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just SPRING ROSE OPENING: Dora Garcia: Love with Obstacles >> Pg. 19

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arts & culture

By VICKY WANG JUSTICE CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Last Saturday, the Taiwanese Student Association held its annual cultural show, “My Home, Formosa,” in the Levin Ballroom. In 1542, Portuguese sailors came across a forest-cloaked land and shouted: “Ilha Formosa,’’ meaning “Beautiful Island.” Taiwan was then named “Formosa” in 1542. This year, TSA picked Formosa as the namesake and topic of the show to conjure up a feeling of home and belonging for Taiwanese-American students, and to present the beauty and essence of Taiwanese culture in the Brandeis community.

TSA kicked off the event with a creative E-board video. The video depicted 10 skits showing unique aspects of Taiwanese culture. One of the features was titled “Knowing the true meaning of Beethoven’s Für Elise.” In the video, some TSA members were running down the stairs with their garbage when they heard the music because, in Taiwan, garbage trucks follow their route while playing “Für Elise.” The amusing acting made everyone in the room laugh. The event reminded the Taiwanese students of their home and gave the students who are not Taiwanese a glimpse into that culture.

TSA reached out to various artists from outside of Brandeis who performed traditional and contemporary Taiwaness performances. The first presentation was by the DFBB dance group. The group’s name is an acronym for Dong Fang Bú Bài, a character in the well-known Chinese novel, “Xiao Ao Jiang Hu.” The group was composed of students and professionals from various backgrounds in the Boston area. While their confident postures and energetic moves impressed and hyped up the audience, they also brought the audience closer to Asian dance culture.

Following the dance performance, TSA set up a stage to share pop songs from Taiwan. Myles Gui ’21 covered two songs by Taiwanese artists. TSA member Jay Tseng ’21 joined hands with Myles and performed the first song, “Without You.” Myles’s touching voice and Jay’s energetic rapping gained great acclaim from the audience. After the first song, Myles stayed on the stage to cover the second song, “Black Humor” by the famous Taiwanese singer Jay Chou. The soothing melody caused me to recall my memories of the songs from my youth. However, the

EMILY BLUMENTHAL/the Justice

MUSICAL TALENT: Various artists, both from Brandeis and the local area, performed at “My Home, Formosa.”

song was enjoyable for everyone, whether they were familiar or unfamiliar with Jay Chou’s songs. The Sad Boys Club from Boston put on a thrilling and vibrant dance performance. Street dance is an essential part of Taiwanese culture; the Sad Boys Club members built their performance from the breaking, popping, krumping and hiphop freestyle common in street dance. Their dynamic was youthful and vigorous, and each dancer’s passion permeated the audience. The crowd applauded enthusiastically at the end of their performance.

The first and second halves of the show started and ended with TSA members distributing boba tea to the audience, including guava and passionfruit tea, mango green tea and classic milk tea. As Taiwan was the place of origin of boba tea, TSA members did not miss out on the chance to share the popular boba culture with the audience, especially as boba tea has gained many fans in the U.S.

As I have previously illustrated, dancing is a major part of Taiwanese culture. The 14 TSA E-Board members danced to “Chinese Herbal Manual” by Jay Chou on the stage to open the second half of the show. WuZee, a Chinese fusion dance group from Tufts, performed a traditional dance to express appreciation of Chinese culture and dance. Ten performers dressed in traditional costumes danced while using paper handheld fans as props and performed the role of male scholars. I was glad that the traditional and ancient culture was inherited through generations up until the present. Thanks to these passionate dancers, I was able to experience the charms of traditional dance culture. Overall, the dancers’ graceful movements showed the audience the spirit and the beauty of Taiwanese traditional dance.

In order to introduce more people to traditional Chinese trick, TSA also invited the BLS Diabolo Club to bring a fabulous

EMILY BLUMENTHAL/the Justice

DANCING FUN: Some of the performers shared a variety of dances to showcase traditional and modern Taiwanese culture.

show to Brandeis students. During the show, they performed with and without the lights. Their demonstrations showed yo-yo skills and techniques with increasing difficulty as the performance progressed. They cast the yo-yo up into the sky, swapping the yo-yo with each other in the air and even manipulating two yo-yos simultaneously. The audience was continuously amazed by these extraordinary tricks. Playing Chinese yo-yo was a precious memory of my childhood and I was proud of the performers because they had developed their skills so well to impress the audience with this aspect of Asian culture.

Justin and Jason from the Jrod Twins performed duet covers of popular songs for the audience. The twins appreciated performing at Brandeis for the second time (the first time they were invited by the Southeast Asian Club). Justin and Jason performed five songs, some in English and some in Vietnamese. Even though many in the audience did not understand Vietnamese, the melody was calming and appealing enough to make the audience immersed in the music. The twins’ performance seemed to demonstrate the saying that “music needs no language.” The show ended with TSA coordinators serving several kinds of traditional Taiwanese foods. Throughout the entire show, all the coordinators were well-organized, each performing their designated roles responsibly. Behind this splendid show, it was all about the hard work, cooperation and time investment of TSA members. Most of the performers were not from Brandeis, and, therefore, the preparation process was quite challenging for TSA coordinators. Jiaao Gong ’21, the primary coordinator of TSA, said in an interview with the Justice that the most challenging part of planning the event was “definitely coordinating because you have to coordinate so many performers, like some performers, say, have their own stuff to do and sometimes they forgot to do the contracts, forgot to send us the music. You have to go back and forth with them and make sure that they give you what you need.” As someone from a similar cultural background, I appreciated TSA’s dedication to this cultural event. The event introduced and shared the essence of Taiwanese culture while offering belonging for those who are away from home.

CONCERT

Jams with SCRAM and BAMCO

By ELISABETH FREEMAN JUSTIC EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

On Friday night at the Rose Art Museum, SCRAM and BAMCO joined forces to host an afterhours Winter Coffeehouse concert. SCRAM is a group of students that works with the Rose Art Museum to plan events and BAMCO discovers and brings musicians from a diverse set of backgrounds to campus. The performance was surrounded by the magnificent works in Dora García’s exhibit, “Love with Obstacles.”

In an interview with the Justice, SCRAM President Alex Shoshani ’22 said, “We do a concert with BAMCO most semesters. This particular semester, we wanted to focus on female performers because Dora Garcia’s work is inspired by really amazing women.” The audience saw three performances: a Boston-based singer-songwriter called oomph!, Brooklyn comedy duo OLGA and an acoustic set from the on-campus band Sproutfit.

The first act was oomph! Her songs were original compositions, except for her finale, which was a cover of a song by ABBA. The tone of her songs and the acoustic performance created a sense of intimacy and vulnerability. In between songs, she cracked jokes and talked to the audience, making her set more interactive. As time progressed, more people were attracted by the performance and continued to crowd into the room.

The second performance was the comedy duo OLGA. Two millennial women, their set was largely targeted towards women of the same age group and was composed of sarcastic quips about feminism and politics. Nonetheless, the audience — containing people of all ages and genders — was laughing.

Last, but certainly not least, was Brandeis’ own Sproutfit, an indie pop band. In addition to singing original music, the students played the guitar, cello, keyboard and cajón. The combination of these instruments created a unique sound, giving the performance a laid-back mood. During the performance, some audience members subtly tapped their feet to the rhythm and immersed themselves completely in the world of music.

I thought that the event was an interesting experience. Before Friday night, I had never seen a female comedian live, which made the event a first for me. The novelty of the experience and supporting female comics made the show meaningful for me. Besides, I appreciate the value of exposing myself to local talent — both on and off campus. You never know where people go in life, and I’d like to think to myself, “Hey, I got to see so-and-so before they were famous.” Thank you, SCRAM and BAMCO, for the wonderful opportunity.

I adored the fact that the concert was planned so that the audience would watch predominantly female-led performances in the context of Dora García’s art. In other words, the concert supported female artists in more ways than one. I believe that female representation — women celebrating women — is important and relevant in our current sociopolitical climate. García’s art made it so that the concert was not only an opportunity to enjoy music but also an opportunity to assess society beyond our college campus. While OLGA directly told the audience about intersectional

Photos by RIVER HAYES/the Justice

LOCAL ARTIST: The first act was oomph!, a Boston-based singer and songwriter.

feminism, I believe oomph! showed it by creating her path in society as a young woman. As members of society, a small but significant thing we can do is support women’s voices. As Shoshani said, “We just really want to be able to work with the progressive work that Dora [García] has done, and this was a really fun way to do it.”

HOME-GROWN MUSICIANS: Sproutfit, the final act, is an indie pop band created by Brandeis students.

Today is for ‘Yesterday’s Tomorrow’

By LUKE LIU JUSTICE EDITOR

On Feb. 13, the Rose Art Museum hosted its opening ceremony for the Rose’s Spring Exhibition. In the Gerald S. and Sandra Fineberg Gallery and Lower Rose, “Yesterday’s Tomorrow” presents a selection from the Rose Museum from 1933 to 2018. The chosen pieces focus on historical incidents that had long-lasting impacts on our present understanding of society sentences is delicately inserted in the background of drawings of splendid figures that carved their names in history. Starting and ending the scroll with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki seems to suggest a cycle that will never break if we fail to learn lessons from the past. Moving to the Lower Rose, a relatively small piece caught my eye. “(Geometries) Fire X” is a TIME Magazine cover with sacred Islamic geometrical cutouts. While one can still read the

WIDE VARIETY: “Yesterday’s Tomorrow” presents artworks from the museum collection spanning from 1938 to 2018. future for Russian women can be read through the lines of her thoughts, which sharply contrasts the reality of Russia in the footage. A short fiction called “Soon (In 48 Years’ Time)” imagines a commune in the 1970s with no poverty and pain. At the same time, the aged architecture in a Russian city looks like someone’s faded memory.

On the other side of the chamber, several collections of documents are displayed around the room, including letters between Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger, two great German philosophers of the 20th century, who shared an intimate relationship for over five decades. After World War II, scholars were divided on their stand on Heidegger, who was known as one of the most influential philosophers in the 20th century and a follower of the Nazi ideology. Should we separate intellect from moral imperfection? By resuming her correspondence with Heidegger, Arendt chose the path of reconciliation, hence the title of the collection. Like

Photos by NOAH ZEITLIN/the Justice APPRECIATING ART: The Rose Art Museum opened this gallery for the spring semester.

what she wrote in her diary, reconciliation “is thus the exact opposite of forgiveness, which generates inequality. The burden of injustice is for he who has committed it, that which he has laden on his shoulders.” The choice of reconciliation demands courage in one’s own decision, which allows her to break through the identities of Heidegger and talk directly to the person himself.

These are just some of the pieces that caught my eye upon my first visit. If any of these comments interest you in one of the specific pieces or the museum in general, pay a visit to this fine establishment.

and that continues to shape our future. In the Lois Foster Gallery, “Dora García: Love with Obstacles” includes a variety of art forms, from film and drawings to documents and performances created by Dora García. The exhibition aims to tackle the relationship between idealism, reality and the difficulties of bringing the former to the latter. Entering the museum, one cannot help but notice the scrolllike construct on the left side at the end of the room. “Project for a New American Century” is a 65-foot-long, six-foot-tall paper loop that is covered in words and drawings. One part of the sculpture curves in on itself so that one can walk inside and be completely surrounded by it. The text and graphics on the paper wall covers international affairs from the end of World War II until post-9/11. The mixture of names, numbers and front line of the magazine, which is clearly related to a report on warfare, one cannot help but be distracted by the cut-out, which feels like looking through a kaleidoscope. Who’s to say it is not how we feel about news today? More and more often, we read news under layers of cover and sculpting. The pieces that were cut out might very well be their own story, but we shall never see the whole story.

A corner of the lower chamber is set up as a small screening room, where Dora García’s documentary, “Love and Obstacles, 2020,” is shown. The film focuses on Alexandra Kollontai, a Russian feminist and activist before and during the early stage of the Soviet Union. In the film, letters and fiction of Kollontai were read, with the images of the posters of her lectures and the architecture featured on the screen. A hopeful

BOOK REVIEW

GRAND GALLERY: People observed the exhibition on the opening night.

A lovely read: ‘The Lovely and the Lost’

By JESSICA SCHWARTZMAN JUSTICE CONTRIBUTING WRITER

A missing persons case sparks a cocktail of both intra- and interpersonal drama in “The Lovely and the Lost,” Jennifer Lynn Barnes’s most recent standalone thriller.

Enter Kira Bennett, wilderness survivor. Until she was found by a Search and Rescue dog, all she could remember was a life of fending for herself in the forest, an experience that made her feral and distrustful. Over a decade later, she still struggles with human interaction.

Enter Cady Bennett, Kira’s adoptive mother. After finding Kira, she takes her in and welcomes her into the family business: training world-class Search and Rescue dogs alongside her son, Jude, and their teenage neighbor, Free.

Enter Bales Bennet, Cady’s estranged father. One day, he appears at the Bennetts’ house asking for his daughter’s help in finding a girl who went missing in Sierra Glades National Park, the latest in a series of disappearances. As they search through acres of mountains and forests, Kira becomes increasingly obsessed with finding the missing girl because she knows exactly what she is going through.

However, it quickly becomes clear that there is more at stake than meets the eye: Kira’s repressed memories start bubbling to the surface and family secrets are unearthed, as the situation becomes more dangerous than it initially seems. All of these threads are woven together into a survival tale of family, secrets and trying to bring back the lost.

All told, I really enjoyed this novel. While “The Lovely and the Lost” does not quite live up to Barnes’s “Naturals” quartet (young adult “Criminal Minds”) or her “Little White Lies” duology (“The Princess Diaries” meets “Mamma Mia”), this book was far from boring. Rather, like all of Barnes’s novels, the story had enough twists and turns to keep me interested. From the unknown elements of Kira’s past to the mystery of her adoptive brother’s father to the missing persons case that serves as the backbone of the story, there is so much to unravel. I found it just as engaging to form theories about the book’s conclusion as it was to read the tale unfold. Barnes deftly spins her story, avoiding drama for the sake of drama and leaving minimal loose ends. The middle of the

book is a little slow, but the beginning and the end more than make up for it. Furthermore, I really like Barnes’ writing style. She writes scenes that had me laughing out loud one minute and reeling from a gut-punch the next. As an added bonus, her character writing is hyper-realistic, as all of the smaller details combine to give a clear idea of each character’s personality and motives. This makes it easy to become invested in them, which is important because much of the book deals with emotional journeys. Together, all of these factors make “The Lovely and the Lost” an enjoyable read for when you get to that point in the semester when you are sick of staring at the same four textbooks. I would recommend this standalone for anyone who likes dogs, stories about families or the TV show “Criminal Minds.”

“A lynching is a murder, a group murder,” reads the quote from artist Melvin Edwards accompanying his piece, “Nigerian Diamond,” on the ground floor of the Rose Art Museum. This piece, affixed to the wall and made of welded steel, was created in 1978 as part of a series begun over a decade earlier. Edwards’ Lynch Fragments series consists of sculptures made from recovered steel objects and recalls the “metaphorical significance of these items as instruments of oppression,” per the piece’s explanation on the wall at the Rose. Looking at this small sculpture on the blank white walls of the Rose, I was struck by its simplicity and, frankly, its ugliness. This is not a value judgment — the piece is simply not aesthetically pleasing in a conventional way, nor is it meant to be. It, as well as the others in the series, is meant to be a “powerful [reminder] of the enduring presence and reverberating effects of violence and injustice.” I did not think I would choose to write about “Nigerian Diamond,” but instead of brushing past it, I spent time with it. I thought of the horror of lynchings and the danger of mob mentality. I felt shame because, even though my ancestors did not commit those atrocities, it is part of my cultural heritage as a white American. I thought about how people are still lynched today, killed or driven to despair by a mob more powerful than them. I will not list every idea I had, but the bottom line is that I had a truly productive and meaningful interaction with this sculpture. I like art that is pretty or makes me feel good. However, works of art, like people, are not all conventionally attractive, and those which we consider to be ugly are still art and can still make us feel something. Also, as with people, the relative ugliness or attractiveness of a piece is subjective. Additionally, I think that the visual art we find boring or ugly, or the performance art that makes us uncomfortable, or any other confusing work we have come across presents the potential for a more meaningful interaction. Anyone who has written a Spotlight article or even just been to the Rose will encourage you to go and to see the exhibits on display there. I would like to take it one step further: go to the Rose and spend some quality time with a piece that DOESN’T speak to you. See what happens. It may be nothing, but you’ll never know until you try. ON THE ROSE ART MUSEUM By MAYA ZANGER-NADIS JUSTICE EDITOR

Editor’s Note — Editor Hannah Kressel did not edit or contribute to the article because she works at the Rose as a curatorial intern.

STAFF’S Top Ten

SUDOKU

Top 10 Ice Cream Flavors By THEA ROSE EDITORIAL ASSISTANT NOAH ZEITLIN/ the Justice

Here are the ice cream flavors that I scream for!

1. Moose tracks 2. Heath bar crunch 3. Coffee toffee 4. Black raspberry 5. Rainbow sherbert 6. Mint chocolate chip 7. Chocolate chip cookie dough 8. Mango 9. Cookies and cream 10. Strawberry

1978 Welded steel Melvin Edwards “Nigerian Diamond” 17 x 13 x 10 in. (43.18 x 33.02 x 25.4 cm)

Photo Courtesy of ROSE ART MUSEUM

MEGAN LIAO/the Justice

J.B. Barricklo

A Theater Arts Production of “The Tem- pest” by William Shakespeare will be presented on March 6 -8 and March 13-15 in Laurie Theatre. This week, JustArts&Culture spoke to Mr. Bar - ricklo, the director of the production at the Brandeis Department of Theater Arts, about the coming events. NOAH ZEITLIN/the Justice

JustArts&Culture: What is your role in “The Tempest”?

JB Barricklo: My title is director of pro - duction for the Brandeis Department of Theater Arts, so really that means our de - partment basically supports or produces all of the production elements of the show. Anything that’s not a performer on stage is somehow supported by our depart - ment. Traditionally that’s scenery, cos- tumes, lighting, sound. Our department has someone professionally on staff to do one of those things in conjunction with professional designers and directors and students. JAC: What can you tell me about the tech - nical and scenic elements of “The Tem- pest”? JB: I think the most exciting thing about “The Tempest” or one of the more excit - ing things about “The Tempest” in this go around is that the scenic designer of the show is a current Brandeis design student, Jacob Bers ’21. Usually Brandeis hires outside directors and designers, which is pretty wonderful. In this partic - ular case, Jacob had done design classes here in the Theater Department and our faculty design teacher, Cameron Ander - son, thought he was particularly talented or well suited to ... design the show. She acts as his supervisor and mentor on the project; I think he is doing this as his se - nior thesis. So that’s really exciting to essentially manifest and put his design which is really just on paper in a little model but sticking that writ large in a theater. Plus Jacob, as a student, gets to work with a professional director, a pro - fessional lighting designer, a professional costume designer, a professional sound designer — that’s pretty awesome for a student. JAC: What is the biggest difference be - tween working with students and work- ing with professional designers? JB: The learning curve. I know, if a de - signer is a professional designer, there is an expectation of experience that they’ll bring to the table. I’ll assume that they have a certain amount of experience. I’ll assume that they have a certain amount of knowledge of the practice of the craft of theater, how theaters operate and how work gets done in theater. One of the great things about doing theater at Brandeis is, although we have majors and minors, our productions certainly from an acting standpoint are open to all students. So in any cast of actors, you may have actors who are majors and maybe not majors but who have done a lot of theater before and you may also have students who have never done theater before, so they are re - ally coming to the show from a real place of innocence almost. In addition to learn - ing their lines and learning their parts, they are also learning about the whole process and business of theater. That’s the most exciting thing about working at a school: you get to participate in working in that learning experience of the student. JAC: For “The Tempest,” is there any - thing particularly unique about the set of any of the other technical elements? JB: The set is very striking. What’s unique about it is Jacob’s vision. I don’t want to speak for him. We are creating a sort of magical place for him. “The Tem - pest” takes place on a desert island — these folks are shipwrecked on an island — and so I think Jacob is envisioning a sort of wild and slightly scary dark is - land space in which the play takes place. I think anyone who comes to see the show will be surprised at the scale of the scen - ery. [The show] is in the Laurie Theater, the smaller of our two theaters, so I think they’ll be surprised at the scale of the set in what is typically thought of as a small - er theater. JAC: What are you most excited to see in the upcoming tech week and/or the per - formances?

JB: I think what I’m most excited to see for this coming week is the actors being in the real scenery for the first time. To date, they have seen a model of the set and they’ve seen designs of the set, but they’ve been working in a blank rehears - al room that’s been spiked taped on the floor where all the scenic elements are. Tonight is really the first night and start - ing tomorrow with the set because it’s the first time that they will actually be in the three-dimensional environs of the set.

JAC: Is there anything else you want to add? JB: I think, in particular, the theater de - partment is really excited to work with this director — his name is Christopher Edwards. Christopher Edwards is the newly appointed artist director of the Actor’s Shakespeare Project in Boston. We’ve been trying to get him out here for a couple of years now to come and work for us. He has a very long history of directing Shakespeare, so we were re - ally excited to get him here and have him work with students. I think it’s going to be a really terrific production because of his vision about the show and his ability to work with our students.

—Caylie Jeruchimowitz