Articles filed under “Arts”

With the insanity of New Jersey’s doomsday weather this week (first a tropical storm, then a blizzard…where are the locusts?) comes a slew of exciting arts opportunities this weekend!  These next couple of weekends before Thanksgiving have a multitude of great shows and concerts in store, nearly all of which you can attend for free with your Student Events Eligible pass (a.k.a. a simple swipe of your prox).  Don’t delay–these babies are sure to sell out fast!

  • Tonight, the Princeton Katzenjammers present a one-night-only musical extravaganza of co-ed a cappella.  If their great vocalizing isn’t enough to tempt you, the night’s also featuring a performance by former KJ Ben Taub ’14, fresh from his stint on NBC’s  The Voice.  11pm Thursday night, Theatre Intime.  Click here for more.
  • This weekend only, the Princeton University Players present Nine, a sexy musical directed by sophomore Eamon Foley ’15.  Song, dance, leggy ladies with great pipes: who could ask for more?  Thursday-Saturday at 8pm, Saturday at 2pm in the Matthews Acting Studio, 185 Nassau Street.  Click here for more.
  • You won’t want to miss eXpressions Dance Company‘s electrifying fall show, Uprising.  Tickets go fast for this one-weekend event, so get ‘em while you can!  Thursday-Saturday at 8pm in the Frist Film and Performance Theater.  Click here for more.
  • This weekend and next, Theatre Intime presents the hair-rasing comic thriller Wait Until Dark, directed by sophomore Mike Pinsky ’15.  8pm Thursday-Saturday for two weekends in Theatre Intime, with a 2pm matinee next Saturday (11/17).  Click here for more.
  • All-Nighter with David Drew, Princeton’s only live late-night talk show, presents its second episode at 11pm this Friday in Frist.  The first show was a huge hit, so it’s definitely worth a watch!  Featuring guests Bruce Easop ’13 (USG president), Professor Sam Wang (election predictor extraordinaire), and singer-Songwriter Mark Watter ’14.  Click here for more.
  • The Lewis Center for the Arts’ Program in Theater collaborates with the Department of Music to present its fall show extravaganza, Der Bourgeois Bigwig.  Chock full of hilarious hijinks from a talented team of actors, music from the University Orchestra, and stunning costumes and set, it’s a must-see.  Friday and Saturday at 8pm; next Thursday-Saturday at 8pm (11/9-10 and 11/15-17). Berlind Theater and McCarter Theater Center (across from the Dinky).  Click here for more.
  • This Friday only, the Princeton Tigressions present a great night of female a cappella at Richardson Auditorium for their biannual Jam.  It also features guest performances from BAC Dance and the Princeton Footnotes (male a cappella).  A terrific night of music and dance in a beautiful venue!  Click here for more.
  • This weekend only, Princeton Chinese Theatre presents Rhinoceros in Love, directed by Jianfei Chen ’15 and Liukun Wu ’15.  Thursday-Saturday at 8pm, with a 2pm Saturday matinee, in Whitman College’s Class of 1970 Theatre.  Click here for more.
  • As you plan your weekend’s viewing schedule, remember to snag tickets for the Princeton Triangle Club‘s newest show, Tree’s Company: Forest’s a Crowd!, which will run next Friday and Saturday at 8pm with a Sunday matinee (11/16-18).  It’s in the Matthews Theater at McCarter (the big one at the top of the hill), and tickets sell out fast, so get on it!  Click here for more. 
Nov 8, 2012

Weekend Arts Roundup: Theater, Dance, and A Cappella Galore

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Here at Princeton, where our competitive streaks run deep,  job interviews are an art form, and application-only majors like Woody Woo (but no more!) have total cachet, it only makes sense that new artsy folks flock in droves to the school’s host of competitive student-run arts groups.  From dance to drama to a cappella to musical theater, the Great Classes of 2015 and 2016 have been keeping arts groups busy with a huge number of new auditionees this season.  Looks like a banner year of underclassmen interested in the arts!  What do you think about these staggering stats? Let us know in the comments.

Graph Credit: Ellen Shakespear

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Oct 2, 2012

Student Arts Groups at Princeton: the Woody Woo for those artistically inclined?

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Leaving Firestone to walk back to my room just now I passed by Cannon Green only to hear the strumming of banjos, ukuleles, and guitars and the piercing tunes of an expect harmonica player.

I stopped by for a while to join Rise Up Singing, the folk-singing group that meets once a week in Murray Dodge on Wednesday nights. When the Weather Machine is on they meet outside. Tonight you’ll find them on Cannon Green (until it starts pouring, at which point they’ll relocate under the East Pyne arch) for the sixth annual All Night Rise Up. They’ve been there since 11:30pm, and will be there until the sun rises, so you’ve got time (this clip is just a teaser)…

From the email sent to the Rise Up listserv today:

“Originally inspired by the challenge to sing as many songs as possible, this is the sixth year for this event.

We’ll meet in cannon green, the lawn behind Nassau, with sleeping bags, headlamps, instruments and voices to sing the night away. If you can’t come for the whole time, just drop by when you can. Additionally napping out on the lawn is welcomed.” (TE ’13, CC ’13, LM ’13)

May 24, 2012

All Night Rise Up Singing

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Seen this girl walking around campus today and wondered what bet she lost?

If you missed it, don't worry. Her hair will be like this tomorrow and Saturday, and then again next week on show days!

If you missed it, don't worry. Her hair will be like this tomorrow and Saturday, and then again next week on show days!

The answer to your query is “none”. Maeve Brady ’15 is doing the only thing she knows how to “make my hair stay curly for more than 45 minutes”. And why does she need curly hair? She’s in the Princeton Shakespeare Company‘s production of Titus Andronicus,which opens at 7 tomorrow at the Class of 1970 Theater at Whitman College.

Apr 25, 2012

Leopard Print Curlers: for the Love of the Show

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They say it’s hard to break through the Orange Bubble, but how about breakdancing through the Bubble?

B-Boy crews from all over the Tri-State area converged on the Carl Fields Center dance floor last night to battle it out for the $1000 grand prize. Hosted by Sympoh, Princeton’s breakdancing group, the battle featured both 2- and 4-member crews.

Missed the action? Check out the video. (I promise it’s much better than the awkward grinding down in Wilson Blackbox–sorry prefrosh.)

Apr 21, 2012

Princeton Battlegrounds 3

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[Prefrosh, do this.]

Crystal Stilts, a somewhat established surfy NY garage band, bring their “zoned dream pop a la 1986” to Terrace this evening. For those ballsy previewers looking to get scrapey on a moped out dancefloor, tonight’s the night. I can personally assure you the Stilts will top most any Preview activity on the official docket (although the prefrosh may have some trouble getting in…)

The Guardian had these remarks about the band:

If you like the idea of an American singer whose barely-there vocals makes him sound as though he’s auditioning for a part in Thames Valley: The Movie, if you like splashy drums that make Moe Tucker sound like John Bonham, bashy tambourines, tinny, surfy 60s organ, wheezy harmonica, echoey spectral guitars and la-la-lee melodies that sound like nursery rhymes played by an extra-miserable Black Rebel Motorcycle Club (because they’ve just been dropped, possibly) at 18rpm, the whole thing coated in lo-fi gloom, then grab your stripey blue and white T-shirt, squeeze into your black drainpipes, and we’ll see you down Syndrome on Oxford Street to celebrate. What, it’s closed? Now we’re really depressed.

Apr 19, 2012

Crystal Stilts Play Pop at Terrace Tonight

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Awkward and selective censorship

Awkward and selective censorship

[NOTE TO READER: THIS POST MAKES FREQUENT USE OF EXPLETIVES.]

This shit was going to happen eventually. Add it to the list of national trends trickling on to this campus (see Occupy Wall Street). On January 17th, BodyHype unleashed its own spin on “Shit girls say,” a YouTube phenomenon where in dudes in drag make videos saying, well, shit girls would say. Most would agree that “Shit Princeton Kids Say!” – a slightly less gendered adaptation of the original – does a pretty good job, hitting all the major tenets of campus life. At the moment of this post, it’s closing in on 15,000 views.

Depending on how closely we look at it, it can tell us a lot about ourselves, namely that no matter what social boundaries divide Princeton students, at the end of the day we can all bond over our common future careers in finance. Have a look at the video and a thoughtful analysis after the jump.

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Feb 13, 2012

Dancers Talking Sh#t

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madlib_02

Coming to an eating club near you

Good news for all of you who are 1) somewhat hiphop-inclined, and 2) looking for some hope to keep you afloat in these trying pre-Dean’s Date times. Madlib, one of the finest producers alive, will be performing at Terrace on Tuesday night.  A Madlib beat is an odd specimen, radiating the hazy warmth of vinyl, constantly teetering on the verge of a groove before twitching and fracturing and meandering away to explore some other musical thought. He often eschews the typical hook-verse-hook template in favor of weirder, looser song structures, all the while sampling voraciously and multiculturally. Sometimes he raps, too. Maybe we’ll hear some of that at Terrace, but his beats alone will be more than enough to satisfy. Maddeningly prolific, he’s dropped tape after tape of instrumentals (see especially his jazz-inflected stuff), but he might be best known for his collaborations with rappers. Most recently with Freddie Gibbs, most mainstreamly with Mos Def, and probably best of all with MF Doom — their brainchild, Madvillainy, ranks among the top rap records of the last decade, and every time my stomach sinks with the dread of Tuesday 5 PM I just think about prospect of hearing some of those beats live. Hear the flute loop on this song and know that everything will be okay:

Opening acts Shigeto and Dabyre are sure to impress as well. Terrace sets are hard to predict, but I can’t imagine Madlib himself will go on anytime before 12:40 or so. Go listen.

Jan 16, 2012

Madlib to Deploy Beats at Terrace on Dean’s Date

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The “summer jam” is certainly a cliché — the type of hymn or tune that can only come out of your tattered Jeep Wrangler or FJ Cruiser (for the modern, upper-middle class bohemian). But the “summer jam” — “summer song”, “sound of the summer,” whatever incarnation you please — is one of those weighty clichés that actually means something. At least in the case of the noteworthy professors so many of us students neglect throughout the year due to schedule and (more likely) due to fear, one’s choice of summer jam gives some gritty emotional information that normally takes serious office hours to uncover.

We asked some of Princeton’s most revered intellectuals for their summer jams. Though it took almost an entire summer to compile — you weren’t the only ones doing nothing — they are finally listed below. Think of this almost-mixtape as an ode to the last hurrah that is Princeton’s awkwardly pushed back start date.

ProfessorialMixtapePic (Version 2)

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Aug 16, 2011

Beachcombing: A Professorial Mixtape

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O, Lawnparties. For the Street-going masses, it’s been something of a marathon weekend, but provided you get to Sunday in one piece (and with liver intact), you’ll enjoy some solid tunes on Prospect Avenue. You’ve got your usual slew of heinous cover bands, but there are also few gems. Here are the acts to keep an eye on.

Here is the first Google result for Lawnparties.

Here is the first Google result for "Lawnparties"

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Apr 30, 2011

Lawnparties 2011: A User’s Guide

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Wiz Khalifa (via hypetrak.com)

We know you’re more preoccupied right now with either (1) resting up before the sheer length and intensity of this House- and Lawnparties-filled weekend or (2) going bonkers about whether or not someone is wearing the same dress as you (!!!).

While you’re gearing up, though, here at The Ink we figured we’d catch you up to speed with some of the musical acts for this weekend. First up, we decided to spotlight Lawnparties’ headliners, because Yaro & Co. absolutely killed it this year and brought a pair of rap’s up-and-coming stars for the bright, sunny, and much-venerated prep-fest of day-drinking and carousing. (And seriously, what is up with Princeton attracting such fresh rap talent? El-P, Jedi Mind Tricks, Ghostface Killah kind-of, Das Racist, and now Wiz Khalifa and Big K.R.I.T.? Are we the hippest Ivy?)

First, I have to admit I was really surprised but even more excited to hear opener and Mississippi native Big K.R.I.T. would be joining Wiz on stage this Sunday. His career’s been on the up-and-up since releasing his debut mixtape K.R.I.T. Wuz Here this time last year, and the press has been buzzing with his name. You can download his newest (and seriously great) mixtape Return of 4eva free/legally here.

And the music? If you’re at all a fan of Southern rap kings UGK, Atlanta duo Outkast, or even up-and-coming Curren$y, you’ll find something to love in K.R.I.T.’s deep South, country-fried sound. Check out “Country Shit,” a straight banger from K.R.I.T.’s first mixtape that hit so hard Southern veterans Ludacris and Bun B decided to hop on the beat for a remix.

Intrigued? Check out “Sookie Now” — if this doesn’t have you bobbing your head and smiling, reconsider your Lawnparties schedule.

If you’re feeling this, check out “Glass House” for a smoother cut featuring Curren$y and Khalifa, and “Return of 4eva” for a heavier selection that’ll keep up the Lawnparties pace.

Moving on to the headliner himself, though, Wiz Khalifa‘s been something of a one-huge-hit wonder with his smash “Black and Yellow,” but trust me, there’s way more to be excited about for this Sunday. A look at some of his best cuts after the jump.

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Apr 29, 2011

Lawnparties Playlist: Wiz Khalifa x Big K.R.I.T.

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Friar, a fender-bowing prodigy.

Friar, a fender-bowing prodigy.

Thought Techno Jeep exhausted the musical possibilities of junk cars? Think again. Sean Friar ’GS, a Ph.D. candidate in music, was recently named the youngest American Academy Prix de Rome winner in 25 years and will spend eleven months in Rome expanding his winning composition, “Clunker Concerto: A Junk Car Percussion Quartet Concerto.”

Yes, you read that right: junk car percussion quartet, backed up by a chamber orchestra. Friar went to junkyards harvesting scrap metal with promising musical possibilities, then analyzed their tones and sound textures with a computer to see where they might fit into his magnum opus.

He’s performed Clunker Concerto at Carnegie Hall, which must have been an unexpected sight and sound for patrons used to your standard Mozart and Bach. But really, when you think about it, why does it make any more sense to jam on a tuba than a hubcap or fender?

See Friar and the fender in action in the video below, or listen on Friar’s website.

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Apr 27, 2011

Chords for Clunkers

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