – Friday, November 20

These three outsider artists from New Mexico share some unusual common bonds in their personal lives and histories as well as in their dedicated and disciplined approach to their art. All have lived a life with developmental disabilities, all have experienced a length of time confined to an institution, and all have come into their own individual artistic path later in life. Like many Outsider Artists, Jay Dickens, Arnold Nelson, and Floyd Nelson have developed artistically without any preconceived notions or limitations regarding art. They also have not received formal art instruction. Collectively, their work illustrates the triumph and strength of the human spirit.

Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company

Serenade/The Proposition is a lively, colorful rumination on the nature of history. The refrain “It could be said that history is…” runs through the piece and asks the question of our connection to history, or lack thereof. Video projections fill an iconic set of movable columns that evoke the architecture of history: the White House, the Parthenon, or the ballroom of an elegant plantation parlor. The spare staging is filled by a cast of fierce dancers in beautifully deconstructed costumes performing flowing movement that assembles into moments of still portrait like postcards from the past. The original score draws from Mozart’s Requiem, Battle Hymn of the Republic, and Dixie to create a contemporary, playful, musical collage for cello, piano, and soprano. The piece premiered at the 2008 American Dance Festival, and is now on tour before being seen in New York at the Joyce Theater, the work’s lead commissioner.

Thursday, November 5
Concert Hall 7:30 PM
$40, $30, $15, Five College/GCC/STCC and Youth 17 and under: $15

American Shakespeare Center

Dance, athleticism, and swordplay share the stage with sonnets, bawdy wit, and soul-searching speeches in this profoundly human and always surprising masterpiece. The American Shakespeare Center recovers the joys and accessibility of Shakespeare’s theatre and gives its audiences some of the pleasures that an Elizabethan playgoer would have enjoyed: universal lighting, doubling of parts, fun with gender confusion, minimal sets, familiar costumes, and the use of music throughout.

Co-presented with the Massachusetts Center for Renaissance Studies.

Tuesday, November 3
Bowker Auditorium 7:30 PM
$20, Five College/GCC/STCC students and Youth 17 and under: $10

Rumi: Poetic Readings by Peter Rogen with Music by Amir Vahab

Sunday, October 25
First Church, Northampton 3:00 pm
$20; Five College/GCC/STCC students/17 & under $15
In Memory of Sufi Bashir Ahamed

The poetry of Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, recognized for its loving spirituality, has spread throughout the world, and has made him one of the greatest literary and spiritual figures of all time. Peter Rogen, an ardent Rumi devotee, received a Rockefeller Grant for study in the American theater and performed in Shakespeare plays with The Helen Hayes Equity Theater at BAM in New York, Most recently, he performed Rumi’s poetry at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, and the National Cathedral in Washington DC.

Amir Vahab is a wonderful, internationally recognized musician and singer who will play the ney flute, tanbour and daf frame drum. Amir will also recite verses of Rumi in Farsi, and sing Rumi verses in Farsi and Turkish.

Presented in collaboration with the First Church in Northampton.

Tell us what you think..

Dan Zanes and Friends

Friday, October 23
Concert Hall 7:00 pm
$35, $25, $15, Five College/GCC/STCC students and Youth 17 and under: $10

Concerts by Dan Zanes & Friends are always cause for celebration, filled with singing and dancing to songs brimming with warmth, wisdom and wonderful music. The Grammy-Award winner is joined by his “beautifully scruffy, harmonically precise, spirited, and better-than-ever band” and they’ll be singing songs in both English and Spanish with their own homespun style giving you the feeling that a bunch of wildly talented friends and neighbors just got together to throw a party . . . and everyone’s invited. This is an ASL-interpreted event.

Arts Give Back
Link to Libraries collects and distributes new and gently used books to elementary school libraries and nonprofit organizations to enhance the language and literacy skills of children of all cultural backgrounds. Please visit their site for a list of preferred books or bring some goodies from your personal collection.

Let us know what you think…