Nonsense 101
Students, confused and snickering, shuffle into the classroom as the bellowing man wearing a cape of gold wrapping paper greets them while wielding a cardboard sword. He loudly announces, “Welcome! Welcome all to Cabaret Voltaire!”
Other oddly dressed figures flit about the room, handing out plastic body parts, Tootsie Pops, and scissors. Members of the mad company sing, whisper, shout, pirouette, recite poetry to walls, and bleat like sheep. They read through a wild script of verse, manifestoes, and Sex Pistols lyrics while the Disney movie Fantasia plays on an overhead projector. Anarchy is the word of the day.
The chaos is all in the name of Dada, an early 20th-century cultural movement that emphasized deliberate absurdity and randomness. The caped crusader is actually Pitt history instructor Tony Novosel (A&S ’05G, FAS ’91, CGS ’89) channeling the spirit of leading Dada writer Hugo Ball. The actors—representing prominent Dadaists Emmy Hennings, Tristan Tszara, and Marcel Duchamp, and others—are played by Novosel’s former students and colleagues. Every year, Novosel treats students in his Honors Western Civilization II class to a day of craziness shortly after they take his notoriously difficult midterm. This session, titled “Dada Day,” serves two purposes: to give the students a well-deserved break and to teach them about the Dadaist movement that spread throughout Europe after World War I. Novosel created the presentation a few years ago to spice up the class. “I was a frustrated actor somewhere down the line,” he explains.
After the presentation, students stand on chairs reciting their original Dadaist poetry (words cut out of newspapers and strung together) in unison. “The presentation really opens up discussion,” Novosel says. “The students start tying the articles we read together.” Finally, the class watches the Marx Brothers movie Duck Soup. Rather than packing up in anticipation of the end of class, the students stay engaged through the last minute. For these students, the details of the Battle of Verdun may one day become hazy, but one thing is for certain: They’ll never forget the quirky professor who banged on their desks and sang, “Hey! Hey! My! My! Rock and Roll will never die!”
—Molly Kwiatkowski
Entranced
Four dancers undulate gracefully under the luminous glow of soft, suspended lights. Their poised postures and nimble movements are in perfect step with the resonating thunder of kettle gongs and the trill of bamboo flutes. Long sapphire skirts and coral sashes cascade around their twirling bodies. Slowly, the beat intensifies, until another dancer—the grim bandit Begal—leaps out, clutching a handful of sharp arrows.
This is the world premiere of The Tale of Princess Gandrung Arum, a dance drama about a 16th-century Indonesian princess, created specifically for the University Gamelan Ensemble by Indonesian playwright Yoseph Iskandar. Gamelan is an Indonesian music ensemble composed largely of metal percussion instruments. Pitt’s gamelan ensemble performs traditional Indonesian music under the direction of Andrew Weintraub, associate professor of music. He invited dancers and guest artists from Indonesia to join the group for this novel performance.
On the Bellefield Hall stage, one of the dancing princesses, Brandi Neal (A&S ’06G), a teaching assistant and doctoral candidate in musicology, springs into the air to escape the evil Begal as student drummers shake bamboo rattles and hammer on knobbed gongs. The canary yellow ribbon adorning Neal’s elaborate updo somehow remains in place as she lands lightly on her bare feet. As the princess-bandit battle continues, Neal concentrates on her arm movements, trying to keep time with the complicated rhythms of the drums.
Adjusting to the variety of unbroken beats is not the only challenge of dancing to gamelan. Neal has divided her time between the stage and the classroom, adding an array of Indonesian words to her vocabulary. During rehearsals, she has enjoyed meeting other student musicians and dancers, who, like her, are attracted to gamelan to learn about a different culture.
“Through their experience working with musicians and dancers from Indonesia, the students gain knowledge, understanding, and compassion for people from different countries,” says Weintraub. “That’s what gamelan is all about.”
That same curiosity rivets the audience as the princesses ward off the threatening Begal. Glancing up, Neal spies a cluster of students from the western art music class she teaches. They’re nestled in the back row of the packed auditorium, enraptured.
—Rachel Hayes
Sheer Genius
The scene is a typical one at Pitt: a student and a professor embroiled in animated discussion as they maneuver briskly through a laboratory, ideas and enthusiasm almost visibly sparking between them. Today, the scene is played out by Dan Handley, a PhD candidate in human genetics, and Robert O’Doherty, assistant professor of medicine and molecular genetics and biochemistry in the University’s School of Medicine. The pair stops occasionally, Handley listening carefully as O’Doherty points out the essential equipment used to conduct his research. They also stop to let the cameraman catch up.
Handley is the creator of Pittsburgh Genius, a monthly television show featuring an exclusive, in-depth look at Pittsburgh’s cutting-edge academic research and innovations. As a researcher himself, he saw a need for the academic community to communicate with the public and decided to put his filmmaking hobby to use.
Each episode—aired on Pittsburgh public access channel PCTV-21 and through the show’s Web site, www.pittsburghgenius.com—features a single researcher, providing the scoop on discoveries being made every day at Pitt and throughout the city. Some of the topics include stem cell research, gene therapy, cancer research, artificial intelligence, and Mars exploration. O’Doherty’s research focuses on the relationship between obesity and diabetes.
Handley learned about working with film and television by volunteering for community access productions. He recruited his film crew by notifying the film studies programs at Pitt and Carnegie Mellon University and student groups such as Pitt in Hollywood. Student volunteers take turns working at different shooting sessions. Funding for the show came in the form of a Seed Award from The Sprout Fund, which supports creative community projects like Pittsburgh Genius.
“So many interesting things are going on in Pittsburgh,” says Handley. “There’s a lot of innovation and discovery occurring, and the public should know about it.”
The same holds true for Pitt, he says. “Pitt has both an extremely high density of world-class researchers and an amazing variety of research, so there’s no shortage of great show topics available. If I didn’t make a special effort to capture the diversity of research in Pittsburgh overall, I could base the show entirely on Pitt without ever being at a loss.”
The excitement surrounding today’s interview is obvious. Handley’s crew is in constant motion, checking microphones, shifting lights and sound equipment, debating the best angles for filming. Regardless of where the camera is set up, Handley believes he has the perfect angle on the University and the city he loves.
— Katie Kurtzman
All Smiles
A blond boy hesitantly follows a tall dental student into an exam room buzzing with drilling and suction noises. After some gentle coaxing, the boy sidles up to a basket brimming with plastic sunglasses and selects an electric yellow pair with lime green lizards running across the frame. In a nearby reclining chair, a girl swishing mouthwash between her cheeks wears hot pink frames. The boy relaxes as he scans the room, seeing a dozen other kids tilted at different angles, sporting sunglasses to protect their eyes from spraying water and toothpaste.
As the youngster climbs into a dental chair, Mitra Pandya, a third-year dental student, circles the exam room and distributes manila folders stuffed with patient charts. Clad in a crisp lab coat and comfortable sneakers, Pandya is president of Pitt’s student chapter of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry, which is hosting the event, “Give Kids a Smile” day. It’s a national initiative sponsored by the American Dental Association to provide free screenings to more than 500,000 children without dental insurance.
“Please make sure all consent forms are filled out with a parent’s signature!” Pandya reminds her peers, who are busy examining tiny teeth and setting fillings. The scent of bubblegum fluoride permeates the pediatric unit in Salk Hall as student and faculty volunteers from the School of Dental Medicine hum along to the background radio. All 22 chairs, lined like the cushy leather seats of a hair salon, are occupied thanks to Pandya, who, with the help of pediatric dental department coordinator Dianna Cervi, scheduled about 60 appointments for patients to receive a total of $7,500 in care.
At a large event like this, Pandya says, not everything always goes according to plan, but so far, she’s keeping the chairs full and the volunteers busy.
“A large part of being a healthcare professional is the ability to give back to the community,” she says. “This event gives us the opportunity to fill the dental needs of these children, as well as the chance to do a lot of hands-on work in one day. We get to practice dentistry, which is always beneficial.”
Light reflects off the blond boy’s cool lizard lenses as his teeth are examined. It’s clear he brushes regularly, but in a few moments, his smile will be even whiter.
—RH
Dance, Dance, Dance
Strobe lights are flashing in the Fitzgerald Field House at 1 a.m. on a Sunday. Lauren Cavallaro, a Pitt senior, swerves to avoid a toilet-papered mummy and nearly knocks over a tower that a group of students are carefully maintaining while playing the game Jenga.
Waving her glow stick and dancing to the techno music thundering out of nearby speakers, she passes a gathering of poker players and a pair of women painting their fingernails. Nobody looks twice at Cavallaro’s rhythmic moves; they’re all dancing too.
It is the halfway point of the Pitt Dance Marathon, and Cavallaro and her fellow dancers—students, faculty, and staff—have been on their feet for 12 hours raising money for lung cancer research at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute.
Cavallaro, a communications major, came up with the idea for the marathon in spring 2005, during her successful campaign for Pitt’s Panhellenic Association president. Her vision was to unite the entire campus for an event that would become a Pitt tradition and help collect money toward the University’s Greek organizations’ pledge to raise $500,000 for Pitt’s affiliated medical center over the next five years.
Fraternities and sororities raised funds for the marathon in various ways, and the top fundraisers participated as marathon dancers.
Emcee Penny Semaia (CAS ’03), a career and life skills advisor for Pitt student-athletes, keeps the crowd going—only 12 more hours of dancing left—by announcing the next scheduled activity: dance dodgeball. Paired with partners who keep them hydrated and motivated, the dancers play games and vie for raffle prizes throughout the night to keep their minds off their aching joints.
“I’m freaking out because nothing is going wrong!” says Cavallaro. She and a team of organizers have been planning every detail of the event—from restroom maintenance to glow stick distribution—for nearly a year, all with the help of countless volunteers. “The harder we planned, the more positive responses we got from people,” says Cavallaro. Donations of every kind, from food to T-shirts, poured in.
With two hours remaining, the dancers welcome their ultimate motivation. Pitt senior Megan Sculley arrives, moving through the swaying crowd and lifting tired spirits with an energy that belies the fact that Sculley, an accounting major, is a cancer survivor whose leukemia only recently went into remission.
At 1 p.m. Sunday, the dancers collapse, cheering and massaging weary muscles. They listen as Sculley recounts her experience fighting cancer, moving the crowd even more than the past 24 hours of music.
Exhausted and emotional, the dancers rally for the loudest cheer yet when the marathon’s final earnings are announced: a grand total of $37,800—the most ever collected by a Pitt student organization.
—Katy Rank
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