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Home > News & Events > CLA Today Archive > Winter 2006 : New, Nifty, & Noteworthy

New, Nifty, & Noteworthy

CLA faculty and alums broadcast for Katrina

In September, the University joined hands and mics with the Minnesota Broadcasters Association (MBA) to cosponsor StormAID: Minnesota's River of Relief. The “radiothon” on the Washington Avenue Bridge raised more than $867,000 for victims of the hurricane.

During the event, CLA's Judith Martin (geography), Earl Scott (African and African American studies), Eileen Sivert (French), Patricia Frazier (psychology), and CLA Dean Steven Rosenstone—along with other members of the University community and American Red Cross disaster relief workers—shared their knowledge, expertise, and personal stories with listeners across Minnesota. More than 150 radio stations across Minnesota carried the broadcasts.

Jim DuBois (’87, communication studies), president and CEO of the MBA and past president of the CLA Alumni Society Board, played a lead role in organizing the event. Long a tireless champion for CLA, du Bois received the Volunteer of the Year award from the UMAA this year for his pivotal role in creating Access Minnesota, a CLA Alumni Society partnership with MBA and Radio K, the U's student-run radio station. The program features notable guests (including CLA faculty) discussing state and national issues.

Another CLA alum, John Anfinson (B.A. ’77, anthropology; M.A. ’81, Ph.D. ’87, history), offered perspective on the history of the Mississippi River, specifically as it relates to floods. Anfinson is the National Park Service Historian for the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area and the author of The River We Have Wrought: A History of the Upper Mississippi (U of Minnesota Press). He focused on the 1927 flood, which inundated most of the Mississippi River valley from the mouth of the Ohio River to the Gulf.

For a list of radio stations that broadcast Access Minnesota, visit www.accessminnesotaonline.com.

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School of Music joins forces with St. Paul Chamber Orchestra

The University of Minnesota School of Music and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra (SPCO) recently reached an unprecedented agreement that will nurture collaborations in instruction, training, performance, and special events.

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Celebrating two peas in a pod

by Pauline Oo

In 1881, a group of freshmen presented a play called The Last Loaf—the location of the performance and the plot since lost to history—and it was the very first theatrical show on the Twin Cities campus. Theater was not offered for credit at the University of Minnesota until 1909, and a theater program was not officially established until 1930.

Today, 75 years later, the program is flourishing, and it has a home to call its own—the Rarig Center with its myriad theater halls. It has talented undergraduate and graduate students, renowned faculty, and famous alumni. It also has an equally successful sibling, the University's dance program, housed in the Barbara Barker Center for Dance.

University Theatre and University Dance were brought together in 1985 under a single department that now resides in the vibrant West Bank Arts Quarter. Today, close to 300 undergraduates and 50 graduate students are enrolled in the department.

75:20

This performance season, the Department of Theatre Arts and Dance is celebrating its double anniversary, calling it 75:20.

“There are several things that have [allowed our theater and dance program to withstand the years],” says scenic design professor C. Lance Brockman, who is coordinating the grand affair and who has been with the department for more than 30 years.

“We have always been in a rich cultural community, with so many ways to benefit our students beyond what we do in the classroom. Our students are actively involved, most of them from their sophomore year on, with the [larger Twin cities cultural] community—either observing or interning.”

As the oldest theater company in Minnesota, University Theatre is credited with developing the relationship with Tyrone Guthrie that in 1960 compelled him to choose Minneapolis as the location for the Guthrie Theater. In partnership with the Guthrie, the department offers a bachelor of fine arts actor-training program, which auditions 400 to 500 people each year in Minnesota as well as in cities such as New York, Houston, Chicago, and San Francisco for 20 coveted spots in the freshman class.

The department has created a new anniversary website and will host a reunion weekend in April 2006, which includes a sneak preview tour of the new Guthrie Theater.

For more information on the 75:20 season, visit the website: www.7520.umn.edu.

A longer version of this story was originally published in UMNnews, an online publication of University Relations, on September 23, 2005.

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Merce Cunningham Takes a Bow

by Linda Shapiro

Perhaps no other artist better embodies the collaborative and interdisciplinary spirit of the West Bank Arts Quarter than choreographer Merce Cunningham, who received an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Humane Letters in November.

Cunningham, a pathbreaking artist for over 50 years, is recognized the world over for his continuously innovative work, his lifelong passion for learning and experimentation, and his commitment to dance as a living performance art. He has changed how audiences view dance, and his influence has spread beyond dance to encompass the visual arts, music, film, and video.

The honorary degree celebrates in part Cunningham's long association with Minnesota and with the Dance Program of the Department of Theatre Arts and Dance. In November, his company returned for the seventh time to perform on the Northrop Auditorium stage. To celebrate his innovative spirit, the Regis Center for Art mounted an exhibition of his animal drawings, "Exercises,” in October. Students from the dance program performed his work "Inlets 2" at the opening.