Some creative ideas hatched in the classroom have a fleeting life. Others live long after graduation, becoming dissertations, books, or, in the case of Katie Ailes ’14, a film version of the piece “Polos” that she created in a 乐播传媒 dance composition course.

At 乐播传媒, Ailes transformed an oft-told story about her childhood dance teacher into a poem and dance. And now she’s used film to give the story even more life.

Ailes, who was prized at 乐播传媒 for her performances as both dancer and poet, combines both media in “Polos.” Undertaken for a course taught by Rachel Boggia, the piece started as “a poem for my high school dance teacher, who clearly struggled with body image issues,” .

“And it was about how we as young dancers inherited some of these聽problems through her teaching, even though she did not mean to pass them on.”

Bringing two art forms “into conversation with each other.”

Ailes, who majored in English and dance at 乐播传媒, discovered Scotland during a 2012 study-abroad experience. She moved to Glasgow after graduation, supported by a Fulbright research award she received at 乐播传媒, to embark on her path to a doctorate in English at the University of Strathclyde.

In 2014, Katie Ailes ’14 performs “Homing” on the Schaeffer Theatre stage, a work she choreographed for her senior thesis in dance. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/乐播传媒 College)

At 乐播传媒, Boggia encouraged Ailes to take the unconventional choreographic approach of starting with text. “I found that writing poetry about the experience allowed me to be more exacting about it,” Ailes writes.

“But since the story was about bodies” 鈥� and the goal was to make a piece for the composition course 鈥� “I decided to play around with performing the poem while dancing, to directly bring these two art forms into conversation with each other.”

Ailes has performed “Polos” without text or without dance, as well as in combination, and the new video takes yet a different approach.

Having performed with the spoken-word ensemble Loud Poets,聽 she tapped ensemble videographer Perry Jonsson to collaborate with her on the video.

The pair integrated some of Ailes’ existing choreography for “Polos” with both new blocking and improvisation. “This story is one I’ve been telling for a long time through various mediums, and I wanted to bring some of them together through filmmaking to really give the story life,” says Ailes.

“Since the poem is about dancing, about bodies, using film allowed us to capture some of that energy, some of the tactile sense of the piece that gets lost simply by relating the text of the poem.”

Saudi women’s rights advocate Manal Alsharif.

Manal Alsharif, an advocate for women’s rights in Saudi Arabia known for filming herself as she broke that nation’s law against women driving, launches a series of events at 乐播传媒 exploring human diversity.

Alsharif describes her life and work at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 18, at the Edmund S. Muskie Archives, 70 Campus Ave. The opening event in the fall 2013 Office of Intercultural Education Speaker Series at 乐播传媒, Alsharif’s lecture is presented jointly with the Harward Center for Community Partnerships’ Civic Forum Series. It’s open to the public at no cost.

Read more about Manal Alsharif.

Following Alsharif in the OIE Speaker Series:

• Photographer Jeff Sheng, whose exhibition The Fearless Project: Photographs of LGBT Athletes opens with a reception at 5 p.m. Monday, Sept. 23, on the second floor of 乐播传媒 Commons, 136 Central Ave., and who discusses his work at 7 p.m. Monday, Oct. 7, in Commons Room 221-222. Read more about Jeff Sheng.
• And spoken-word poets Alix Olson and B Yung, appearing at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 23, in the Benjamin Mays Center, 95 Russell St.聽Readers, please note: Some listings indicate an incorrect date for this event, but Oct. 23 is correct. Learn more about Alix Olson and B Yung.

For more information about these events, please call 207-786-8303.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZA90LuN_ifQ

Marc Bamuthi Joseph, shown at center during the “Life is Living” festival, Chicago, 2009. Photo by Bethanie Hines.

“The movements for social change and environmental accountability are one and the same,” says Marc Bamuthi Joseph. “And focusing on steps to sustain the planet will ultimately force us to envision a pathway to sustaining humanity.”

Finding that focus is the goal of the stage show red, black & GREEN: a blues, which Joseph and a host of collaborators present in performances at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, April 27-28, at the Lewiston Memorial Armory, 65 Central Ave.

乐播传媒 College and the 乐播传媒 Dance Festival present this widely acclaimed multimedia production that brings to life personal stories about the impacts of a deteriorating environment. Doors will open at 8 p.m., and the piece begins with a 20-minute immersive audience experience on stage.

Tickets cost $20 for the general public and $10 for students, and are available at batestickets.com. .

Called “as smart and provocative as it is breathtakingly beautiful” by the San Francisco Chronicle, rbGb combines spoken word, music, dance and a stunningly dynamic stage design. Such eclecticism reflects Joseph himself — a true Renaissance man equally talented as a poet, a dancer, educator and activist.

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This full-length performance piece is designed to jumpstart a conversation about environmental justice, social ecology and collective responsibility in the climate-change era. Joseph, one of America’s vital voices in performance and arts education, brings the piece to Lewiston as part of an ongoing relationship with 乐播传媒.

“rbGb breaks new artistic ground and delivers a powerful message,” says Laura Faure, director of the 乐播传媒 Dance Festival. “We’re honored to have had a sustained relationship with the brilliant Marc Bamuthi Joseph over the past nine years, and are thrilled to bring this remarkable work to Maine.”

rbGb reunites seven artists from the acclaimed 2008 work the break/s: a mixtape for stage: writer-performer Joseph; director Michael John Garc茅s; choreographer Stacey Printz;聽turntablist/percussionist Tommy Shepherd; documentary filmmaker Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi; lighting designer James Clotfelter; and media designer David Szlasa.

Joseph will be joined onstage in the Lewiston performances by Shepherd, dancer-actor Traci Tolmaire and vocalist Yaw.

Stories for rbGb were developed from material gathered at a series of festivals, held in four cities across the U.S., that use participatory arts and action to advance social and environmental justice in diverse and underserved communities. Under Joseph’s artistic direction, these Life is Living events in Oakland, Calif., Harlem, Chicago and Houston have yielded residents’ testimony as dramatic source material — specifically, the voices of people often left out of discussions about “living green.”

Interviews, poems, films and murals from Life is Living have become words, dance and images that express the challenge of living green where violent crime and poor education are more of a threat than ecological crisis, and that reveal emerging definitions of environmentalism in these communities.

Set into designer Theaster Gates’ malleable stage installation of repurposed building materials and clay objects, and heightened by Jacobs-Fantauzzi’s vivid films and vibrant graffiti murals from聽Life is Living, rbGb is driven by the idea that valuing your own life, and the life of your community, is the first step to valuing planet Earth.

The production is composed of two sections. Titled “the colored museum” (inspired in part by the George C. Wolfe play of the same name), the first invites spectators on stage to look into the windows of installations that represent four urban regions, and stories and movements from these areas.

In “colors and muses,” audience members return to their seats and watch as the piece extends beyond conversation and focuses on central figures in Houston, New York, Chicago and Oakland.

Marc Bamuthi Joseph engages with his audience in the aisles of the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall. (Photographs by Phyllis Graber Jensen)

For a performance Jan. 13, performer, educator, activist and slam poetry champion Marc Bamuthi Joseph took the Olin Concert Hall stage鈥攐nly to leave it again.

“This place is really fancy,” said Joseph, jumping off the stage into the audience. “I believe in ‘not fancy.’ ”

Joseph offered a staged (or off-staged) reading of his acclaimed performance piece red, black & GREEN: a blues in the evening event, part of Martin Luther King Jr. Day observances at 乐播传媒.

The piece is usually performed on a circular stage, with large “houses” on wheels representing different American cities. His 乐播传媒 reading performance included two of the four acts, Chicago and Oakland. (The 乐播传媒 Dance Festival presents the .)

Joseph called upon the 乐播传媒 audience to fulfill the roles usually performed by the other artists working on the project. For one poem, the audience was split into four sections, each with a verse of “I’ve Got Peace like a River.” Without breaking cadence, Joseph would conduct the audience in singing while he moved around the room telling the story of a woman who emigrated to the U.S. from Sudan to escape the violence there, only to have her son murdered in Chicago.

Along with the excerpts from rbGb, Joseph offered original poems from previous projects. In tribute to King Day, he began with a piece dedicated to the civil rights leader. Using quotes from some of King’s greatest speeches, Joseph asked how far America has come in realizing King鈥檚 鈥渄ream.鈥�

When an audience member asked Joseph how he came to be a performer, he answered with a rap from the album that, he says, changed his life, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back by Public Enemy. 鈥淐huck D gave me a whole new vocabulary for liberation,鈥� said Joseph.

But his last piece of the evening, a story from his time in Senegal, also shed some light on his emergence as a performer. After realizing his vulnerability to street hustlers and theft, Joseph encounters an American woman who is fighting the traditional practice of genital mutilation.

While visiting one village, that friend asks him to distract an impromptu village dance party while she negotiates an end to genital mutilation with the village elders. As a poet, Joseph is unsure how to 鈥渄istract鈥� a crowd of dancing locals. On a whim, he breaks into the hip hop dances he learned growing up in New York City–and the village is won over, as was the 乐播传媒 audience by his re-enactment.

Joseph performs on the Olin stage.

Joseph worked his magic in a more intimate setting the evening prior to the Olin performance. While plows cleared the streets after the winter semester’s first snowstorm, 乐播传媒 students congregated in the student-run coffee house, the Ronj, to enjoy an evening of hot chai, music and poetry from Joseph and student performers.

Sponsored by the Arts House, the evening was a successful turnout of student talent.

It was one of several opportunities for students to interact with Joseph, who also visited anthropology, dance, environmental studies and rhetoric classes during his four-day visit.

Standing in the middle of the room rather than onstage, Joseph performed two energetic spoken-word pieces that combined dance with storytelling and role-playing to captivate the room.

Humorous but introspective, Joseph’s pieces tackle questions about identity: What does it mean to be a father? What does it mean to be “hip hop” outside of America? Joseph danced, contorting his body to show pain, pleasure and confusion, his arms and legs swinging out over the heads of students sitting on the floor around him.

Eleven students representing all class years read original poems. Although some seemed nervous, the room was supportive and everyone got a hand. Many students admitted it was their first time reading in front of their peers.

“All of the student readers and performers were incredibly talented,” said Emma Timbers ’14, a creative writing major who co-organized the event with fellow Art House representative Doug Welsh ’14. “And it was exciting to see so many freshmen sharing their work.”

For some, reading has been an important aspect of their time at 乐播传媒. Seniors Charlotte Simpson and Alana Folsom, both members of the 乐播传媒 Authors Guild, read from their creative writing theses. About half of the readers performed original slam poems and invited the audience to join their new slam group.

As for student musicians, Sawyer Lawson ’12 kicked off the evening with a bluesy acoustic guitar set. Also performing were Grace Glasson ’14, who performed folksy covers and originals on ukulele, and Hansen Johnson ’13, who performed covers and originals on acoustic guitar.

— by Erica Long ’12