The Mini Locally Grown Dance Festival comes to the Schwartz Center Nov. 30-Dec. 2.

Things to Do, Nov. 17-Dec. 1, 2017

‘Yiddish Dances’ and more

The Cornell University Wind Symphony will be joined by the Cornell University Klezmer Ensemble (CUKE) in a concert Nov. 17 at 8 p.m. in Bailey Hall. Open to the public, the concert features Adam Gorb’s “Yiddish Dances,” with free dance instruction at 7 p.m., led by CUKE director Ryan Zawel.

Conducted by James Spinazzola, CU Winds also will perform Michael Daugherty’s “Lost Vegas,” Paul Hindemith’s “Symphonic Metamorphosis” and world premieres of works by Janice Macauley, Ph.D. ’86, and Byron Adams, DMA ’84, composed in honor of the late emeritus professor of music Karel Husa.

The Department of Music presents free public performances on campus throughout the year. Events this month include “Re-Formation” with the Cornell Chamber Singers and guest vocal ensemble Variant 6, Nov. 18 at 7:30 p.m. in Anabel Taylor Chapel, culminating a communitywide celebration of music as a catalyst for change.

Also: The Cornell Chamber Orchestra features selections by Charlie Parker, Telemann and Bach in a concert Nov. 19 at 3 p.m. in Barnes Hall; and University Organist Annette Richards performs music for Advent and Christmas, Nov. 29 at 12:30 p.m. in Sage Chapel.

Free speech lecture

Constitutional law scholar Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, brings a reasoned, scholarly perspective to a polarizing topic on college and university campuses in a lecture, “Free Speech on Campus,” Nov. 20 at 6:30 p.m. in Alice Statler Auditorium.

Titled after his recent book, Chemerinsky’s lecture is free and open to the Cornell community and will be live streamed on CornellCast.

The Free Speech Presidential Speaker Series, initiated by President Martha E. Pollack, addresses campus climate at Cornell and universities across the nation. The series is co-sponsored by Cornell Law School.

Thanksgiving Feast

Cornell community members and the public are invited to join the 30th annual Traditional American Thanksgiving Feast on campus, Nov. 23 from noon to 4 p.m. at Robert Purcell Community Center.

The menu includes roast turkey with gravy, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, candied yams, pumpkin and apple pie, New England clam chowder and butternut bisque, poached salmon with hollandaise, herb-baked tofu with rice pilaf, assorted cakes and more.

Tickets are available online at issotickets.com for members of the Cornell community, and will be on sale to the general public beginning Nov. 20 at 9 a.m. Tickets are $14 for adults, $8 for children ages 6 to 12. Children age 5 and younger eat for free.

Seatings are at noon and 1:30 p.m. in the third floor Robert Purcell Marketplace Eatery. Diners are asked to choose their preferred seating time when ordering tickets.

The event is sponsored by the International Students and Scholars Office and Cornell Dining, with support from cosponsors across campus.

Emerging artist concert

Boston singer-songwriter Amanda McCarthy performs in the Lauren Pickard ’90 Emerging Artist Series, Monday, Nov. 27, at 7 p.m. in the Willard Straight Hall Memorial Room. The concert is free and open to the public.

Boston singer-songwriter Amanda McCarthy performs in the Lauren Pickard ’90 Emerging Artist Series, Nov. 27 in Willard Straight Hall.

“Essentially, the love child of Taylor Swift, Paramore and Adele,” as described on her website, McCarthy blends pop influences with alternative rock and Nashville roots. She has supported headliners including Steven Tyler of Aerosmith, Styx, Train and Natasha Bedingfield. Her songs “Elephant in the Room” and “Bad News” made the nomination ballot last fall for the 59th Annual Grammy Awards for Best American Roots Performance.

Established in 2001, the Lauren Pickard ’90 Emerging Artist Series was created in memory of Pickard, a poet, activist and active student employee and volunteer at Willard Straight Hall who loved the student union’s weekly coffeehouse series. Pickard died after suffering a seizure while living and working in Paris.

The series is sponsored by her family, the Willard Straight Hall Student Union Board and Campus Activities. For information, email activities@cornell.edu or call 607-255-4169. 

Vogel’s 'Indecent' on screen

The Tony Award-winning play “Indecent” on PBS’ “Great Performances” will be shown in a high-definition broadcast Nov. 28 at 7 p.m. in the Schwartz Center’s Film Forum, presented by the Department of Performing and Media Arts.

Written by Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist Paula Vogel, M.A. ’76, Ph.D. ’16, “Indecent” follows a troupe of actors who risked their lives and careers to perform “God of Vengeance,” Sholem Asch’s 1907 play depicting a Jewish brothel owner, his wife and their daughter, who falls in love with a prostitute.

Originally produced in Berlin, “God of Vengeance” was the first Broadway play to feature a lesbian kiss. Six weeks into its run in early 1923, the production was raided by police and its entire cast, the producer and theater owners were tried and convicted on obscenity charges, which were later successfully appealed.

“Indecent” was Vogel’s doctoral dissertation at Cornell, first staged in 2013, and marked her Broadway debut this year, running at the Cort Theatre from April to August. The Broadway production was a creative collaboration with director Rebecca Taichman, who also had written a graduate thesis play about “God of Vengeance.”

Across the universe

Assistant professor of physics Michael Niemack presents “Ancient Light and High Telescopes: Using Cosmic Microwaves to Uncover the History of the Universe,” Nov. 29 from 7 to 9 p.m. at Casita Del Polaris, 1201 N. Tioga St. (behind Northstar), Ithaca.

Niemack will describe how the cosmic microwave background in space – the oldest light in existence – offers evidence for the formation and evolution of the universe, and how he and his colleagues are working to improve its detection, using and building new telescopes at high-elevation sites in Chile.

Free and open to the public, his presentation is part of the Science on Tap series organized by Graduate Women in Science, Ithaca chapter. The series aims to make science exciting and accessible to everyone, bringing scholars from Cornell into the community to present their research on a diverse range of scientific topics in an authentic, engaging and understandable way.

The bard and black activism

Kim F. Hall of Barnard College gives the Paul Gottschalk Memorial Lecture, “’Intelligently Organized Resistance:’ Shakespeare in the Diasporic Politics of John E. Bruce,” free and open to the public Nov. 30 at 4:30 p.m. at A.D. White House.

In 1916, journalist John E. Bruce described a self-directed Shakespeare study within a framework of black advancement and resistance to “Ye Friends of Shakespeare,” a group of black activists and intellectuals convening on New York’s Lower East Side. Hall’s lecture situates Bruce’s speech amid early 20th century anti-racist activism, and is part of a project exploring black archives seeking “in these archival fragments a Shakespeare more suitable for 21st-century America.” She leads a related graduate student seminar Dec. 1, on “Early Modern Race Studies and its Discontents.”

The Lucyle Hook Chair of English and professor of Africana studies at Barnard, Hall is the author of “Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England,” “Othello: Texts and Contexts” and “The Sweet Taste of Empire: Sugar, Gender and Material Culture.”

The Department of English’s Gottschalk Memorial Lecture honors the memory of Cornell English professor Paul Gottschalk, a British renaissance literature scholar and author of “The Meanings of Hamlet” (1972), who died in 1977 at age 38.

Locally Grown Dance

The annual Mini Locally Grown Dance Festival will be staged Nov. 30-Dec. 2 at the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts, 430 College Ave., Ithaca. The 2017 festival is directed by senior lecturer Byron Suber.

Presented by the Department of Performing and Media Arts, performances begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Class of ’56 Dance Theatre. All tickets are $5 general admission.

Media Contact

Jeff Tyson