Washington College Dance Company Presents Spring Concert

CHESTERTOWN – The Washington College Dance Company, under the direction of Professor Karen L. Smith, will present its annual Spring Dance Concertat the College’s Decker Theater in the Gibson Performing Arts Center, Thursday through Saturday, April 22-24. The concert, which will kick off the beginning of National Dance Week, commences with a special matinee for local schoolchildren on Thursday, April 22, at 1:15 p.m. Subsequent performances are Friday, April 23, at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday, April 24, at 2 p.m.

This year’s program will feature a variety of dance styles—classical and contemporary ballet, modern dance, jazz, hip hop, tap, lyrical, and pom—performed by more than 35 students.

Ensemble dances include “Veins” and “Chicago Medley” choreographed by Riley Carbonneau ’10; “Come Dance With Me” choreographed by Kathy Bands ‘10; “Celtic Sundance” choreographed by Nichole Hovermale ’10; “Curbside Prophet” and “Are you Gonna Go My Way?” choreographed by Rachel Dittman ’11; “At Last” and “Everytime We Touch” choreographed by Jessica Hohne ’12; “Jazz: A Retrospective” choreographed by Alyssa Velazquez ’12; “Hit the Floor” choreographed by Elle O’Brien ‘12; and “ABC–Dance with Me” choreographed by dance program director Professor Karen L Smith.

A trio of choreographers – Rachel Dittman ‘11, Sarah Hartge ’12, and Megan Gentry ’12 – will perform their contemporary number. Tap and modern pieces by Mary Fletcher ’10 and two ballets – ”Brahms Waltz” and “Quasi Una Fantasia,” choreographed by ¬student dancers, round out the program.

The show also will feature three dances from the repertoire of Sho’ Troupe, the Washington College Dance Team, titled “Diva” choreographed by Elle O’Brien, “Let’s Get Loud” choreographed by Emily Hordesky ’12, and “B.O.B.” choreographed by Stephanie Golub ’13.

Three solos will be performed by choreographers Mary Fletcher, Jessica Hohne, and Emily Hordesky. A duet will be performed by choreographers Kathy Bands and Ally Happel ’11.

In addition to the choreographers, performers in the concert include: Juniors Jenny Hobbs, Eve Nealon, Sara Prickett, Kelly Topita; Sophomores Ryan Adams-Brown, Amanda Johnson, Virginia Long, Grace Swanson, Emily Simpson, Kris Smith, Veronica Spolarich, Kristian Wilson; and First year students Emma Bolles-Bevins, Cortnee Doll, Devon Garges, Tasha Guzie, Aubrey Hastings, Jessica Kreppel, Laurie McDade, Asmae M’nebhi, Kelly Sipko, and Kimberly Zepeda.

The Spring Dance Concert will feature a raffle for a chance to win “A Night at the Movies” and “Eastern Shore” themed baskets filled with goodies. Tickets for the raffle cost $1 and can be purchased during all three performances. The winners will be drawn at the end of the Saturday performance.

The Spring Dance Concert is open to the public; a $1 donation is welcomed. For more information, call 410/778-7237.

Washington College Focuses on Local Food, Nutrition in Celebrating "Earth Day" 2010

CHESTERTOWN – Washington College will mark Earth Day 2010 on Thursday, April 22, by celebrating local food sources with a mid-day farmer’s market on campus, a lunch menu based on ingredients from area growers, and a documentary film about an activist mom’s efforts to improve school lunches. The following evening, Friday, April 23 at 7 p.m., in Hynson Lounge, Hodson Hall, journalist Sally Fallon Morrell, author of Nourishing Traditions, will discuss the dangers of low-fat processed foods and the benefits of natural food sources.

Thursday, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., vendor tables along the Cater Walk (the brick thoroughfare that runs in front of the new Hodson Hall Commons) will sell vegetables, flowers, herbs and meats. In the new dining hall inside the Commons, which is open to the public, Chef Kent Tilton’s lunchtime menu will be designed around locally sourced ingredients. The offerings will include salad greens from Chesapeake Greenhouse, asparagus from Godfrey’s Farm, and bacon from Cedar Run Farm—all three located in Sudlersville—plus grass-fed beef from St. Brigid’s Farm in Kennedyville, Bay Blue cheese (Maryland’s first raw-milk cheese) from Chapel’s Country Creamery in Easton, and oysters harvested from the Chesapeake Bay. Donna Dhue, the Director of Dining Services at Washington College, also hopes to have local tomatoes, honey, and herbs on her menus, depending on vendor availability that day.

Also inside the Commons, in the first-floor performance space known as “The Egg,” the documentary Two Angry Moms will be playing continuously from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Presented by the Department of Anthropology, the 2007 film follows nutrition crusader Susan Rubin, founder of Better School Food, as she fights to put healthier options onto school lunch trays.

Dhue says the message behind the day’s events reflects that of the broader “locavore” movement, which encourages consumers to buy fresh foods closer to home. Buying locally provides fresher, more flavorful foods, supports farmers and small businesses in the community, and reduces the cost and pollution of transporting foods long distances. Dhue hopes the Earth Day offerings will increase students’ awareness of how consumer choices affect local land use and the environment. “I also want this to be a fun day for students, staff, faculty and the greater Chestertown community to come enjoy some great food from local growers,” she adds. “And to learn more about how food choices impact the health of the individual and the community.”

Friday night’s speaker, Sally Fallon Morrell, is an outspoken critic of the food-processing industry who views “low-fat propaganda” as a conspiracy to enrich businesses at the expense of Americans’ health and vitality. She decries the overuse of refined carbohydrates and oils derived from corn and soybeans and calls for a return to organic farming, pasture-fed livestock and whole foods.

Fallon and her research colleague, Mary G. Enig, Ph.D., an expert on lipids, defend animal fats and cholesterol as vital factors in the human diet. They also stress the value of traditional broths and age-old methods of preserving and cooking foods. Presented by the Anthropology Department, the lecture is free and open to the public.

Washington College Presents "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum"

CHESTERTOWN – The Washington College Department of Drama will stage the musical “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, April 15-17 at 8 p.m. in the new Decker Theatre, Gibson Center for the Arts.

The play’s famous opening number sums up what audiences can expect: “Old situations, new complications, nothing portentous or polite. Tragedy tomorrow. Comedy tonight!” The popular song helped further the career of composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, who turned 80 on March 22 of this year, and it sets the tone perfectly for what follows on stage: bawdy, rowdy fun.

Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart (the latter wrote the movie Tootsie and the TV show Mash) created the musical’s book, drawing heavily from ancient farces by the Roman playwright Plautus (c. 254–184 BC). The plot follows the adventures of the wily slave Pseudolus, who wants his freedom so badly that he will do anything to win it. That includes using all the age-old comic devices—mistaken identity, lying, dressing in drag, threats, deception—and, of course, singing.

The show also includes a bevy of beauties, a young hero and his love, the battle-ax and her henpecked husband, their hysterical servant, a procurer, a befuddled old man in search of his missing children, a vain general, and three clowns who play multiple roles.

Forum was originally conceived as a vehicle for old-time comedians who had appeared in vaudeville and burlesque shows. Consequently, it relies on old-school comic devices, or “shtick” from that era. Think Jerry Lewis, Jack Benny, Milton Berle, Phil Silvers – if you are of a certain generation. For contemporary audiences, think Eddie Murphy, Jim Carrey, David Allen Grier.

Students in lead roles include Stephan Jordan as the slave Pseudolus; his twin brother Antoine Jordan as Lycus, purveyor of courtesans; Josh Smith as Hysterium, the chief slave of a well-to-do Roman citizen; and Michael Zurawski as the young Hero, who falls in love with the virgin Philia, played by Nina Sharp. Professor Jason Rubin directs, and choreography is by Professor Polly Sommerfeld. Musical director Kate Bennett plays keyboard and is accompanied by Ian Trusheim on bass and Jake Deal on drums.

To reserve tickets ($8 adults; $5 students) call 410-778-7835, or email drama_tickets@washcoll.edu.

Legendary Chesapeake Skipjack Captains to Appear with Author Christopher White at Washington College

"Skipjack: The Story of America's Last Sailing Oystermen"

On Sunday, April 25th, Christopher White, author of the newly published and critically-acclaimed book, Skipjack: The Story of America's Last Sailing Oystermen (St. Martin's Press), will appear at the Decker Theatre on the campus of Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland. Joining White will be four legendary skipjack captains from the Eastern Shore, including 89-year old Captain Arthur Daniels, Jr. and his son Captain Stan Daniels, both of Deal Island, plus Captain Wade Murphy, Jr. and Captain Stanley Larrimore of Tilghman Island.

Skipjack: America's Last Sailing Oystermen is the story of a quickly vanishing way of life and a culture unique to the Chesapeake Bay. The skipjack, an iconic wooden sailing vessel, has been used for dredging oysters since the nineteenth century. Once numbering in the hundreds, the number of working skipjacks has fallen to little more than a handful as the annual oyster harvest has been drastically reduced due to disease, pollution, and mounting social and economic pressures. At Washington College, the author and captains will be speaking up about the traditions and future of this singular way of life. A way of life that has sustained the watermen and their communities for generations is now on the verge of extinction.

Christopher White moved to Tilghman Island for two years in order to immerse himself in the watermen's culture. During that time he crewed on skipjacks owned by the island's most formidable captains, such as Captain Wade Murphy, Jr. of the Rebecca T. Ruark and Captain Stanley Larrimore of the Lady Katie. White also ventured down to Deal Island to work with the Chesapeake's oldest working skipjack captain, 89-year old Arthur "Art" Daniels, Jr. and his sons and grandsons aboard the skipjack City of Crisfield.

The book that came of out this experience chronicles a life of hardship and frequent danger as these men work through the winter navigating unpredictable waters and an equally volatile economic seafood marketplace. The story beautifully reveals the abiding passion these watermen hold for working the waters of the Chesapeake Bay.

Skipjack: America's last Sailing Watermen is co-sponsored by the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience and the Center for Environment and Society at Washington College. The event will also include an exhibition of skipjack-inspired art, including photography by Marion Warren, A. Aubrey Bodine, M.C. Wooten, Constance Stuart Larrabee and others, plus ship models, poetry and a post-program reception. All events will take place in the Daniel Z. Gibson Center for the Arts at Washington College in Chestertown, Md.. The conversation with Christopher White and the Chesapeake watermen will begin at 5:00 p.m.

For more information or to make reservations, contact Michael Buckley, Program Manager, C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, Washington College (410) 810-7156, or emailmbuckley3@washcoll.edu. This event is free and open to the public but reservations are strongly suggested.

About the Starr Center

The C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience explores our nation's history—and particularly the legacy of its Founding era—in innovative ways. Through educational programs, scholarship, and public outreach, and especially by supporting and fostering the art of written history, the Starr Center seeks to bridge the divide between past and present, and between the academic world and the public at large. From its base in the circa-1746 Custom House along Chestertown's colonial waterfront, the Center also serves as a portal onto a world of opportunities for Washington College students. Its guiding principle is that now more than ever, a wider understanding of our shared past is fundamental to the continuing success of America's democratic experiment. For more information on the Center, visit http://starrcenter.washcoll.edu.

American Pictures Series at Smithsonian Features Civil War Historian James M. McPherson

CHESTERTOWN, MD – On Saturday, April 10, Civil War historian James McPherson will kick off the 2010 “American Pictures” series with a discussion of Alexander Gardner’s stirring 1862 photograph “Confederate Dead by a Fence on the Hagerstown Road, Antietam,” one of the first pictures to bring the shocking realities of war before the eyes of the American public.

            A joint program of Washington College, the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the “American Pictures” series offers a highly original approach to the visual arts, pairing great works of art with leading figures of American culture. This spring's all-star line-up features a trio of Pulitzer Prize-winners: McPherson, cartoonist/author Jules Feiffer (who appears on April 17), and cultural historian David Hackett Fischer, who will appear on Saturday, May 1. Each speaker chooses a single powerful image and investigates its meanings, revealing how artworks reflect American identity and inspire creativity in many different fields. The series director is historian and essayist Adam Goodheart, Hodson Trust-Griswold Director of the college's C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience.

            James McPherson is America’s leading historian of the Civil War. He won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, which was a New York Times bestseller and is widely acclaimed as the best single-volume history of the Civil War ever published. The success of Battle Cry of Freedom helped launch an unprecedented national renaissance of interest in the Civil War. McPherson served as an historical consultant on two PBS documentaries, Ken Burns’s The Civil War and Abraham and Mary Lincoln: A House Divided, and on the 1993 film Gettysburg. In 1991, the United States Senate appointed him to the Civil War Sites Advisory Commission, which determined major battle sites, evaluated their conditions, and recommended strategies for preservation.

McPherson is George Henry Davis ’86 Professor of American History, Emeritus at Princeton University. In 2007, he received the first Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for lifetime contributions to the field of military history. In addition to Battle Cry of Freedom, he is the author of several other important books on the Civil War, including For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War, Drawn with the Sword: Reflections on the American Civil War, and Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution, all published by Oxford University Press.

            All “American Pictures” events take place at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery, located at 8^th and F Streets, N.W., in Washington, D.C.  McPherson’s talk will begin at 4:30 p.m. in the museums’ Nan Tucker McEvoy Auditorium. Tickets are available in the G Street lobby, beginning at 3:30 p.m. No reservations are necessary for the general public.

Students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends of Washington College may reserve tickets to this and the other American Pictures events on a first-come, first-served basis. The Starr Center is also running free buses from Chestertown to Washington for each talk. For details, please call 410-810-7165 or e-mail lkitz2@washcoll.edu. For more information on the American Pictures series, visit starrcenter.washcoll.edu.

                                                   

About the Sponsors

            Founded in 1782 under the personal patronage of its namesake, Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland, upholds a tradition of excellence and innovation in the liberal arts. The American Pictures series is a project of the college’s C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience and its Department of Art and Art History.

            The National Portrait Gallery tells the stories of America through the individuals—poets and presidents, visionaries and villains, actors and activists—who have built our national culture. It is where the arts keep us in the company of remarkable Americans.

            The Smithsonian American Art Museum, the nation’s first collection of American art, is an unparalleled record of the American experience. The collection captures the aspirations, character and imagination of the American people from the colonial period to today.

Encore Presentation of 'In Search of Polin: Chasing Jewish Ghosts in Today's Poland,' April 14

Chestertown – Washington College’s Office of the Provost & Dean will present “In Search of Polin: Chasing Jewish Ghosts in Today’s Poland,” a lecture/slide presentation by Dr. Gary S. Schiff, Adjunct Professor of History, at the Casey Academic Center Forum on Wednesday, April 14, at 7 p.m.

“In Search of Polin” is an encore presentation of a lecture Schiff gave last November based in part on his summer 2009 trip to Poland, where, in addition to tracing some of his family roots, he was on the trail of “a thousand years of Jewish history.”

Prior to the Holocaust, the largest concentration of Jews in Europe was to be found in Poland – 3.3 million people, or roughly 10 percent of the Polish population.

The percentage was actually much higher in the cities; in Warsaw, for example, Jews comprised about a third of the population. In other cities, such as Bialystok, Jews were in the majority.

Poland’s Jewish population density was due to its rare open-door policy during the Middle Ages, when Jews were not only welcome, but invited with incentives. As early as the 13^th century, Polish kings, in order to help bring their nascent land up to the economic standards of their contemporaries, offered liberal charters of rights and economic opportunities to entice more Jews to relocate there.

As restrictions, persecutions and expulsions periodically reared their heads further west throughout the medieval period, Jews continued to flock from throughout western and central Europe into Poland.

In the 1880s, pogroms under Russian rule spurred a mass exodus of Polish Jews to the United States. Poland was the largest source of Jewish immigrants to America.

Of the 3.3 million Jews in Poland at the onset of World War II, 3 million were killed in the Holocaust. Most of the survivors emigrated. Only a handful remain. Before the war, there had been more than 500 synagogues in Warsaw. After the war, only one remained.

In addition to the shocking death toll of Polish Jews, the vast majority of Jews from throughout Europe who were killed in the Holocaust died in Poland, where they arrived by the trainload to the infamous Nazi death camps built there.

The lingering echo of such horrors is the reason, said Schiff, that some Jews today consider Poland “one big Jewish cemetery, and won’t go back there, even to visit.”

But there is much of great historical interest left to see there as well, he notes. Schiff’s journey into Poland’s Jewish past included the personal – he toured the area where his family had lived since the 18^th century and unearthed old family marriage records in the town of Ostrow’s City Hall – to the deeply historical – in Krakow, the old royal capital and the first Polish city to acquire a major Jewish presence, he found “a gold mine of Jewish history,” including famous synagogues and graves dating back to the 15^th century.

On the other end of the spectrum, Schiff also visited the horrific concentration camps of Treblinka, Majdanek, Plaszow (where “Schindler’s List” was filmed) and Auschwitz, where at that site alone 1.1 million Jews, including 200,000 children, were put to death. “It’s so vast,” Schiff said of Auschwitz, “it’s hard to imagine evil on such a massive scale.”

 Admission to “In Search of Polin: Chasing Jewish Ghosts in Today’s Poland” is free and open to the public.

Acclaimed Material Culture Scholar Returns to His Local Roots to Discuss Collections, Collecting, and Why We Love "Antiques Roadshow"

On Tuesday, April 13, at 7:30 p.m., the noted material culture scholar Robert Blair St. George will visit Washington College to give a multimedia presentation titled 18th-Century Souvenirs: From the Founding Fathers to the Antiques Roadshow. Immediately following the talk, he will join Patrick Henry Writing Fellow Marla Miller and Linda Eaton, Curator of Collections at Winterthur, for a public conversation on the role of objects in American memory, from the Revolutionary era to "Antiques Roadshow." This event is free and open to the public.

As a town brimming with "18th-century souvenirs" (featured just this month in both Early American Life and This Old House), Chestertown is an ideal spot to explore the different meanings that objects hold for scholars, owners, and collectors. It is also one of the places that first hooked St. George on reading architecture, a passion that has become his life's work. While visiting the Eastern Shore as a young man, he began to look closely at the buildings around him, finding clues to the past in their architectural details.

Robert Blair St. George is Associate Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, where he serves as Director of the Program in Public Culture. He is the author of four books on American cultural history and material culture, including Possible Pasts: Becoming Colonial in Early America (2000) and Material Life in America, 1600-1850 (1988), a perennially popular textbook in material culture classes.

A graduate of the prestigious Winterthur Program in American Material Culture, St. George received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1982. He has held fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the American Antiquarian Society, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Gilder-Lehrman Institute for American History.

St. George's talk will include clips from the hit PBS show, "Antiques Roadshow," and a discussion of the show's impact on popular interest in collections and collecting. Public conversation hosts Marla Miller and Linda Eaton will draw the audience into the discussion, turning the conversation toward the ways in which objects are assigned subjective meaning by their owners and users.

Marla Miller, Washington College's 2009-10 Patrick Henry Writing Fellow, is Associate Professor of History and Director of Public History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Linda Eaton is Curator of Collections at Winterthur, one of America's best-loved period estates.

St. George's talk is cosponsored by the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, the Department of Art & Art History and Winterthur. The program will begin at 7:30 p.m. in Litrenta Lecture Hall, John S. Toll Science Center.

About the Starr Center

The C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience explores our nation's history—and particularly the legacy of its Founding era—in innovative ways. Through educational programs, scholarship, and public outreach, and especially by supporting and fostering the art of written history, the Starr Center seeks to bridge the divide between past and present, and between the academic world and the public at large. From its base in the circa-1746 Custom House along Chestertown's colonial waterfront, the Center also serves as a portal onto a world of opportunities for Washington College students. Its guiding principle is that now more than ever, a wider understanding of our shared past is fundamental to the continuing success of America's democratic experiment. For more information on the Center, visit http://starrcenter.washcoll.edu.

About Winterthur

Winterthur, known worldwide for its preeminent collection of American antiques, naturalistic garden, and research library for the study of American art and material culture, offers a variety of tours, exhibitions, programs, and activities throughout the year. General admission includes a tour of some of the most notable spaces in the 175-room house, as well as access to the Winterthur Garden and Galleries, special exhibitions, a narrated tram tour (weather permitting), the Campbell Collection of Soup Tureens, and the Enchanted Woods children's garden. Winterthur, located on Route 52, six miles northwest of Wilmington, Delaware, and five miles south of U.S. Route 1, is committed to accessible programming for all. For information, including special services, call 800.448.3883, 302.888.4600, or TTY 302.888.4907. Online, visit winterthur.org.