ashleyw-cpsarts

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Tonight, I went to see Maryland Night Live at the Stamp. It was incredible! I’ve watched SNL every week for a long time and it’s by far one of my favorite shows. Because of that, I really wanted to see what MNL was all about. It was so great! The actors and comedians were so funny and talented. I thought it was cool that they followed the SNL show formatting, while still making it their own and tailoring it to students at UMD. I’d heard sets from a lot of the comedians at a comedy showcase during Next-Now-Fest last semester, so it was really awesome to see what they could all come up with together. Usually, in a comedy show, there’s always one or two skits that just don’t land on the audience right, but I have to say there wasn’t a single sketch that didn’t make me laugh out loud. I also really loved that they had musical guests and stand-up comedy sets to break up the sketches. It really helped make it a well rounded show. I would say that I and every other person in that incredibly warm room witnessed a really wonderful show! I would 100% see it again, if they had it!

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This weekend, I went to see the Forward Motion Dance Company’s Spring Showcase. I really enjoyed it. My favorite piece was called, “Don’t Shoot,” and was set to a poem performed by William Lohier pertaining to the topic of gun violence in schools. It was an incredibly powerful piece. They really expressed their frustration and fear that accompanies the threat of gun violence that many students have been forced to become accustomed to. I thought it was really captivating how they used light and shadow to add an extra element to all their pieces. This was especially true in their piece named, “Sweet Dreams,” where they were all cast in an eerie red lighting. I also enjoyed their song choices. I thought they perfectly embodied their dances. I completely enjoyed their showcase and look forward to seeing what they do in the future.

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I went to the art gallery in the Art-Sociology Building on campus this week. I really enjoyed it. I was the only one there, which was a very interesting situation, because I’d never been in an art gallery by myself, but I kind of preferred it. I didn’t have to worry about bothering anyone else, I was able to just enjoy the art for myself. The gallery had a lot of really wonderful pieces. In the front room, there were a lot of artifact-like pieces that you could tell were incredibly old. Those were so interesting to see because I feel like those pieces aren’t usually treated like art but rather historical relics. It was cool to see them from a different perspective. There were other pieces that didn’t fit the theme in the front room, including a piece by George Dunlop Leslie, and another by Salvador Dali. Having other pieces strewn throughout the front room that didn’t have a uniting theme was an effective way to give each piece its own space and identity where it didn’t have to exist with anything else, just itself. The room farthest to the back of the gallery was home to a collection of paintings (and three lithographs) by the artist Paul Reed. I loved his pieces. They utilized color in such a wonderfully captivating way. In the piece pictured at the top, “Blue Plume,” by him pairing the green and blue with two earth tones, the green and blue literally seemed to be glowing. In the piece pictured at the bottom right, “Marmara VII,” Reed seemed to use glitter because the piece was sparkling under the lights. I just loved his use of geometry and perfectly curated color palettes. I really enjoyed visiting the art gallery at the Art-Sociology building. I would definitely do so again. 

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This weekend, I went to see Hamlet Replayed at The Clarice. It was so not what I expected it to be. I knew it would be a spin-off on the Shakespeare classic, but I never expected what transpired. Some of the on-stage antics were a little too over-the-top for me like the silent film and the America’s Got Talent spoof, and the ghosts in the audience were a little distracting at times. That being said, though, there were numerous times when I laughed out loud, most of which coming from the cast’s one-liners and word-plays on the original Shakespeare. One other thing is that I absolutely loved the music! The band was incredible and the song choices were so fitting and well-performed. I loved the modernization on a classic. It was super well-done and incredibly enjoyable!

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This weekend, I went with some friends to see Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. It was so enjoyable! The cast of characters was diverse and played off of each other so well. It would have been interesting to see their relationships blossom even more. I loved the main character Miles because he was so likable and relatable. The plot was pretty predictable, so the characters and their humor helped drive the narrative along less predictably. Now, the thing that I really want to address is the animation style. It was beautiful! The pictures that the animators created at certain moments were just breathtaking, such as the one in the photo I included above. It was such a pleasing scene in the way it was drawn, which just helped highlight even more how much of an important moment it was in the movie for Miles. I also really loved how the scenes were designed to mimic comics in the appearance of the dialogue along with the shading and line art. It was really like watching a comic unfold onscreen. All in all, I think the creators put a lot of effort in making it the best movie they could and it totally paid off.

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Yesterday, I went and saw the Kaleidoscope of Bands at the Clarice which featured the University Band, Maryland Community Band, and “The Might Sound of Maryland” Marching Band. It was an amazing show! Honestly, I didn’t realize that we had that many school bands. It was really cool to see how different they all were in their performances. I absolutely loved the Marching Band’s performance. It was so exciting. I liked how they paired each song with a performance by either the cheerleaders, dance team, baton twirler, or the Guard. I’ve never been able to see them all perform that up close and they are incredible. I’ll tell you one thing I didn’t expect to like as much as I did was the baton twirling. She was absolutely amazing and so fun to watch. You could tell she’s been working on her craft for years and really enjoys doing it. Honestly, I could say that for every person I saw last night. Every performer just seemed like they were enjoying every second of their performance. It was contagious. I’m really glad I went last night. It was a fantastic show!

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This weekend, I went to the movies with my family and saw Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch. I wanted to see it because I saw some previews and thought it would be cute and funny. It was! I’ve seen the original version before and I was interested to see how similar or different it would be to that. I thought that the new version really focused on the characterization of the story’s characters and it made them very sympathetic. I was routing for them all by the end. One character that stood out more than I remember was Cindy Lou. They really gave her a distinct and intriguing personality rather than just making her a plot device for the Grinch’s story. I enjoyed that. The movie had a great message and really put me in the Christmas spirit. It was really good and I would definitely see it again. It’s really easy to mess up a remake, but they made the movie it’s own, while not losing the heart of the original and without making it so predictable that it was boring.

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This weekend, I went and saw the movie Venom. It’s a Marvel movie about a man, Eddie, who has found his life turned upside down when his body is taken over by a symbiotic alien creature named Venom. The movie started off a little slow trying to establish the plot, but once it got moving, it did so fairly quickly. I found the characters to be quite intriguing, especially Venom. By combining the two characters of Eddie and Venom, it made the hero of the story a little morally ambiguous, because Venom is quite destructive and Eddie tries to balance that, but struggles with it. It made the conflict pretty complex, because you have both an internal and external conflict between Eddie and Venom, but then there’s also the greater external conflict of them both against Carlton Drake. It was a well put together plot, with a really great cast. Tom Hardy was likable and easy to root for. I also really loved the supporting cast, especially Jenny Slate and Michelle Williams. The ending also had a bit of a surprise which was nice. All in all, it was a really good, action-packed movie.

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This weekend, I went to The Clarice to see Little Shop of Horrors. I had heard of the show before, but I’d never seen it. I was delightfully surprised. It was such a well put together production. The music, the stage decor, and the costumes were absolutely beautiful. The actors were so talented and I felt myself empathizing with their characters very easily. I thought the show tied together humor and drama incredibly well. It was just an all-around likable show. I will definitely be going back in the future to see other theater performances at The Clarice.

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Last weekend, I went to Next Now Fest at the Clarice and I saw the Comedy Showcase. It was the first comedy show I’ve ever attended and it was wonderful! They had comics from UMD campus and also DC. The comics were of all different backgrounds and had very distinct comedic styles. The most popular topic that they each focused on was their background and how it had impacted their lives in funny, unique ways. I think this was a good example of the impact of migration. You have a handful of different people from all different origins in one place with one common goal: to make people laugh. 

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I went to see the Undergraduate Dance Concert yesterday. It was amazing! I was so impressed, especially when I found out that the students choreographed all of the dances. The performances explored personal experience and politics through movement, light, sound, and props. My favorite performance was called “Mistari Ya Kuona” and it focused on our responsibility to action in the current political climate. The dancers wore blindfolds while various bits of news casts were played over the music. At the end, one of the dancers took off his blindfold as the stage went to black. It was very powerful and relevant. Another dance that I really liked was called “Do Not Defenestrate Me.” I liked it because it commented on femininity and played off of the audience’s expectations. I also liked that it was portrayed in a funny way. The concert really attested to the impact that art has on the world in that you can add to the conversation in a constructive and human way. The students’ choreography focused on gender inequality, police brutality, sexuality, feminism, and mental illness in a way that made the audience see how it affected people. 

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Recently, I went to a concert at the Fillmore in Silver Spring. It featured 5 Seconds of Summer, a band that I’ve been a fan of for a while. They’ve had a considerable amount of succes over the years but have more recently been on hiatus. Now, they are on a small tour to promote their upcoming album. They decided to play a few small venues to showcase their new music before it comes out. The venue was very packed and at times it was a bit uncomfortable, but the experience was still very fun. They put on a very good show. I really loved how the lighting paralleled with the percussion. The show was just as fun to watch as it was to hear. I think that the overall experience really attests to the “virality” of art. The band travels the world to play their music to different people every night, and people come from all over to hear it. It also struck me that they were playing songs that have not been released yet, but a sizable amount of people knew the words enough to sing along based on low-quality videos from concerts just days before. It was all really cool, and I would love to go again. 

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On Saturday, I visited the William Benton Museum of Art in Connecticut while visiting family over break. The museum was small but there were three different exhibitions that we were able to see. The first one was kind of a mixed bag as far as what pieces were on display. There was a variety of beautifully intricate paintings, a few black-and-white photographs, and a few statues/sculptures. My favorite painting was called,”Noblewoman and Child”, by Alonso Sánchez Coello. It was like eight feet tall and incredible detailed. The second gallery featured an exhibit called, “A Print Sampler: Explore Printing Techniques Through Polish Prints (1960-1990),” where we learned about how artists use different printing techniques. There were many examples on exhibit as well as displays that showed the processes that some of them went through, and a few videos that showed the more detailed processes. It was really interesting. We learned about engraving, linocut, woodcut, screenprinting, and lithographs. In the museum, there was also a small collection of black-and-white photographs called, “I Am A Man,” detailing the works of Martin Luther King. They represented his work chronologically and were very recognizable representations of the Civil Rights Movement. They were powerful and each came with an explanation that laid out just how important the action being displayed was. I really enjoyed my time at the museum and was quite intrigued to see what art different places have to offer.

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Yesterday, I went and saw Faux Paz’s 25th aniversary show at the Clarice. I was not previously familiar with them, but I was pleasantly surprised by their talent and the extent to which their influence goes. Their arrangements were original and well suited for their individual voices. It was very interesting for me to watch and be able to discern how uniquely important each member’s voice was; they each brought something different to the arrangement and that was very cool to experience. The show had a few guest appearances. The main one was an appearance from Gestalt, an acapella group from the University of Florida that they had met during the competition circuit. They brought a different approach to their arrangements than Faux Paz, which was interesting to see how two groups of people can go about the same intention in different ways. One of the members of Gestalt talked about how much Faux Paz had influenced their formation. It was great to see how far their influence extends; it really attests to the “virality,” of art itself. Many of the alums of Faux Paz were there, including the founding members. One of which talked about how when she helped form the group there was nothing like it and that they really wanted to put their own unique spin on acapella. So, they did and I have to say it seems to have paid off.

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Yesterday, I went and saw the movie The 15:17 to Paris. It was a movie about the three Americans who saved all the people on a train to Paris that was being taken over by an attacker. I was most intrigued because the actual men who saved the train were playing themselves in the movie. I think that it was well done. The action was dramatic. It left its audience feeling inspired and I think it’s important for a work to move its audience. The movie wasn’t perfect, though. Having the men play themselves, when they aren’t trained actors, left for some clumsy performances. The largest fumble, though, was in the story-line itself. A lot of the story that was laid out just wasn’t interesting or clearly related to the climax. It just felt like there was a lot of filler before they could get to the action. I did enjoy the movie despite its shortcomings. It was interesting to learn about the lives of the heroes and see what really happened that day on the train. 

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This weekend, I went to see Wendy Whelan, Brian Brooks, and Brooklyn Rider’s Some of a Thousand Words. I thought it was a wonderful performance. Whelan and Brooks are incredible dancers and Rider’s music couldn’t have been better. I think it all displayed very well the global reach that art has and the capacity for it to, “go viral.” The three artists are all from different places, but have performed all over the world and have come together in order to spread their art forms to even more parts of the world. It’s really amazing to see how art can bring people together. 

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I went to see the newest Pixar movie, Coco. It was beautifully animated and wonderfully emotional. I found myself laughing and crying with the rest of the packed theater. I can definitely see the “Going Viral” theme present within the movie. The film follows Miguel, a young boy from Mexico on a journey to becoming a musician in a family that doesn’t support such dreams due to past grievances. Miguel gets himself transported to the land of the dead on Dia de los Muertos in search of his great great grandfather, whom he thinks will be the key to his future as a musician. The film displays a small part of an expansive culture and in incredibly creative fashion. It spreads the ideals and values of many Mexican families as well as their traditions to a global audience.