Bryn Mawr College

2007-08

 

The Hot Club of San Francisco
Silent Surrealism
Saturday, Sept. 15
8 p.m., Goodhart Theater

Picture Paris in the 1920s when intimate clubs played host to the new arts of cinema and jazz. The Hot Club of San Francisco recalls that era with a mix of rarely seen silent surrealist films and live music. These virtuosic exponents of "gypsy jazz" bring the distinctive music made famous by Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli into the 21st century with new arrangements and compositions by stellar lead guitarist Paul Mehling. Hot Club provides live music accompaniment to to films including the slapstick You Tell One and silent horror flick The Fall of the House of Usher.

"Intricate, scorching and often brilliant …"
— Accoustic Guitar

Yin Mei
Nomad: the River
Friday, Sept. 28
8 p.m., Goodhart Theater

Nomad: the River conveys with stunning poetic clarity the impact of memory, history and cultural traditions on the journey of life. Beguiling and mysterious, this multimedia dance-theater piece invokes the potent force of two fabled rivers — China's Yellow River and the Ganges in India — plumbing Yin Mei's experiences as a child during China's Cultural Revolution and her subsequent path as an intercultural artist in America.

"The greatly gifted Yin Mei works from a deep place ... Nomad brushes our mind with images whose poetry ensnares us, whose enigmas taunt us." — The Village Voice

Supported by Dance Advance, a program of the Philadelphia Center for Arts and Heritage, funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and administered by the University of the Arts.

 

Thaddeus Phillips
¡El Conquistador!
Friday and Saturday, Dec. 7 and 8
7 and 9:30 p.m., Goodhart Theater

¡El Conquistador! was nominated for a 2007 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Off Broadway Solo Show. Innovative theater artist Thaddeus Phillips was also nominated for a New York Drama League Award for portraying Polonio, a peasant who flees his war-ravaged village to become a soap opera star but instead finds a job as the doorman of the New World Building. Its crazy inhabitants are actual Latin American TV stars who appear via videophone system. Conceived, performed and designed by Phillips with capable collaborators, this uproarious and moving performance resembles a foreign film, epic history and telenovela.

"[Phillips'] DNA might hold traces of Charlie Chaplin, Rowan Atkinson and, perhaps, Einstein." — Philadelphia Inquirer

 

India Jazz Suites
Friday, Feb. 15
8 p.m., Goodhart Theater

India Jazz Suites brings together Pandit Chitresh Das, a master of the Indian dance form kathak, and Emmy Award-winner Jason Samuels Smith (Bring in Da' Noise, Bring in Da' Funk), who's been called "one of the brilliant young talents reanimating the art of tap dancing" ( Voice of Dance ). Their groundbreaking collaboration explores the movement and dance rhythms of their respective forms, accompanied by North Indian classical and jazz music ensembles. India Jazz Suites won the prestigious Isadora Duncan Dance Award for Best Ensemble Performance of the Year (2007).

"Alone they're capitivating. Together, they're magic — Voice of Dance

A pre-show talk on kathak and the expanding boundaries of traditional Indian dance will be presented at 7:15 p.m.

Il Fondamento
Friday, March 28
8 p.m., Thomas Great Hall

The 17-member early music ensemble Il Fondamento will fill Thomas Great Hall with the sonorities of period instruments in a program highlighting music from all across Europe. The Brussels-based group is celebrated both for its interpretations of more familiar Baroque pieces and for unearthing lesser known works. Il Fondamento and its artistic director Paul Dombrecht have received multiple honors including a Diapason d'Or, four stars in Le Monde de la Musique and The Early Music Review's Disc of the Month award.

"The orchestra Il Fondamento is perfect through and through … [with] subtle, colorful nuances and an ever expressive momentum."— Le Soir, Belgium