RALLYING FOR SUPPORT
JOCKS JAM OUT
Women’s Empowerment League gathers by Doudna steps to continue raising awareness for sexual assault on campus. Page 3
Jock ‘N’ Roll event showcases the musical talent of Eastern athletics teams. Page 7
D ai ly Eastern News WWW.DAILYEASTERNNEWS.COM
THE
“TELL THE TRUTH AND DON’T BE AFRAID”
VOL.97 | ISSUE 92
THURSDAY, January 31, 2013
K ALEIDESCOPIK A
MIR ANDA PLOSS | THE DAILY EASTERN NE WS
Members of the Lehrer Dance Company perform during Kaleidescopika: The Art of Unfolding Wednesday in the Theatre of the Doudna Fine Arts Center. The performance was a combination of live music by Cordis and contemporary dance performed by the Lehrer Dance Company. The show was one of only two United States performances on their National Preview Tour.
Aerialists, dancers dazzle crowd By Bob Galuski Entertainment Editor
D
angling 20 feet in the air, using only upper-body strength to pull herself up the column of silk, Airin Dalton lets go and stops her fall with a well-placed foot wrapped in the fabric. Dazzling aerial feats like this were showcased during Wednesday’s performance of “Kaleidescopika: The Art of Unfolding.” The act combined music, dance and aerial acrobats in a well-directed show on par with performances such as Cirque du Soleil. The most thrilling highlights of the show revolved around each of the aerialists spinning, twirling and dancing in mid-air. Angela Buccinni and Yoni Kallai accompanied Dalton in their aerial stunts, which ranged from hand-to-hand transfers to higher up acrobatics, such as the silk column.
The curtain of silk was utilized throughout most of the aerialist moves, as both Dalton and Buccinni would climb up the 28 feet of fabric and intertwine themselves between each segment of the curtain. They also brought out what Dalton called the aerial hoop – a large ring suspended by a cable. Dalton and Buccinni would spin and move in and out of the ring, and even occasionally lay down during the performance. The performer’s daredevil antics were further shown-off during the final piece before the end of the first act. Mixing the powerful sound of the percussion against a torrent of dancers moving and twirling on the stage, Buccinni performed what she called bunging. Strapped between two bungee strips, Buccinni bounced up and down, flinging herself higher above the stage, until she finally began
to rapidly spin around the strips. More impressive, however, was the fact that none of the aerialists were able to check the heights of their apparatuses. Because of a lost luggage mishap during the journey from Buffalo, N.Y. to Eastern, none of the aerialist equipment could be tested until a few hours before the curtain rose. “We couldn’t check the heights on the silks, but we were able to make sure everything was safe to use,” Buccinni said. She also said the performers were able to get through the show by whispering directions to each other while on stage. When the aerialists were not in the middle of amazing in-air gymnastics, the spotlight was on the deserving members of the Lehrer Dance company. Scantily clad, each dancer performed gracefully across the stage, with very few noticeable mistakes.
Jon Lehrer, choreographer and owner of Lehrer Dance, said he wanted less clothing to accentuate the dancers’ muscles. The band Cordis, a quartet that mixed chamber music with heavy rock and roll, supplied the music. Moving from slow, methodical melodies on cello to hard-hitting percussion pieces helped transition each of the dances to a climactic end. The ensemble featured cellist Jeremy Harman, Andrew Beall on percussion, pianist Brian O’Neill and Richard Grimes playing the cimbalom, an electric cymbal with origins in Hungary. In addition to the music and dancers, the lights of the show added to the overall performance. Interweaving hues of red, blue and green, the lights helped set the mood for each of the dances. AERIALISTS, page 5
TOWN HALL | ADDRESSING THE ISSUES
Community speaks on discrimination, assault issues By Amanda Wilkinson City Editor More than 300 students filled the seats, aisles and surrounding classrooms of the Coleman Auditorium Wednesday to speak their minds and hear from Eastern and Charleston leaders. Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. and the NAACP hosted the event to talk about issues on campus and the Charleston community. The town hall meeting was created after peo-
ple posted racist comments on the Charleston police department’s Facebook page. Mayor John Inyart, Bryan Baker, the chief of police; President Bill Perry, Jeannie Ludlow, an English associate professor; Michael Loudon, an English professor; Kaci Abolt, student body president and senior communication major; and Blake Morris, a senior theatre arts major, participated as panel speakers at the meeting. Janice Collins, a former Eastern journalism professor, moderated and started the meeting
by reading some of the comments posted on Facebook. As she read the comments aloud, many audience members reacted to the content of the speech. “These students need to be shown the door,” “EIU has to stop recruiting these thugs” and “bounty hunting? I’m down,” Collins read to the audience. She said people assume the black students are the ones committing all the crime. Collins said in Charleston, that is not the
case. “Most crimes are done by white locals,” she said. “A very small percentage of AfricanAmericans are in that statistic.” Collins said it is not the statistics that are creating the problems, but the dialogue that comes from people reacting from the crime itself. Inyart said Caucasian suspects committed 32 crimes in the past year and African-Americans committed 36 crimes in the past three years. ISSUES, page 5