LEWISTON – Bates College is dedicating the third week of January to programs that reflect the cultural wealth and diversity of Asia, particularly China.
Supported by the Freeman Foundation, Asia Week at Bates – actually 11 days – includes a concert of Chinese music, exhibitions of photographs documenting China, a lecture on Japanese garden design and an Asian film festival.
Asia Week begins at 5 p.m. Friday, Jan. 16, with a lecture and opening reception for the college’s Museum of Art exhibition, “Documenting China: Contemporary Photography and Social Change.” Showcasing work by seven Chinese photographers, this nationally significant exhibition examines the impacts of urbanization and industrialization in that rapidly modernizing land.
The show was curated by Gu Zheng, an expert in documentary photography and associate professor of journalism at Fudan University, Shanghai. Gu, who will spend the winter semester at Bates on a teaching residency. He will discuss the show in the 7 p.m. lecture in Room 104, Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St.
The exhibition will run through March 28. For more information, go online to www.bates.edu/x36102.xml.
Students’ views of China
Also starting Jan. 16, and continuing through the month, are two exhibitions of student photographs of China in the Chase Hall Gallery, Campus Avenue, and the Ronj, Bates’ student-run coffeehouse, 32 Frye St. The images are taken from a body of work by two dozen students who spent the fall semester in Nanjing. The students worked briefly with Professor Gu in Shanghai on ways to most effectively photograph their experiences in China.
Next, “The Eye: The 2004 Bates College Festival of Contemporary Asian Cinema” runs between 6 and 10 p.m. from Tuesday, Jan. 20, through Friday, Jan. 23. The first screening will take place in the Benjamin Mays Center, 95 Russell St., and the remainder in Olin Arts Center, Room 104.
Here’s the festival schedule:
Jan. 20: “The Eye” (Thailand, 2002, horror), “The Vertical Ray of the Sun” (Vietnam, 2000, romantic comedy);
Jan. 21: “Spirited Away” (Japan, 2001, animé), “Double Agent” (South Korea, 2003, action);
Jan. 22: “The Wind Will Carry Us” (Iran, 1999, drama), “The Road Home” (China, 2001, romance);
Jan. 23: “Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam” (India, 2003, musical).
Chris Berry, festival curator and associate professor of film studies at the University of California, Berkeley, will lead discussions of the films for the first two evenings, joined by John Yu Zou, professor of Chinese at Bates. Zou will lead the discussion the final two evenings.
For more information go to www.bates.edu/asian-cinema-festival.xml or call 207-786-6195.
Two famed musicians from Beijing
“The Zheng: A Concert of Classical Chinese Music,” featuring two renowned musicians from Beijing, will start at 8 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 24, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall. Performers are Tian Qing, a musicologist and multi-instrumentalist, and Zhang Shan, a virtuoso on the zitherlike stringed instrument called the zheng. The musicians will offer a preconcert lecture in the concert hall at 4 p.m.
The program explores diverse classical forms from courtly music to melodies from the autonomous Central Asian region of Uighur. One of China’s foremost music scholars, Tian Qing is a leading authority on Buddhist music. A master of classical Chinese instruments, he has lectured and performed extensively in Asia and Europe. The Bates concert marks his first visit to the United States.
Zhang, a winner of numerous awards, has performed often as a soloist since 1989 and is known for her precise but bold interpretations of classical material. The zheng, dating back 2,500 years, has more than 20 strings spanning an unfretted wooden body. It has a haunting vocal quality obtained by bending the pitch of the plucked strings.
The concert concludes the 2003-04 Bates College Concert Series. Admission is $8 for the general public, $5 for seniors and students. For reservations and concert series information, call 207-786-6135.
Focus turns to gardens
Finally, in the Mays Center at 7 p.m. Monday, Jan. 26, David Slawson will offer the slide lecture “Creating Japanese Gardens Inspired by Native Scenery.” Slawson, a Cleveland-based designer, is the author of the influential book, “Secret Teachings in the Art of Japanese Gardens” (Kodansha, 1987). For more information, call 207-786-6255.
All events except the Jan. 24 concert are open to the public at no charge.
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