This Saturday evening, Lawrence's student dance troupe "Reinvented" the energy of Stansbury Theatre and dazzled a full house of spectators during its 2009 spring performance. With a graceful French name that means "chaos," Mêlée displayed the beauty that can come of unreserved creative collaboration, of artistic chaos.
British composer Stephen McNeff spent last week here at Lawrence University as an artist in residence, collaborating with student composers and holding question and answer sessions. McNeff is popular in England especially for his work in opera, children's music and musical theater.
For everything that distinguishes Lawrence from other universities, there are a few aspects of the small Appleton campus that tie it to other colleges, and the a cappella tradition is one of them. If so inclined, one could find a cappella versions of thousands of songs on YouTube, all from various college a cappella groups.
Well, it is official: 2009 is already an infinitely better year for music than 2008. Sure, last year we romped in the forest with Fleet Foxes, we giggled to some of Montreal's innuendos, and we got a lesson in old-school rock and roll from The Raconteurs. But 2009 has already, not even halfway through, seen some major hitters that have knocked those groups out of the water.
I'm not quite sure what I was expecting of the Decemberists before I entered Milwaukee's beautiful Riverside Theater last night, but I can say without a doubt that my expectations were far, far surpassed. Colin Meloy and company put one of the finest, most memorable shows I've seen in the past few years.
Despite our love of the classics -- i.e., dead white European dudes -- taught in these illustrious halls, plenty of noteworthy artists operate outside of the Lawrence bubble. In this column, we'll cover those Midwestern artists -- writers, sculptors, photographers, filmmakers, actors, etc.
That "Battle of the Smithsonian" is a sequel should have clued me in that I did not need to spend six dollars to see it in a theater. Sequels are tricky. For a second film, you expect some new tricks mixed with the old gags. If you make a sequel, you need to be rather creative in making it at least as good as the first without relying on the same formula.
You probably don't know Alex Bunke; he seems to belong to that oh-so-small minority of students on this campus whose face you cannot put to a name. However, regardless of the fact that this senior has been under the radar -- or perhaps more appropriately, under a rock -- for the last four years, this surprisingly does not reflect all that poorly on his artistic career at Lawrence.