4B - Thursday, April 5, 2007 {the b-side} The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com More than dancing SENIOR THESIS CONCERT COMBINES CHARITY WITH ART By CAITLIN COWAN Daily Arts Writer It seems as if many artists - even the starving ones - want a piece of the pie. Be it Mike Baldwin's "Will Work for Food" cartoon series or the Cunninlynguists's sublime underground rap album Will Rap for Will Dance Food. Six seniors in the School of Music, The- fOr Food ater and Dance will per- Today, form their senior thesis tomorrow concert "Will Dance for and Saturday Food" tonight, tomor- row and Saturday at the at 8 p.m. Betty Pease Studio The- $5 ater, located inside the Atithe Betty Pease Dance Building next to Studio Theater the CCRB at 8 p.m. The public perfor- mance is a requirement for the bachelor's of fine arts in dance degree. "We each had to choreograph a solo, and we also choreo- graphed a group work," concert participant Natalie Griffith said. In addition to dance elements, the dancers used a range of dif- ferent multimedia components in some of the solos, which feature projection videos, photographs and music created by Univer- sity students. While planning their concert, Anna Bratton said she and her fellow dancers began to think of their graduation and agreed the future of a dancer is unstable at best. "Dancers don't make any money. We joked that we might have to dance just to get food. And that was it! We decided to call the show 'Will Dance for Food,' " she said. But for these dancers, a snappy title wasn't enough. "We got the idea to make it a service-oriented show," Griffith said. They decided to take their dance concert out of the realm of pure aesthetics and turn it into a socially conscious art form. "We thought we could take food donations," Bratton said. The performance and the six young women behind it have partnered with the Ann Arbor Food Gatherers, a food rescue 4 Six Dance senior performa scene from their collaborative thesis project, "Will Dance For Food," program founded by Zingerman's Delica- tessen in 1988 that supplies food to soup kitchens, daycares and other institutions. But instead of a monetary donation, the dancers instead chose to donate another commodity that's even more precious to the Food Gatherers: food itself. "We're asking the audience members to bring canned goods or nonperishable food to donate," Griffith said. The dancers have used their publicity to solicit food dona- tions from faculty, students, friends and family this week, and hope their food drive will culminate in a crowning moment at the show this weekend. While all the dancers in the show are involved in the community, they've never partnered with a local organization to bring art and service together until now, so the Food Gatherers were eager to work with them. "They seemed really excited about this," Bratton said. "They dropped off three big barrels for us to fill up with food. And I hope we can fill them, and maybe more." The dancers have chosen to use the event to solicit food donations, but the show itself isn't concerned with food or eating. "It's a really diverse show," Griffith said. "There are hip-hop elements, jazz, modern dance, ballet movements and lots of variety in music styles." Each dancer will perform a themed solo piece. "My solo is inspired by the Yoruba culture in West Africa," Bratton said. "It doesn't really mimic the movement of the Yoruba people but it uses their ideas on art and life." Nicole Jamieson's solo blends themes of personal experience and weather to create a piece in small sections with titles like "Severe Thunderstorm" and "Partially Cloudy With a Chance of Rain." The dancers believe activist art is espe- cially relevant to the world today. "Art for art's sake is one thing," Jamieson said, "but art that betters the world and the commu- nity is even better." TASSI From page 1B that shark-like grin of his. Robert DeNiro, since playing a young Vito Corleone in "The Godfather Part II," has contin- ued his mobster parade in new classics like "Goodfellas," "Casi- no" and "Analyze This." Both of them could retire from acting forever right now and still be remembered for giving some of the best onscreen performances in history, but they soldier on, bringing their old school work ethic to each new project. Our young actors stand to learn a thing or two from them. Out of our "new school" of actors, who will be remem- bered? I don't mean whose names will we still recognize when we get older. I mean whose names will our children recognize, who will be born years after these actors were at their peak? As sad as I am to say it, I'll probably remember who Ben Affleck is my entire life, and I know I'll never forget Vin Diesel. Over time, both will fade from the public's memory. Will my kid know who John- ny Depp is? Hopefully. Orlando Bloom? Hopefully not. I can see the future: My teen- age son stares at me skeptically as I tell him Keira Knightley used to be hot, and instead he points to the posters on his wall of Shiloh Jolie-Pitt and Suri Cruise, nodding his head. My daughter flips through the Oscar issue of People magazine where a silver-haired Leonardo DiCaprio finally wins his first statue after being nominated 13 times. I gather them up for family movie night, and natu- rally, we have a library of clas- sics that I've schooled them in. My son yells "Die Hard" and my' daughter pleads for "Titanic." We settle on the most timeless love story and action film of my generation, "Top Gun." Some things just have to live forever. - Actually, Tassi already has a couple of kids: Topper Harley and Neo. E-mail him at tassi umich.edu. RAMAYANA: its own x story in a different place Disagree? Agree? Can you defend yourself? Come on over and grab an application. 413 E. Huron St. From page 1B pretation with the aforementioned artistic modifications, performed in Indonesian (English for Sunday's performance) and less than two hours long. The husband-and-wife team of Soegito and Yulisa Mastati are the creative minds featured in this year's performance. Both gradu- ates of STSI Surakarta, the most highly regarded institute for the arts in Indonesia, Soegito and Mas- tati have spent the last two years at the University teaching puppetry and Javanese dance classes respec- tively. Mastati dances professionally in Indonesia, having studied the tra- ditional form since she was eight years old, and Soegito has also been invested in his specialty since childhood. While there have been other wayang kulit performances in the U.S., this will be the first combined gamelan/dance interpretation of the Ramayana, Kimura said. Last year the group did a wayang sando- sa production of the Mahabharata. Although the University has hosted visiting Southeast Asian artists each year for the last sev- eral years, Soegito emphasized the importance of appreciating what they have to offer now as it's not always guaranteed that the Uni- versity will have the opportunity - or funding - to invite guest art- ists. "We are so proud and so lucky because we had a good opportuni- ty to introduce (our) culture, and I hope the Javanese programs like puppetry or dance can continue at the University of Michigan," Soegito said. "I think it's good for American students." Another decidedly different take on the classic Sanskrit epic is the multimedia performance piece Pornrat Damhrung's Thai theater class has been working on this past semester. "Seeda, Tell Our Stories" focuses on the Sita character's point of view instead of the hero Rama's. Two years ago, Damhrung put together a similar production, "Sita: Sri Rama?" The piece asked whether Sita serves only the honor of Rama, or if she deserves to be a richer, more com- plex character. But Damhrung will readily tell you she is not the first to take on what some would deem a feminist take on the Ramayana. "Even in the history (of) India itself, there's a lot of stories about her," she said, "women writing about her in particular local com- munities - they have songs dedi- cated to her and her life." The character of Sita remains especially interesting because she's seen as the ideal woman in many societies where the Ramayana spread. Portrayals of Sita in Thai- land usually marked her as a quiet character, faithful and waiting to be saved by her valiant husband. But in Thailand there are also many folk stories illustrating the sheer power of women. Stories with female war- riors and fighters, wise and knowl- edgeable women, great travelers and even tricksters, instead of sim- ply, as Damhrung said, "being quiet and being the good supporter, the good wife." "Those types of things made me interested in why Sita in classi- cal literature has become an ideal image of women, an ideal image for society to teach how girls behave - because there are other ways to believe aswell," she said. Thus, Damhrung's project became not just a Sita-centric ver- sion of a legendary tale, but a social commentary. "I had to look beyond Thailand: 'OK, this is not just Thai problems, it is everywhere in South Asia and Southeast Asia,' "she said. In contrast to the more modern- ized interpretations of the Ramaya- na by the dance/gamelan-ensemble and Damhrung's Sita-centric the- ater piece, Sreyashi Dey will lead her dance company, Srishti Dances of India, in a more traditional per- formance - Odissi. "(Odissi) is visiually very strik- ing - there's a lot of very elaborate hand gestures and facial expres- sions, very fast footwork," Dey said. "It's a very expressive form of dance ... a combination of graceful and soft and strong movements. -- -'- -'pe rAaln ha - - TOP: Soegito instructs the actors. ABOVE: Gamelan players rehearse a gongan MIDNIGHI MOVIES EVERY SATURDAY NIGHT JEAN RENO NATALIE PORTMAN THE PROFESSIONAL SATURDAY, APRIL 7 @ MIDNIGHT FOR MORE INFO VISIT MYSPACE.COM/STATETHEATREA2 terized by elaborate, brightly col- ored silk costumes, said Dey, who performs across the United States and India. Before relocating to Ann Arbor, she recently taught Indian classical dance at Carnegie Mellon University. Dey's performances on April 13th and 14th will correspond with the Thai performances. Before Dey and her company tell Rama's epic through classical movement, there will be an invocation to the gods. With performances this coming Sunday and the followingweekend, the Indian, Thai and Indonesian versions of the Ramayana are "all a combined effort ... to ensure the diversity of the Ramayana across Asia," Dey said. Originating in India sometime between 500 and 100 B.C., the Ramayana spread throughout Asia, and different traditions and ver- sions of the story sprung up over the last two and a half millen- nia. The Thai version is called the Ramakien and its faithful wife is Seeda instead of Sita; that version's Kh' a rn -- i ba -- -- crr n the Reamkr. In some interpreta- tions, Sita dies or is cast off to a dif- ferent land at the epic's conclusion, and in others she asks the earth to swallowher whole. "I think people will be able to see the similarities and differences (between the performances)," Dey said. "The source is in India and (the story) traveled to these other countries - (the audience) will be able to see the regional differences in these other performances." Sullivan echoed Dey's comments. Hesaidthepointis toshowthe mul- tiplicity and diversity of the Rama- yana but also show that they're all part of the same story. "(The Ramayana) has all these variations ... sort of an example of early globalization," Sullivan said. Just as different goods spread through Asia via trade, the Rama- yana traveled and evolved through storytelling. "(The versions) take on their own meaning. They have their own cultural identity in (each) space," he added. "Even though it's all related it's still recognizable as its own story in a different place." L ' E 3EPORR Do you experience a warning sign, such as numbness or visual disturbance, before a headache? 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