After years of listening to Andrea Bocelli, I thought of opera as a beautiful expression of human emotion. When I walked into the theatre, I was amazed by the size of the room, the elegance of the lights, and the size of the orchestra. When the orchestra began to play, I deeply appreciated the unity and chemistry of the large orchestra, all members playing as one. First impressions can mean so much.
Add comment December 4th, 2013I particularly liked the photograph of the homeless man selling snowballs of different sizes. This simple gesture was both moving and inspiring to me. In a life full of lemons, this man has successfully made lemonade.
Add comment November 21st, 2013Puck was undoubtedly my highlight for this production, as he (or she) single-handedly created the magical atmosphere of the fairy realm. I was also mesmerized by Oberon’s character, who had a uniquely regal air about him.
Add comment November 21st, 2013It was interesting to see how forthright Juliet was upon discovering that Romeo had heard her entire soliloquy. Her surprise visibly faded within a mere two seconds, slowly fading into confidence.
Add comment October 27th, 2013Music- In the first piece, the “Sound Space Tap Dance,” I thought it was amazing to hear how each individual’s rhythm blended together into a harmony of sounds. Their melodies created discrete, mathematical, metric units of sound that made the dance truly come to life.
Add comment October 27th, 2013Just Kids: The Vietnam War
The Vietnam War, also known as The Second Indochina War, lasted from November 1st 1955 to the fall of Saigon on April 30th 1975. The Communist regime, the Vietnam People’s Army of North Vietnam used traditional war tactics when battling the French and American backed South Vietnamese forces. The Viet Cong, a lightly armed South Vietnamese communist common front directed by the North, fought a vicious guerilla war against the anti-communist forces of the South.
The United States felt it quite necessary to support the French effort against North Vietnam, seeing this war as part of the larger containment effort directed against the spread of communism. The U.S. presidents of the Cold War era felt that if they failed to take action in Vietnam, it would inevitably lead to “critical psychological, political and economic consequences” for U.S. interests in the region. Moreover, “in the absence of effective and timely counteraction”, the “loss” of any single country in Southeast Asia would have “probably lead to relatively swift submission to or an alignment with communism by the remaining countries of this group.” This idea became known as the domino theory. The government of North Vietnam on the other hand, along with the Viet Cong, saw South Vietnam as a “puppet state” and sought to reunify Vietnam under a single government.
Throughout the early 1960’s, the U.S. heavily bombed Laos and Cambodia in an effort to eradicate the Viet Cong. U.S. involvement further increased in 1968, after the Tet Offensive. Eventually, due to the extreme and ubiquitous unpopularity of U.S. involvement, the process known as Vietnamization began and U.S. troops were gradually withdrawn. U.S. involvement finally ceased in 1975. A year later, Vietnam was reunited. The staggering death tolls of this war clearly explain why it was so unpopular to the American public, as 58,220 U.S. service members were killed in the conflict. This war left an indelible blemish on the presidency of Lyndon Johnson who refused to run for a second term in office. It is also regarded by many as the only war ever lost by the U.S.
Here, Goshka Macuga presents Colin Powell, a sculpture of the former Secretary of State during his 2003 United Nations speech on weapons of mass destruction. The sculpture is inspired by the replica of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, the anti-war painting which usually hangs in the assembly, but was covered during Powell’s speech. Amazingly, this simple sculpture successfully captures a cross section of history. The contrasting artwork is modern art, a type of art not meant to tell about history, but about self expression.
1 comment September 15th, 2013
