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Archive for the ‘Performing Arts’ Category

Thang Ta: A journey

(Through the history of Kangleipak)

from an ancient combat art to a popular modern sport  [3rd section]

-6th Part-

(a) The Sports aspect:

However, there is another equally important aspect of Thang Ta (the sport aspect), which was left unheeded or not so seriously considered. Though the expressive or the performing form of Thang Ta on stage looks very impressive & attractive, but some modern Thang Ta lovers & practitioners fear that it might eventually just remain as any other exhibitory item or a commodity product. As the time has changed much, with the scientific advancement, & the availability of many futuristic weapons of mass destruction, training in martial arts for warfare is not as useful as in olden days, even the chance of using it in self-defense has much reduced.

What remains to learn is the spirit, the inner knowledge, & essence of the art, which has taken thousands of years, blood & sweat of our fore-fathers to accumulate. The understanding of which not only fulfills one’s physical (including health & fitness), inner & spiritual necessity, but more importantly fosters the cultural identity & the nationalistic pride. But, the problem is to convey the message effectively to the youths in this fast, busy, highly competitive, result & career oriented, impatient present society. To be sincere, very few have the time, hard work, seriousness, sincerity & dedication- which too with no lucrative career option; becoming a warrior (that too of swords & spears etc., in this nuclear world) which generally is not the intended by many – as required in the teaching style of olden days.  Read more...

During the recent years, the world of Arts and Entertainment in the Middle East has taken a new form. Unlike the past where painting, architecture, sculpture, theater and cinema were the only mediums that creative people could use for their artistic expression, the present world offers a plethora of choices. Whether you specialize in performing arts like various dance forms, can mesmerize your audience with orchestras, symphonies and bands, want to use art exhibitions and galleries to display and publicize your graphic art, calligraphy, painting or sculpture, get the word out about your metal art, using contemporary channels of mass communication like getting listed in online business directories can help.

People into the entertainment business also need to give adequate exposure to their business and there is no better and cost effective way of advertisement than using online business directories. However, your chosen online directory should have relevant business categories to list your business. Getting listed under “Restaurants and Bars” when you actually own a tourist resort with a gaming zone is no way to further your business. It is here that d3ayat can help.

This online directory has many categories under Arts and Entertainment where you can submit the details of your business, product or service. The main categories under which you may submit your business listing include Arts Exhibits; Arcades & Amusements; Children’s & Family Entertainment; Carnivals, Fairs & Festivals; Event Planning; Game Centers; Entertainment Industry; Performing Arts; Music; Movies, Videos, & DVDs; Gifts & Novelties; Visual Arts; Cultural Attractions, Events & Facilities. In case you want to dig deeper to come across a more specific category suitable for your business, you can check the sub-sections under each of these main categories to choose the right one. By getting listed under the relevant business category in d3ayat, you stand to get prospective customers who are most likely to strike a deal and help you further your business. In other words, d3ayat listing can help you get focused visitors who are likely to buy from you rather than getting you stray visitors who may browse through your offerings and just leave.  Read more...

Award-winning magician Jeff Grow will present his one man show, Jeff Grow: The Art of the Con, at the Adelphi University Performing Arts Center (AU PAC), 1 South Avenue, Garden City, NY on Wednesday, December 1, 2010, at 7:30 p.m. His new magic show features an evening of conniving tricks that bring the audience into the magical world he creates on stage. As the winner of two 2009 Innovative Theatre Awards (IT Awards), Mr. Grow’s engaging personality and con artistry will leave audience members in a state of wonder. Whether Jeff is entertaining guests with intimate sleight of hand miracles or presenting stage magic for hundreds, he does not just puzzle his guests, but rather leaves them delighted.

Jeff Grow’s career spans from live shows in venues throughout New York City and Europe, to films and national and international commercials. His most recent production, Creating Illusion, which was directed by Jessi D. Hill, received outstanding solo performer and outstanding performance art production honors from the IT Awards. In addition to performing, Mr. Grow consults on original creative content for films, commercials, and theatre. Also, Mr. Grow is regularly invited to incorporate his magic into a slew of corporate and private client’s events.

The simplicity and straightforward nature of Mr. Grow’s performances makes them accessible to a wide scope of audiences, from Fortune 500 companies to cutting edge arts festivals. NYTheatre.com said, “Grow is an appealing technician who brings a boyish charm to a group willing to be fooled. He is adept at slowing down his motions, conning us into thinking we will see how he does the trick as he explains it.” By mixing together sleight of hand and surreal mind reading, Mr. Grow explores the various facets of the art of illusion.  Read more...

Before the projects can begin, we spend one class period looking at the conventions and themes of traditional and literary ballads—rhyme, mercer, and stanza.

Narratives marked by the presence of supernatural forces, secrets, temptation, and violence, dialogues with questions that create mystery and a sense of ill-omen. That night, the students write a five-minute stream-of-consciousness piece that starts with the word guilt, and then they free write for 3CMlO minutes on their associations with the word, the physical and emotional and spiritual experience of guilt, images it calls up, ways it arises, recurs, and is sometimes resolved.

Some of these pieces turn out to be quite personal and private, so I ask students to keep the writing in their notebooks to revisit while reading the poem and creating the project. Next day we read Coleridge’s account of his nightmares, “The Pains of Sleep,” written perhaps five years after “Mariner,” in which he describes three nights of praying aloud “in anguish and in agony / Up starting from the fiendish crowd / Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me”. In nightmare he experiences a sense of wrong, a need for revenge, a powerless will, “desire with loathing strangely mixed / on wild or hateful objects fixed,” and an inexplicable shame and guilt over “Deeds to be hid which were not hid, / Which all confused I could not know / Whether I suffered, or I did”.

I tell the class a little about Coleridge’s sufferings from opium addiction and the nightmares that accompanied his efforts at withdrawal, as well as his statement in Biographia Literaria that in collaborating on the Lyrical Ballads with Wordsworth, where “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” appeared, “it was agreed, that my endeavors should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith” (Coleridge 264).  Read more...

Why take time for projects on “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”? Why teach the poem at all, except, perhaps, in a British literature survey or a study of the Romantics or an AP course?

One of my students offered an answer last year in her project proposal: “This ballad is an old sailor’s tale that travels to lands all over the map, a tale that takes any listener from any time and place through a journey of enlightenment about self.” For this reason, Mariel gathered the class around her in a circle and unpacked from a battered suitcase the vintage album she’d made with stained pages on which she’d written, in faded ink, passages from all seven sections of the poem.

But she had replaced certain “key words” with equivalents in various foreign languages “to convey my sense of the poem’s mystery and universality.” For each page she made a visual representation of “the symbolism that lingers in the verbal images”—a different medium for each mood, including collage, cutouts, charcoal, and fabrics. “I want to show that this ballad is a universal story that can liberate all who read or hear it.”

Mariel had been struck by the penance required of the Mariner—the agonizing “wrench” that compels him to recount, over and over, his experience of sin, guilt, isolation, and grace.

I pass, like night, from land to land; I have strange power of speech; that moment that his face I see, I know the man that must hear me: To him my tale I teach. (Coleridge 23)  Read more...