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CAMPUS CINEMA
I
The best
of our
science
By Byron L. Bull
Among football games, parties,
road trips, tragic romances,
afternoons in the Diag, nights in the
Arb, no memory of Ann Arbor and the
University is complete without
Casablanca, or 2001, or Rebel Without
A Cause. Movies are as big a part of
life on campus as anything; over the
years this campus has grown to a
position of cinematic preeminence
despite the fact it's far from
Hollywood and isn'trconsidered an
outstanding place for film studies.
For whatever reasons, the campus
supports over a half dozen cinema
groups who over the course of the
school year schedule hundreds of films
of almost every variety, and provide
those with an affection for the
medium a seemingly endless
torrent of film fare they would other-
wise have a slim chance, if any, of
seeing elsewhere.
On just about any night of the week
(with the exception of Tuesday,
which is usually discount special) you
can walk in MLB 3 or Auditorium A in
Angell Hall and see anything from
Terms of Endearment to City of
Lights. Generally the big crowd
pleasers, last years blockbusters and
date movies - The Big Chill, Diner -
play heavily on the weekend while the
more obscure works - My Dinner
with Andre, Black Narcissus - get
scheduled on Tuesday and Wednesday
nights. There is an often precarious
balance between popular offerings
and the curious gems, where the film
groups try to recoup losses on the
letter with offerings of the former, and
often go into the red anyway.
There's certain predictability to the
schedules, partly out of economic
necessity, partly due to a particular
film's tireless appeal. On the Water-
front, The Maltese Falcon, and
Citizen Kane will probably be playing
on campus when our kids are here.
Others, Jaws, Ordinary People,
American Graffiti, lasted scarcely a
few semesters.
The works of Alfred Hitchcock and
Ingmar Bergman are timeless, and
both directors get more than a fair
coverage. Other directors fall in and
out of favor with a cyclical regularity
that seems to run at two or three year
intervals. Herzog, Goddard, Coppola
are all out of favor. Truffaut was a
longtime favorite, whose films were
shown less frequently for a few years,
and suddenly reappeared en masse
the semester after his death, the way
people suddenly began scooping up
Lennon records four years ago.
Underground and cult films play an
important part of the film scene, ap-
pealing to taste as diverse as the
grotesquely stunning Eraserhead to
the gently charming King of Hearts (a
decade-old fave). Years ago Bruce
Lee retrospectives were popular cult
No need
to sweat
By Susanne Baum
DANCE, THE consumate form of
body language, is constantly
bubbling and brewing in little Ann Ar-
bor town. This city, about one-tenth
the size of Detroit, has as many dance
events as all of metropolitan Detroit.
Ann Arbor's liberal, open-minded
dance world can be enjoyed by
everyone from the experienced, life-
long dancer to the beginner interested
but ignorant about dance, to those
who just enjoy watching bodies in
notion.
A University student can enjoy dan-
ce all year long at any one of the many
dance theaters located on central
campus.
First, the world renowned Univer-
sity Dance Department, attached to
the Central Campus Recreational
Building has at least one concert a
month throughout the academic year.
These concerts include senior and
graduate theses, student com-
positions, faculty works, lecture
demonstrations, and the Annual
University Dance Company spring
concert. All concerts, except the
University Dance Company's spring
concert, are held in the dance depar-
tment's own Studio A Theatre for an
extremely reasonable price of $3 per
concert. This small, intimate, yet
fully equipped theater, gives the
audience a sense of closeness to the
dancers and enables them to see even
the slightest facial or body
movement. It is a nice change from
the enormous, multi-balcony theaters
where the minute details get lost
somewhere between the performers
and their distant audience.
The dance department's gala event
is the University Dance Company's
Spring Concert, usually in March, at
the Power Center. The department
has a ten year history of collaborating
with the other arts, and next March is
no exception. The concert theme is
Americanism, specifically 20th cen-
tury American artists. The program
will consist of collaborations between
American 20th century composers
Aaron Copland, George Gershwin,
David Borden, and David Gregory,
and choreographers Jessica Fogel,
Peter Sparling, and Bill DeYoung.
Also, a 1920s Doris Humphrey dance
will be reconstructed from Labon
Notation and performed by the Dance
Department students.
The department's combination of
dynamic faculty and eager students
produces invigorating concerts. The
student concerts are especially in-
triguing, with the young, eager
students breaking out of their teacher's
mold and exploding into their own
styles of movement. More information
and a calendar of all dance concerts
can be obtained from the Dance
Department in the fall.
The University Musical Society,
located in Burton Tower, annually
brings to Ann Arbor dance companies
from all over the world. This year, the
U.M.S. will offer six dance features in
their annual dance subscription series
entitled "Choice." The Kalidoskopio
of Greece, a 35-member company
composed of the Athens Folk Dance
Ensemble and the Katseros
Television Bouzouki Orchestra, will
open the season in October. The com-
pany performs both traditional and
modern Greek music and dance.
Three international ballet com-
panies will make their Ann Arbor
debut: Aterballeto, Italy's first
national ballet, the National Folk
Ballet of Yugoslavia, and the Berlin
Ballet. Two modern dance com-
panies, The Murray Louis and The
Lewitzky dance companies, are
Jessica Fogel, Assistant Professor in the University Dance Department,
titled 'Enfield In Winter.'
playing silent classics like The Black
Pirate and Robin Hood to a live ac-
companiment by orchestra and
theater organ that are absurdly fun
nonsense and should never be missed.
Hill Street Cinema, which emerged
just a few years ago, has survived
despite showing its films off campus
(at the Hillel Foundation, 1429 Hill
St.) and features a lot of foreign
classics. They also sell popcorn and
drinks, which is no insignificant detail
if you see a lot of movies.
Mediatrics, an extension of the
University Activities Center, is fun-
ded by the University and sticks to a
pretty conventional, safe schedule,
though they also stage periodic sneak
previews of major Hollywood releases
during the course of the school year.
With so many groups and films
competing against each other, and a
limited audience, times have been
lean for everyone the last few years.
As a result, there's been greater
cooperation between everyone, with
the more conscientious groups
making sure there's no duplication of
schedules and that smaller, special
films aren't up against heavy com-
petition. Three of the groups, Cinema
Guild, Ann Arbor Film Co-op, and
Cinema Two have started joint spon-
sorships of some films, such as Repo
Man and last winter's impressive
staging of Fassbinder's mammoth 15-
hour Berlin Alexanderplatz, a film far
too expensive for any one organization
to afford.
Every group prints up its own set
of poster-size schedule, but a free
publication called the Michigan
Cinema Guide compiles them all into
a convenient, magazine-format
publication that is invaluable.
scheduled in March. Bella Lewitzky,
director of the Lewitzky Dance Com-
pany and a trailblazer in the modern
dance world, is internationally known
for her high energy, non-stop concer-
ts.
Tickets for these University
Musical Society-sponsored perfor-
mances range from $60-$44 for the
four concert series and from $11-$18
for single performances. Tickets and
further information are available at
the Musical Society's office in Burton
Tower, a hard-to-miss central campus
landmark.
A lot of dance is brewing outside of
the University at the half-dozen
private dance studios within walking
distance from campus. All offer dance
classes in either one or more of the
various types of dance, including tap,
ballet, modern jazz, folk, and
ballroom and some studios even have
performing companies.
The Ann Arbor Ballet Theatre on
Church Street is the home of the Ann
Arbor Ballet Theatre Company. This
classical ballet company directed by
Carol Sharp performs twice a year.
The Community School of Ballet, on
East University has the Community
Ballet Workshop, which performs
classical ballet at their annual spring
concert.
The 25-year-old Ann Arbor Civic
Ballet Company, directed by Sylvia
Homer, is based at the Sylvia Dance
Studio on E. Liberty. This company
performs classical and contemporary
ballet works of both local and guest
choreographers. Their concerts are
twice a year, in the fall and spring,
and are reasonably priced at $4 per
concert.
Dance Theatre 2, the only non-
University modern dance company,
resides at the Dance Theatre Studio
on North University. This company
performs bi-annually in early October
and early April.
For those physical, sweat-loving
people, Ann Arbor is loaded with high
energy dance classes. All the in-
stitutions mentioned above except the
University Musical Society offer a
wide variety of dance classes.
The University Dance Department
offers the largest range of classes, in-
cluding modern, ballet, Afro
American, jazz, tap, and composition
These classes are divided into two
categories-those for dance majors
and those for non-majors. Any
University student can register for a
class for non-majors but only a few
with limited enrollment, are offered
each term. Classes for majors are oc
casionally open to non-majors bu
permission of the instructor is
attractions, now it's Mad Max and The
Road Warrior. The Terminator will
probably be around for more than a
few years too.
The groups that sponsor the films
are mostly volunteer organizations,
made up of small, dedicated staffs
who spend a lot of time and energy to
bring the films they see as important
to town. Most of the shows are held in
University lecture halls, with ad-
mission usually $2, more for double
features.
Cinema Guild started it all some 30
years ago, and today still consistently
runs a pretty solid schedule of
classics. They also sponsor the annual
16mm Film Festival, which on a good
year pulls in fascinating shorts from
across the country.
Cinema Two, the second oldest of
the groups, balances the classics with
more recent releases. Alternative Ac-
tion does pretty much the same, with
an added interest in films that are
political, or socially topical. Ann Ar-
bor Film Co-op sticks to more recent
films, hits of the last couple of years.
The Michigan Theater is a small
town version of a movie palace,
slowly under the process of
restoration, that runs the whole
gamut of cult films, recent hits, and
emphasizes the classics.. The
Michigan has plenty of charm and
really is the only place to see a Bogart
vehicle, or a Frank Capra comedy
The Michigan also has begun to mount
lavish revivals of period films,
Murray Lewis: Takes things in artistic stride.