PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 28, No. 2, July 17, 2008

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brief notes

'Ingenuity Festival'

Music professor to perform July 25

A three-part “multimedia theatrical experience” titled “Inventions Suite,” created and performed by the interactive dance company Toenjes-Marchant-Smith, will be on the program of this year’s Ingenuity Festival of Art and Technology in Cleveland on July 25 and 26. The artists behind the company name are John Toenjes, David Marchant and Benjamin Smith

Toenjes is a UI professor and music director for the department of dance; Marchant is senior lecturer in dance at Washington University, St. Louis, and co-artistic director of Zo Motion Arts; Smith is a UI doctoral student in music compositon.

“I am excited and proud to be performing at this event,” Toenjes said. “Last year’s festival featured Troika Ranch, which is the most famous interactive company in the world. So, it’s an honor to be in the festival, to be sure.”

Toenjes said the piece to be featured at the upcoming festival is intended to draw the audience into “a world of improvisational ‘musivideodance,’ captivated with musical creations borne of beautiful movement and musical manipulation, and challenged with the question of man’s relationship to machine.”

A video performance of the work’s first two parts – “Leonardo’s Chimes” and “Songs of the Elastic Halloon” – can be viewed online at Toenjes’ Web site.

I space

Master’s grads’ works to be featured at I space

Work by the UI School of Art and Design’s newly minted crop of master of fine arts graduates will be on view July 18 through Aug. 16 at I space, the Chicago gallery of the UI’s Urbana campus.

The exhibition, “Pulse of a Perfect Heart,” includes paintings, mixed media, digital photography and installations by 13 M.F.A. students who graduated in May: Collin Bradford, Nam Clark, Adam Fotos, Jeffrey T. Jones, Karin Hodgin Jones, Sun Kyoung Kim, Kimberly Kwee, Sung-Yeoul Lee, Youngjoo Lee, Masako Onodera, Phil Orr, Donald Rasmussen and Miriam Slager.

UI art and design professor Melissa Pokorny organized the exhibition. It is accompanied by a catalog that includes an essay by Chicago-based art critic Jason Foumberg.

An opening reception is planned in conjunction with the exhibition, from 5-7 p.m. on July 18 at the gallery, 230 W. Superior St., Chicago.

I space gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Faculty/Staff Assistance Program

Workshops help ID troubled employees

Employees with declining work performance or inappropriate behavior are often troubled with personal concerns. The Faculty/Staff Assistance Program offers a free workshop designed to assist deans, department heads, directors, managers and supervisors in identifying a troubled employee, documenting job performance and referring the employee to the Faculty/Staff Assistance Program.

The supervisory training workshops, “Recognizing the Troubled Employee,” are scheduled from 9 a.m. to noon July 22 and Aug. 7.

The workshops will be in Conference Room 350-B of Edward Madigan Lab.  To register, contact Tracie Hediger at 244-5312 or e-mail hediger@illinois.edu. If sending an e-mail, indicate the workshop date you prefer to attend and include your name, department and phone number.

Center for African Studies

UI hosts African Language Institute

As the home to one of the most comprehensive African-languages programs in the nation, the UI is the ideal host for the Summer Cooperative African Language Institute, according to its director, linguistics and African languages professor Eyamba G. Bokamba.

The institute, which provides intensive instruction to students from the UI and elsewhere in 11 languages – from Akan/Twi and Arabic to Swahili and Zulu – has been in session since June 9 and continues through Aug. 2. It has been organized by the Center for African Studies in cooperation with the department of linguistics.

In addition to providing participants with immersive instruction in a single language, the institute offers an array of extracurricular cultural activities – from cooking classes, musical performances and dance instruction to film screenings and research forums. All activities and events, including the African Language Showcase, at 6 p.m. July 25 in the Ballroom of the Illini Union, are free and open to the public.

The showcase will feature skits, performed by the students to demonstrate their newfound language skills.

Bokamba said admission to the institute is competitive, for applicants as well as instructors. This year, 101 students are enrolled. They are from the UI and 27 other colleges and universities, with one student attending from Europe. Instructors, who must compete for teaching assignments, are affiliated with the UI and several other academic institutions.

The national institute rotates its location every two years to a different university with African area studies centers designated by the U.S. Department of Education as Title VI National Resource Centers. This is the second summer the institute is being held at the UI; it moves to Michigan State University next year.

More information about the institute and cultural activities open to the public is available online at www.afrst.uiuc.edu.

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