Posted By Rachel Elizabeth Jones on Thu, May 26, 2016 at 12:16 PM

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Matthew Thorsen

Eiko Otake at the Moran Plant

Japanese artist Eiko Otake was long known as one half of the husband-and-wife performance team Eiko and Koma. For the past two years, however, Otake, who has lived in New York since 1976, has been going it alone — all over the world. Her ongoing work "A Body in Places" places her dancing body in atypical performance locations, beginning with the irradiated site of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown.

In October 2014, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts hosted the debut exhibition "A Body in Fukushima," featuring exquisite photos by William Johnston of Otake's pilgrimage . In conjunction with this show, Otake developed "A Body in a Station," a site-specific performance in Philadelphia's 30th Street Amtrak Station.

Since that launch, Otake has danced in locales including Hong Kong, Santiago, New York's Fulton Street Station, a library, an observatory and a farmers market. This week she'll add to that list an abandoned industrial building: Burlington's own Moran Plant — aka the city's former generating station.

Tags: eiko otake , flynn center for the performing arts , dance , moran plant , Image , Web Only

Posted By Ken Picard on Wed, May 25, 2016 at 3:21 PM

File: David Junkin

Earlier this year, the University of Vermont's Department of Pharmacology brought marijuana out of the academic closet by offering a comprehensive course on medical cannabis, the first of its kind taught on any American college campus.

Now, the same team of professors who created and taught that class are bringing some of the content of "PHRM-200: Medical Cannabis" to a wider audience through an online speaker series that's free and open to the general public. The first of the five-part series was today. For more info and to register, click here.

Tags: Cannabeat , cannabis , medical marijuana , pharmacology , University of Vermont , Image , Web Only

Posted By Rachel Elizabeth Jones on Tue, May 24, 2016 at 5:49 PM

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Courtesy of Rachel Moore/Helen Day Art Center

Nathan Suter

Stowe's Helen Day Art Center announced last Friday that executive director Nathan Suter will step down at the end of July, ending his tenure of nearly 10 years. Suter came to the arts center as director in 2006, after receiving his MFA in photography from the San Francisco Art Institute and teaching art to middle and high school students in Palo Alto, Calif., for several years. 

Suter plans to devote much of his time to developing his fledgling consulting firm, Build, with business partner Autumn Barnett. The two met through their respective work with the Burlington-based Peace & Justice Center; Suter is a member of the nonprofit's board of directors.

Build aims to help businesses and nonprofits develop organizational health and effectiveness through awareness of fostering positive internal culture. 

Tags: helen day art center , nathan suter , arts center , Image , Web Only

Posted By Margot Harrison on Mon, May 23, 2016 at 1:29 PM

Oscilloscope Laboratories

Royalty Hightower stars in The Fits.

The scene: an urban community center. A young girl dances frenetically, her fists punching the air, her controlled movements channeling the churning emotions of adolescence. Suddenly she's out of control — writhing, seemingly seizing. Or perhaps she just stands quietly transfixed, as if glimpsing something beyond this world.

Variations on this scenario occur throughout The Fits, the directorial debut of Anna Rose Holmer. The offbeat coming-of-age film screened at the Venice International Film Festival and the Sundance Film Festival. This Thursday, you can see it in Vermont as a presentation of the Vermont International Film Foundation and Main Street Landing Performing Arts Center: May 26, 7 p.m., at Main Street Landing Film House in Burlington. $5-8, or free for VTIFF members.

And why should you see it? Because The Fits combines the energy of a dance film with the obliqueness and eerie atmosphere of an art film. I feel safe in saying I've never seen anything quite like it before.

Tags: The Fits , Anna Rose Holmer , Royalty Hightower , Q-Kidz , Vermont International Film Foundation , Burlington Film Society , Main Street Landing Performing Arts Center , Oscilloscope Laboratories , Image , Video , Web Only

Posted By Ethan de Seife on Sun, May 22, 2016 at 10:03 AM

Tags: film , movie , what i'm watching , my neighbor totoro , totoro , hayao miyazaki , animation , Web Only

Posted By Rachel Elizabeth Jones on Tue, May 17, 2016 at 2:38 PM

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Courtesy of the Flynn Center

NEA grantee AXIS Dance Company (through the Flynn)

In its spring grant cycle, the National Endowment for the Arts has awarded eight grants totaling $893,000 to six Vermont organizations.  The majority of that amount, $718,000, went to the Vermont Arts Council, which in turn provides a variety of grants to individuals and smaller organizations statewide.

The other grantees were the Vermont Folklife Center, the Dorset Theatre Festival, the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, Kingdom County Productions, the Vermont Folklife Center and Weston Playhouse Theatre Company.

Congrats, everybody! The full NEA document here. 

Tags: national endowment for the arts , vermont arts council , arts grants , Image , Web Only

Posted By Ethan de Seife on Mon, May 16, 2016 at 4:42 PM

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Chestertelegraph.org

Misty Valley Books in Chester

Misty Valley Books, the beloved independent bookstore in Chester, has just been purchased by Phoenix Books. The 29-year-old Misty Valley is known for its diverse collection and its in-store events.

Phoenix Books, Vermont’s largest independent booksellers, operates stores in Essex, Rutland and downtown Burlington. Owners Michael DeSanto and Renee Reiner opened Phoenix’s Essex location in 2007; the Burlington store made its debut in 2012. Rutland’s Phoenix Books opened in 2015 as part of a downtown revitalization campaign.

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Posted By Rachel Elizabeth Jones on Sun, May 15, 2016 at 11:47 AM

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Courtesy of Fleming Museum

PechaKucha Night graphic

For Burlington's 20th PechaKucha Night, Tokyo-based founders of the international presentation phenomenon Mark Dytham and Astrid Klein introduced the event themselves via YouTube video. They reminded attendees that "pechakucha" is the Japanese onomatopoetic word for "chit-chat."  

So far, PKNs have taken place in 921 cities around the world, with more than 7,000 presentations available online to date. In what may be the only time the Queen City has been compared to a Japanese megalopolis, the formulators of PKN's 20 slides/20 seconds each model hypothesized about the event's popularity: "Probably in Burlington, as it is in Tokyo, there are few places to show and share work from designers and architects." 

The University of Vermont's Fleming Museum of Art, which established PKN in Burlington, hosted the 20th iteration. It featured presentations from nine Vermonters that ranged in topic from migratory bird-banding to architect-built ice shanties to marketing against sexual assault. 

Tags: pechakucha , burlington , Image , Web Only

Posted By Ethan de Seife on Sat, May 14, 2016 at 9:01 AM

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Saban Films

Still from The Trust.

Film exhibition is not what it once was. The advent of digital streaming platforms has rewritten the rulebook. We can now use digital technologies, licit or illicit, to watch in our homes the kinds of movies that, until recently, we had to visit a cinema to see.

As many commentators have noted in recent years, one result of having easy internet access to current films is that many people now visit the cinema only to see “event” movies. Most such films are giant, noisy, action-packed spectaculars that promise the kind of grandiose viewing experience that comes across most thrillingly in a proper movie theater. Big screen, dozens of speakers turned up to 11, maybe some 3D glasses, if that’s your thing.

Just try this at home, is the implicit message to spectators. That’s the same message that Hollywood conveyed in the 1950s, when the studios were terrified that television would steal their viewers. It was then that such devices as CinemaScope, surround sound and 3D made their debuts, precisely because they offered viewing experiences that humbled those offered by tiny, black-and-white, staticky TV screens.

Tags: film , movie , what i'm watching , the trust , nicolas cage , elijah wood , jerry lewis , heist , genre , exhibition , distribution , Image , Video , Web Only

Posted By Rachel Elizabeth Jones on Thu, May 12, 2016 at 4:39 PM

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Courtesy of the Poetry Experience

The Poetry Experience logo

When Randee Eddins was a little girl — the second youngest of five children — she had difficulty expressing herself with the same verbal-whiplash wit as her family and siblings. Instead, she told Seven Days, she would use poetry to respond after the fact; her family would find "poem rebuttal[s] taped to the bathroom mirror." 

Fast forward to 1998, when Eddins founded THE POETRY EXPERIENCE  with her son Rajnii in their then-home in Seattle, Wash. This gathering of area poets, writers and spoken-word artists emerged from Eddins' love of both poetry and community gatherings. Seven years earlier, Eddins had founded the city's African-American Writers Alliance, which continues to this day.

Randee and Rajnii Eddins came to Vermont in 2010, and have recently begun to host bimonthly Poetry Experience events at Fletcher Free Library in Burlington. "We are determined to make the whole world poets," Randee Eddins said. Now, the mother-and-son pair is branching out to establish a Poetry Experience zine.

Tags: poetry , the poetry experience , zine , Image , Web Only