WEEKEND

WEEKEND // FRIDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2013

w a S l o l t o w d r a H What silences the conversation about disordered eating?

By Jess Hallam and Hayley Byrnes Page 3

ATHLETICS

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A DIFFERENT KIND OF YALE PROFESSIONAL Ashton Wackym examines the resources for hopeful Yale athletes, post-grad.

ADVENTURE

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ALTERNATIVES

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A FLOW CHART FOR THE HOLIDAYS

PARTY OF THE INTROVERTED

WKND takes you on a ride through the tricky territory of naughty and nice.

Wesley Yiin explores the merits of staying in.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

WHY I DON’T TALK ABOUT IT // BY STEPHANIE ADDENBROOKE There is truth universally acknowledged that there are men (and women) in possession of a good fortune here at Yale. A truth less universally acknowledged is that there are many of us for whom a good fortune is a far-off concept. Within the University, there is an awareness of socioeconomic diversity, and even though “we don’t talk about it,” there is some sort of silent respect for people of different backgrounds. But, back home, I will surely be inundated with questions about the swarm of “rich kids” I supposedly go to school with. And while I am not completely immune to the consequences of the economic divides at Yale, I am fiercely defensive of Yale as an inclusive community.

That’s why I don’t talk about it.

I don’t constantly bring up my low-income background, because it shouldn’t really matter. I’m sure my friends would feel just as uncomfortable hearing that I lack some of the things that they have at arm’s length.

But I am not ashamed of my lowincome status. In fact, I am proud to say that I am the first from my high school to come to Yale. The highest compliment I have ever received was from my deputy head-teacher, who told me I was “honorably lighting the way for other students, showing people that they could achieve anything if they put their mind to it.”

I think the problem with talking about wealth is that it forces us to label each other. I have no problem identifying as being low-income — open discussion and awareness about socioeconomic diversity are vastly important to me. I just don’t want to be defined by it. A friend told me that Yale is the “great equalizer.”

Sometimes, the best thing about Yale is that we are all thrown together,

and ambiguity about who we “used to be” can help us to coexist and learn from each other.

My first exposure to opera took place this October, when I went to see Benjamin Britten’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” for my freshman seminar. Not only had I never stepped foot in such an elaborately constructed space, I had never had to align myself with the social niceties that are expected at an outing to the New York Metropolitan Opera. Sometimes I pause before I walk through the Old Campus gates, seeing tourists and prospective students taking photos of the grounds that have become my home. In some of them, I see the discomfort that accompanies feeling like an outsider.

It was the same feeling I initially had at the opera, but being at Yale means

t h a t i t d o e s n ’t always have to be this way.

We all made it here. Contrary to what I’ve been told, I’m not just here to fill a “poor people” quota. We all coexist here, and we will all (hopefully) graduate with a Yale degree. I don’t have a job lined up for me after I graduate. I may even end up working at Starbucks, or at my old high school. It’s not what I want, but it is what historical data foretells for me.

If you were to look up my area code, you would find young people who have spent more time in police stations than classrooms. My life before

A Day of Mike-AlphaYankee-Hotel-Echo-Mike // BY CORA LEWIS The morning of the hoax, everything spelled Tango-Romeo-Oscar-Uniform-Bravo-LimaEcho. There was trouble downtown, and it wasn’t at all clear what kind. Witnesses stepped forward, then melted away under questioning. Policemen and reporters alike dove down rabbit holes and chased wild geese.

False alarms sounded into the early evening, when a man in the Bingham library claimed he had a hand grenade.

The day’s end, thank goodness, didn’t include tragedy. Only worn shoe-leather and these jumbled thoughts on information, communication and timing. *** This was my first Thanksgiving without a regulation school break. Instead, the Monday before the holiday found me still standing at my desk (sitting kills), keeping company with editor Paul Bass and the static of the police scanner in the New Haven Independent’s matchbox-sized office on Elm Street.

Police scanners and Twitter have a lot in common, it turns out. Both face space and time constraints, for one thing. A police officer talking on a radio needs speed — usually someone’s hurt, in danger, requires backup. On Twitter, at least in the news biz, one aims to scoop. In both formats, you’ve got to break it down for your audience.

But the differences matter. If you have access to a scanner, for instance, odds are you’re either a cop, fireman, security guard or reporter, listening for what’s action- or newsworthy. Twitter, happily, with no barrier to entry, combines equal parts signal, noise and meme. *** In the office with the scanner, hour after hour, the retro crackling fades into a fuzzy background soundscape, and a vernacular poetry fills the sonic white spaces in the day.

A phonetic alphabet scheme generates the limited lexicon of this spoken-word genre. In order to avoid confusions, since certain letters of the alphabet sound alike over the air (think fraternally twinned sounds “A” and “H,” or “B” and “V” — not to mention the confusion of “W”), a particular word represents each letter. To spell “Barack Obama,” for instance, you’d say “Bravo-Alpha-Romeo-Alpha-Charlie-Kilo. Oscar-Bravo-Alpha-Mike-Alpha.”

B-heavy names sound congratulatory. When F (Foxtrot) or T (Tango) show up in a license plate description, I feel lighter on my feet.

Much like the visual #, @, MT and RT signs in Twitterese, the oral word code (though technically a kind of expansion, rather than

shorthand) organizes content in a new way in response to a formal challenge.

Plus, both police scanners and Twitter deliver news in real time. There’s no delay — no proofing before a print deadline or arguments around a boardroom table. (One NHI tweet from that day still reads “pdate” for “Update,” a typo testament to the day’s pace.)

A direct communication between writer and reader occurs without anyone to slow it up, question or interfere — some reporters’ dream scenario. Others find it harrowing — the loss of a last line of defense against triteness, a facile point or overzealous news-breaking. Call it self-doubt, but in a panicky atmosphere, with accuracy paramount, why turn down an extra pair of eyes? *** That morning, as I headed towards Old Campus under a pale sky to investigate the police scanner tipoff of a threat made from a payphone, a new message crackled through the air: “Confirmed report of a gunman … Shelter in place at once … This is not a drill.” I called Paul and phoned in the phrases. He posted them on the site. This became our routine throughout the day.

More than once, reporters on Twitter posted details before our main article updated, but Paul made his case for context and narrative, and we stayed ahead of the pack as often as not. @nhindy was, in some ways, a faceless, bodiless handle — with multiple reporters and editors responsible, rather than a single voice.

It was a virtual newsboy — hawking a headline that led to a more complete text. We may have lost a certain human quality with that move, but I also understand better the reasoning behind it now.

And the external eagle eyes of Twitterbirds helped our coverage as much as internal oversight. We’re a skeleton staff of four, so others fleshed out our reporting with on-the-scene details or called for focus where particulars were blurry.

I haven’t leapt out of the nest into the twittersphere yet; I plan to one day soon. Delay and mediation will always be available for those who want distance and crave space between the instantaneous self and the World Wide Web. But on the day of the scare, I was following feeds more often than refreshing pages. So I’ll get up to speed. I really will. Any minute now.

Contact CORA LEWIS at cora.lewis@gmail.com .

F R I D AY

FALL FILM RELEASE

DECEMBER 6

Bulldog Productions unveils their latest slate of films. Popcorn provided!

WLH 208 // 8–10 p.m.

Yale wasn’t bleak, but if I hadn’t been so encouraged to love school, indulge in culture and reach for the clichéd stars, I wouldn’t be here.

In a way, Yale is my Oz. It is a multicolored bubble where a person’s worth is not dependent on wealth.

While there is truly “no place like home,” I can’t help but cringe at my own indulgence this semester. I’ve been drinking at Starbucks without thinking about the cost, ordering stuff online when I receive my paycheck and buying branded necessi-

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ties i n s tea d of the cheapest option. I’m living a life of luxury here: at home, I have a choice of one knife and one fork — at the welcoming dinner for freshmen, there were at least three of each kind laid out before me. Partaking in such formalities would have once terrified me, but now I can approach them with ease.

Yale has exposed me to culture and diversity in a realm I never knew existed. I just hope that when I return to my black-and-white Kansas, I won’t miss the color of Yale. // A

BALKOSKI

LEWIS

ADDENBROOKE

WEEKEND VIEWS

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Contact STEPHANIE ADDENBROOKE at stephanie.addenbrooke@yale.edu .

Words! Be sick as I am sick // BY JANE BALKOSKI M and N talk a lot about books. Books have a certain gravitational pull. M and N eat lunch together Thursdays and start with personal questions: How was your week? How are your classes? How was your midterm? The conversation orbits the inevitable with a lazy grace. Slowly, the circuit tightens and the satellite spirals inwards. Then, a collision. Once again, M and N are talking about books.

They tackle the same question every Thursday, a question they’ve each spent a year trying to answer. They’ve only been friends since June. Before then, they tackled the question alone. They grappled and struggled in separate libraries and separate rooms and now, in October, they grapple and struggle together. They linger, sipping coffee in the afternoon light. The question is dark and knotted — why read?

M and N know a benevolent professor with white teeth and tan, weathered skin. He thinks a lot about beauty and art and claims that the humanities “restore the wonder which those who have glimpsed the human condition have always felt, and which our scientific civilization [...] obscures.” During M and N’s first semester at Yale, he once gave a lecture on the Odyssey and said: “It is hard to be human. Perhaps impossible.” M and N thought this was unbearably beautiful. Now they don’t.

The question is more complicated than the human condition, they think. The words “human condition” don’t mean a thing. When M and N read Mill, they became utilitarians. They’re proud of this tough-love ideology, happy to dismiss antiquated humanism. It feels like revenge.

But even Mill cannot really answer the question. Researchers at the New School for Social Research conducted a study and found that literary fiction, as opposed to popular fiction or nonfiction, promotes empathy. The study went like this: some participants read Don DeLillo and some read Danielle Steel. Then both groups took empathy tests and the DeLillos outperformed the Steels. So there you have it — good books make good people. Feeling selfish and alienated?

Read some Henry James for a quick fix.

With Daisy Miller, you’ll be back on your feet and ready to feel in no time. You’ll

be primed and “sensitive to emotional nuance and complexity.” M and N do not believe this. In fact, they hate the study.

Robert Graves once wrote of a “cool web.” That’s language, of course. Language is a cocoon that keeps us warm and unaware. It mutes and muffles. The world is infinitely complex and language can only convey so much. We cut corners because the Oxford English Dictionary only has 600,000 entries. Words chill “the angry day” and “dull the rose’s cruel scent.” But Graves knows that “if we [throw] off language and its watery clasp [...] we shall go mad no doubt and die that way.” With no rhyme or reason, no pattern, a wordless reality is endless, maddening novelty. We wake up and go to work because words make things simple and clear. Patterns are easy to spot: each day is like the next. Reality slips through language — water through a sieve — and comes out altered. Language breaks it down, gives it form and meaning.

A Field of Study must justify its own existence. Young people will ask the Field: why pick you over other fields?

And the Field will always say: I am the fundamental, basic, pure Field of Study.

I predate all other Fields. I am the first premise. And so History is the study of time and Physics the study of movement.

The Fields are very old and make convincing arguments. But time and movement are words. They’re constructs, an altered, digestible reality. They’re nice but neither is essential, neither is the purest Field of Study. The sieve, the cocoon, the dictionary predates it all.

Language is the first premise. Any other Field takes words for granted, assumes that language will not alter the data it spells out in textbooks and in archives.

So M and N don’t care that books will make them good or teach them how to live. It’s enough to to think of words as the beginning of it all. They eat lunch together Thursdays and they talk about these things. Frank O’Hara wrote: “Words! be / sick as I am sick, swoon, / roll back your eyes, a pool.” M and N are sick — there’s autumn sunlight in their eyes, bitter coffee in their mugs.

Contact JANE BALKOSKI at jane.balkoski@yale.edu .

WEEKEND GIVES TO YOU: Two Yalies DFMO-ing

At Mistletoad’s or not, it’s good to relieve stress.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND COVER

HARD TO SWALLOW

BURNT TOAST

Find the smallest piece of bread and burn it. Each day of her freshman year, Skyler* served herself the same breakfast, sometimes adding a cup of black cof-

fee. The first meal of the day had always been her favorite, but most of Yale’s offerings — eggs, pancakes, bagels — scared her with the possibility of consuming fattening oil and calories. So she stuck to the one option she deemed “safe”: the tiniest piece of black toast.

“Burning toast makes it harder to chew, so I would have to chew longer to finish a piece,” she explained.

With classes throughout the day, skipping lunch was easy. All it meant was a strategic swipe at Bass Café for an iced coffee and a pack of gum – “in case I really needed something to chew on.” Dinner was a plate of raw spinach and tomatoes with a dash of mustard, a combination admired

by Skyler’s friends, who complimented her apparent healthiness.

By the end of her freshman year, Skyler was struggling with a full-blown case of ED-NOS, “eating disorder not otherwise specified.” This meant that, according to a nutritionist, she did not meet the strict physical definition of anorexia but had severely harmful eating patterns with a strong psychological component.

Skyler’s habits fit into the clinical definition of “disordered eating.” According to the Mayo Clinic, “disordered eating” includes both psychological and physical symptoms, like cycles of severe restriction or binging, excessive feelings of guilt when eating, or defining self-worth based on eating habits.

When given this definition of “disordered eating,” 59% of respondents to the News’ survey reported that they have noticed habits that fit this definition among their friends.

Skyler said she recognizes them “everywhere” at Yale, hidden behind a veil of health-consciousness. She mentioned that many students associate dieting with health, and added that many count the ability to balance physical fitness, academics and extracurriculars as a badge of honor.

“It’s just another stretch for perfection.

Yale is filled with all these perfectionists ready to do anything to be the ideal person,” she said.

THOSE WITH DISORDERS HAVE FEW OPPORTUNITIES TO ARTICULATE THEIR PROBLEMS. Katie Chockley ’14 has struggled with an eating disorder since high school. She shared Skyler’s estimation that more people suffer than one might expect. Though, in Chockley’s experience, these habits dominate some groups at Yale more than others.

Chockley has participated in several athletic teams while at Yale and said that

Have you ever been diagnosed with an eating disorder?

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for athletes, weight affects performance.

Certain sports, like long-distance running, benefit those who weigh less.

But after joining the Yale club rugby team, Chockley said she has found a more supportive environment and that she admires the body-positive attitude of her teammates.

“If someone makes a comment about some food as ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ they’re immediately shut down,” she said.

But while acute in certain areas, some social pressures are constant. For those who already have an unstable relationship with food, there are many stressors built into day-to-day life.

Andrea* has struggled with cycles of severe restriction and binging at Yale. At an interview in Bass Café one afternoon, she was energetic and smiling. She looked healthy, but that hasn’t always been the case.

Andrea said restricted dining hall hours teach students to eat at specific times, not necessarily when they are hungry. Often, she said, emphasis is placed on the “comfort” of foods over their nutritional value.

She added that these complaints are not unique to Yale, but endemic to most college environments.

“The dining hall situation is interesting, because it can go both ways. [Buffets make it] easy to binge or restrict. And if you don’t want to eat, you just avoid the dining hall,” she said.

As someone also in recovery during her time at Yale, Chockley added that she felt uncomfortable with the social aspect of food in college, even outside the dining hall.

While students often joke that free food is everywhere on campus — and a hallmark of club meetings — Chockley said these events can be intimidating. Many of these feature unhealthy foods like Claire’s cake and pizza, which are “scary” to those who are over-aware of what they consume.

“There’s this voice in your head that says, ‘Do I have to eat cake for them to think I’m normal?’” she said.

MIND OVER FORK By their nature, eating disorders have an element of voyeurism that escapes most mental disease. In its most extreme form, these diseases manifest as nearly skeletal: bones jutting out, pencil-thin wrists and countable ribs. But for all their visibility — for all their Hollywood connotations — every eating disorder begins immaterially, as a psychological problem. They derive from an impulse to use food, not for nutrition and fuel, but as a way to gain control.

“Eating is one of those things that we can control in this world,” Andrea said, associating these kinds of disorders with competitive environments. “When things

get really stressful, that’s what people can turn to.”

For Andrea, Yale, academically and socially, was that competitive environment. Though Skyler located this pressure not just in classes and clubs, but in a feature specific to Yale: the unspoken expectation of happiness among its students.

Because Yale students pride themselves on a sense of self-control, she said, cracks in the façade are not welcome. The result is an atmosphere in which issues with food can snowball quickly, as students often avoid tough conversations about disordered eating. Skyler exhibited symptoms of ED-NOS before she recognized them as part of a disorder.

“There’s so much more happening than what you decide to eat and not-eat,” Skyler said.

She added that her situation was especially risky because she was at a healthy weight and seemed visibly unaffected.

Those with ED-NOS still experience detrimental physical symptoms such as hair loss and dizziness, she explained, but they do not attract the same attention of those who are visibly emaciated.

And so the answer doesn’t lie in judging healthiness by appearance. Skyler said the root of the problem lies in someone’s habits, which are harder to discern, but still noticeable if you pay attention.

“You shouldn’t look at every skinny person on the street and ask if they’re anorexic. But I think if people were more sensitive, it wouldn’t be that difficult to glean who is having problems. There’s an air that’s almost tangible,” she said.

OUT OF CONTROL We met Eric* at Blue State on York, so crowded with students and businessmen that the collective body heat was making us sweat. Two students sat at a table only a few inches away, discussing a summer program in the Southwest. Concerned that Eric might feel uneasy discussing a personal, sensitive topic in such a crowded place, we suggested a move to somewhere more private. He waved off the idea and said it was no problem. His confidence was astounding, especially for someone who had lived through what many consider a worst-case scenario.

Eric took a year off from Yale midsemester the fall of his sophomore year after struggling with severe disordered eating habits and mental health issues. His disordered eating habits started second semester freshman year. Like the 51% of Yale undergraduates surveyed who listed that they felt a need to lose weight, Eric felt uncomfortable with his weight and body image.

THE LAST DAY OF CLASSES

SEE EATING PAGE 8

WEEKEND GIVES TO YOU:

All over campus // All day

Shout out to language and STEM kids!

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A few weeks ago, the mental health group Mind Matters tabled on Cross Campus. Volunteers offered information about mental health resources at Yale in the form of flyers and conversation. If people were willing, they could write their thoughts about mental health on colored sticky notes and place them on a cardboard display for others to ponder.

“Sometimes I skip lunch on purpose.”

This light blue sticky note in the center of the board — a quiet admission of skipped meals, written in a neat hand — was surround by confessions of depression, anxiety, fear, loneliness and porn addiction.

The sentence seemed so simple; many can admit to accidentally skipping meals, and a pattern of missed lunches would be easy to overlook. But the note’s author was admitting to something intentional, a problem below the surface.

Had they confided in anything other than a sticky note? Had they spoken the written words aloud?

Start to talk about eating disorders at Yale, and a familiar, simplified narrative soon emerges: Yale is an intense place, and in our collective scramble to reach the top, students find solace in control — be it academic or nutritional. Disordered eating, especially anorexic tendencies, follow from this competitive nature, as the outgrowth of an overworked and self-critical student body.

Some of this may true — and students’ intensity (both in the classroom and out) does translate to a heightened frequency of disordered eating. While a widely accepted statistic is difficult to find, given that many of those suffering are left undiagnosed, according to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, roughly 1% of the population suffers from eating disorders. In a recent survey conducted by the News, sent to 500 students with 141 responses, 8% of respondents self-reported that they had been diagnosed with an eating disorder.

Perhaps because of this markedly higher prevalence, 59% of students surveyed also said they thought “disordered eating” is an issue on campus. But though many believe these unhealthy habits develop on campus, few observed a satisfactory level of awareness. When asked to rate on a scale of one to five — one being “not at all” and five being “often or always spoken” — how often discussions of eating disorders occur, respondents rated campus conversation at a low 1.92.

For those diagnosed with eating disorders, or suffering from potentially harmful eating habits, this silence only fuels the problem. Those with disorders have few opportunities to articulate their problems to friends, administrators or even themselves. And, according to many who have suffered in secret, beginning to talk is the first step to a solution.

Do you think that disordered eating is an issue at Yale?

No 4

// BY HAYLEY BYRNES AND JESS HALLAM

Three TFs grading

They regret reading your 15 pages of BS as much as you did writing them.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND ARTS

YALEDANCERS MAKES YOU WANNA // BY PHOEBE KIMMELMAN

Let’s be honest, who doesn’t want to be a dancer? From the ballerina figurines in music boxes to the hit documentary “Mad Hot Ballroom,” society’s collective admiration for dance is farreaching, and we are in lifelong awe of those people, the dancers, who are able to live and breathe the essence of the art. We put dancers on a pedestal as beacons of the kind of creativity and grace to which we, as normal people, can only aspire

IT IS HARD TO BELIEVE THAT THE SHOW WAS PUT TOGETHER ENTIREY BY STUDENTS. In their fall show, held at the ACES Educational Center for the Arts theater at 55 Audubon St. this Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., YaleDancers certainly surpass this lofty expectation. The choreography was nothing short of inspired. The lighting (the use of spotlights in one piece was particularly divine), the costumes and the music were all expertly coordinated, accenting the quality of the dance well. It is hard to believe that the show was put together entirely by students, from music selection to choreography to dancing, over the course of just one semester amidst the juggling of full course loads.

The performance began with an avant-garde piece enti-

tled “Throw it Down,” choreographed by Laura Bass ’15 to Kimberly Cole’s “U Make Me Wanna.” With the dancers clad in red and black costumes, the show opened with a sassy bounce. The highlights of the first act, though, were the concert’s duets. Molly Gibbons’s ’14 romantic piece “Delineate,” offered an elegantly agile respite, and Gracie White ’16 and Christian Probst’s ’16 performance to Eva Cassidy’s “Fields of Gold,” was just as much a demonstration of creative genius as it was a gymnastic masterpiece: White spent the majority of the performance showcasing her flexibility and acrobatic skills.

Theresa Oei’s ’15 “Irish Beats,” a tap dance to Anna Kendrick’s “Cups,” did justice to the song’s fame through Oei’s accurate turns and perfect alignment with the fast-paced rhythm.

(The piece was made complete, of course, by her bejeweled tap shoes.) Next came a sequence of four themed dances, all set to Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker”: “Spanish,” which paired an unpredictable flare with ballet, “Chinese,” a fan dance en pointe, “Arabian,” the marriage of classical dance with linen pants and a cropped top, and “Russian,” a more traditional, but still unique, interpretation of the ballet classic.

The second act even surpassed the first in wow factor, opening to “Bye, Bye,” choreographed by Probst and set to a spunky cover of “Blackbird.” (Spoiler alert: If you think jazz hats play too diminutive a role in 21st century fashion, this is the performance

// MARIA ZAPEDA

Don’t you wish you could dance like this? you’ve been waiting for.) Following came “Schizophrenia,” a piece choreographed by Laura Fridman ’15 to Edit’s “Ants.”

“Schizophrenia” was chaotic in its use of sharp and seemingly sporadic movements, a refreshing contrast to the elegance and fluidity of the first act.

The show came to a close with an interlude by White — she’s dancing inside of a metal hoola hoop 10 feet in the air, need I say more? — and a bold, energetic full-company piece entitled “The Only Way To Live It,” choreographed by Bass and Jane Fisher ’14.

But it was not only the dancers’ boneless maneuvers or the professional-caliber choreography that makes this concert so outstanding. The show seems itself to be an exploration of dance, illustrating the classical and the modern, the geometric and the gracefully smooth, the acrobatic and the athletic.

But while the pieces do seem to draw from this variety of dancerelated connections, there is a symmetry to each piece, and to the show overall, that does not make this broad exploration overwhelming or distracting. It is this kind of creativity and precision of design that puts the show over the top. Ultimately, an experience much worth the trek to 55 Audubon St. Contact PHOEBE KIMMELMAN at phoebe.kimmelman@yale.edu .

A Meta Take on Performance Art // BY EMMA PLATOFF Physiology tells us that our eyes are trained to follow motion, that we tend to ignore what is stagnant. So it makes sense that when attending a play, opera or ballet, most audience members are drawn to the parts of the stage that are moving, be they actors, dancers or elaborate props. But this biological truth might not be so accurate if one were to attend a performance whose stage had been designed by the legendary Ming Cho Lee, because his incomparable set designs must inevitably direct focus off the performers and place it instead on their surroundings.

Many of these incredible designs are on display this month in the Architecture Gallery of

F R I D AY DECEMBER 6

Paul Rudolph Hall. It is a large and echoing room with two levels and walls made of ridged gray stone.

With exposed beams and visible light bulbs, the gallery itself exudes an air of quiet cool that prepares the viewer well for what proves to be an equally refreshing exhibit.

Lee’s art is displayed using many forms of media — small miniatures of set designs atop museum-style white beams, photographs of productions, early stage sketches, a computer and TV playing alternating images and videos describing Lee’s work and process. The exhibit even features one set piece, a large wood and fabric man playing what appears to be a primitive version

of the bagpipes, from a 1993 production of “Carmina Burana.”

EFFORTLESSLY INTEGRATED INTO THE DISPLAY ... ARE COMMENTS FROM LEE HIMSELF. Effortlessly integrated into the display of his work (on the wall beside the watercolors, beneath the many of the miniature stage designs) are comments from Lee himself. Some are revelatory, such as one describing the impor-

MEN’S HOCKEY V. DARTMOUTH Ingalls Rink // 7 p.m.

A sport we are good at.

tant role watercolors have had in his life — and some are self-deprecating — “Too complicated — Trying to say too many things — A very 60’s design.” These commentaries give the viewer an insight to not only Lee’s reflections on his past work, but also to his intimate involvement in constructing every aspect of the show.

The room is filled with dozens of miniature versions of Lee’s set designs, which show both his exquisite accuracy and attention to detail (underscored by notes like “1/8 inch = 1 foot scale model”) and his versatility. Lee has worked on productions by everyone from Shakespeare to Mussorgsky to Tennessee Wil-

liams, and designed for spaces as huge and acclaimed as the Metropolitan Opera and as modest as New Haven’s Long Wharf Theatre.

His flexibility is particularly evident in one clustered group of four miniature set designs, all for the Arena Stage at Fichandler Theater, which features a performance space flanked by audience members on all four sides.

His designs for this stage range from the simple — one unoccupied stool and one barren tree for a 1976 production of “Waiting for Godot” — to the extravagant — a two-leveled scheme involving an entirely glass top floor with furniture and plants visible beneath it, designed for a

1979 performance of “Don Juan.”

And then there’s the traditional — a chandelier centered above a round table, surrounded by four chairs, for Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey into Night” in 1995. Finally, Lee leaves us with the abstract — another two-leveled design with slim trees in each corner for Shakespeare’s “Cymbeline” in 1982.

This exhibit, meta-artistic in its use of one medium to showcase another, both highlights a great artist’s career and challenges its viewer to recognize one particular aspect of performance art — one that we too often take for granted.

Contact EMMA PLATOFF at emma.platoff@yale.edu .

WEEKEND GIVES TO YOU: Four suitemates sleeping

You’re going to need it for next week.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND BIG

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LEAGUES

A DIFFERENT KIND OF PROFESSIONAL // BY ASHTON WACKYM

Left-handed relief pitcher Craig Breslow ’02 backed up his catcher as the ball came sailing in from the outfield to try and make a play at home. As the ball squirted past the catcher, Breslow saw an opportunity to end the inning as he picked it up, firing it up to third base to beat the runner. But his throw was off-target and the runner scored, giving the Cardinals the lead they would maintain to tie the series before heading back to Busch stadium in St. Louis.

Many speculated Breslow’s error cost the Red Sox the Series; it was also particularly poignant since the Wall Street Journal had named Breslow the smartest man in baseball in 2009. But by game six, the Sox had taken the championship and Breslow became the first Bulldog to win a World Series since 1986.

But while this accomplishment — winning the World Series — represents the pinnacle of success in professional sports, it’s a rarity at a school like Yale. At an institution known for funneling the majority of its graduates to large firms, places like Teach for America, JP Morgan and McKinsey & Company, Breslow is an anomaly. He did not follow the traditional Yale paths, instead deferring medical school at NYU to pursue his dream as an MLB pitcher. For Breslow, a molecular, biophysics and biochemistry major, the road to a successful career in medicine was well set.

But his prospects for achievement on the baseball diamond were less certain: Drafted in the 26th round of the 2002 MLB draft, Breslow has since floated through six teams before finally landing on the Red Sox. Breslow’s teammates — players from schools like Arizona State University, San Diego State University and the University of Florida — were largely primed for an MLB c a r e e r long before their freshman year in college.

Indeed, at perennial athletic powerhouses such as Alabama, Auburn and Oregon, there are definitive tracks in place to ensure that the most promising athletes land a coveted spot in the professional leagues. All aspects of a studentathlete’s life are optimized — from sleep schedules to specific meal plans — in order to prepare them for competition on the field.

Yale, by contrast, establishes a completely different framework for its student-athletes.

Unlike schools with a robust focus on athletics, Yale has no training tables to optimize students’ diets, leaving each Bulldog largely responsible for main-

taining a dietary plan conducive to peak performance. And while athletes at a school like Alabama are often assigned personal tutors to ensure that their GPA stays intact, Yale athletes are held to the same standards as their nonathletic counterparts. Students like Breslow are thus faced with the task of adhering to Yale’s rigorous academic standards while simultaneously balancing a competitive practice schedule.

Nevertheless, all Yalies interviewed felt that there was no significant disconnect between their athletic schedule at Yale and the one they experience now in their respective professional teams.

In spite of the overwhelming difference in tracks between schools like Yale and ASU, they felt mostly prepared for the challenges posed by the professional level.

According to Antoine Laganiere ’13, who currently plays center for the Norfolk Admirals of the American Hockey League, practice times and the performance level expected from coaches largely mirror those he experienced as an undergraduate.

The biggest difference, he noted, was in the “style of play,” but the pressure to perform was just as palpable. “The environment [at Yale] prepares you well,” he concluded.

In fact, several interviewed claimed that they perhaps felt more prepared for the professional environment than their teammates from more sportscentric schools.

Greg Mangano ’12, who has played professional basketball throughout Europe since graduation, has found this to be true.

Mangano’s resume is nothing to scoff at: He finished his senior year with 213 blocks — the most in Yale

history and the third-most in Ivy League history. Upon graduation, the 6-foot-10, 240-pound center participated in several NBA camps and, in order to pursue the goal of landing in the NBA, signed a deal to play with Antalya in Turkey before moving to play for Forca Lleida in Spain. He signed a deal in August and recently returned home to Orange, CT after playing for Ratiopharm Ulm of Germany’s BBL League.

Throughout his European experience, Mangano felt adequately prepared to balance the responsibilities of being a professional athlete and living abroad as an independent adult. “I chose Yale because I wanted to get an education because my career

years, Yale, according to Director of Athletics Tom Beckett, attracts a specific type of player.

“Our coaches and programs are looking for extraordinary student-athletes, and the mission of the institution is to prepare our students to work and enjoy their experience at Yale. We’re not trying to do something outside of that,” Beckett said. “We are trying to have the collegiate experience for that student-athlete and that is our objective. We want them to have the academics, athletics and social aspect. All of that is our primary concern.”

Because Yale attempts to bring multitalented student-athletes into its fold, as opposed to recruiting the very best athletes

THE COMPETITION LEVEL IS DEFINITELY INCREASING, SO [THE IVY LEAGUE] IS NOT A LEAGUE THAT YOU LOOK AT AS A SECOND DIVISION ANYMORE. GREG MANGANO ’12

could end tomorrow if something went wrong; it’s what I would tell my son,” Mangano said. “Going to an Ivy League school is the best of both worlds.” Ultimately, he said, the people directly responsible for forwarding his athletic career at Yale — including his parents, coaches and advisors — considered not just what would be the best fit athletically to further his career, but also what pathway would prepare him for the rest of his life.

Given this unique ethos for what it means to shape a student athlete in his undergraduate

in a given sport, funneling students into the professional ranks is an infrequent process. While athletes at other schools eyeing a professional career are in constant conversation with multiple parties — including the entirety of the athletic department — Yalies converse with a much smaller contingent. According to Beckett, those conversations remain largely between the athlete and his coach, and external administrators mostly provide support from afar.

“If the student is talented enough to have a professional career, our coaches are our peo-

ple best situated to advise them,” Beckett said. “Those are conversations always taking place with students about the next best step to take and when to take it.”

This framework has fostered incredibly close-knit relationships between Yale athletes and their coaches. Ultimately, it is the coaches who ensure that their players have contact with and exposure to their sport’s most prominent scouts, the most essential ingredient to acquiring a contract or a draft spot. “[The hockey coaches] were super supportive throughout all of the processes,” Laganiere said.

“Before I signed, they helped me choose what was the best fit for me. They were often the ones contacting me and encouraging me during the summer and they’ve been there all throughout the transition.”

Mangano cited the aid of head basketball coach James Jones as a driving force in helping him gain exposure and attain his goal of playing professionally. From helping Mangano work out with the Celtics to helping him earn a spot in the team USA tryout camp, Jones leveraged his experience and contacts in the basketball community to help one of his players chase his dream.

“He got me the tryout with the USA team through someone that he knew, and halfway through my senior year he was getting contacted by agents from different teams,” Mangano said. “He had some NBA guys come watch practice.”

Similar support from head coach Keith Allain and the hockey coaching staff helped Edmonton Oiler Mark Arcobello ’10 achieve his goal of playing professional hockey.

“Keith Allain was a big part of it. He helped get me started in pro hockey. He’s always push-

ing me along the way,” Arcobello said. “He has a lot of contacts and spent a lot of time in pro hockey.

He’s always putting his players names out there and trying to help us get to the next level.”

This is not to say, however, that Yale’s administrators, detached as they may be from the recruitment process, are not supportive of a student’s decision to embark upon this track. Beckett noted that it is a source of tremendous pride for the athletic department to see their athletes move on to the professional or even Olympic ranks.

For the administration, the Red Sox victory in the World Series with Breslow, along with fellow Yalie Ryan Lavarnway ’08, went far from unnoticed.

“Our student-athletes, while they are here and after they leave Yale — no matter what careers they choose — are a source of pride for all of us,” university president Peter Salovey said.

“I personally was very proud …

I heard several commentators refer to their Yale education during broadcasts, which was terrific for all Yalies who are also baseball fans.”

And as Yale sports continue to climb the ranks in multiple fields, it’s likely that such moments will not go as few and far between.

Indeed, as Yale hockey continues to blaze forward on the tail of their 2013 national championship, the 15 Yalies in pro hockey today are hopeful that more students will join them upon graduation. Mangano echoed this sentiment, noting that, for Ivy League athletics as a whole, “the competition level is definitely increasing, so it’s not a league that you look at as a second division any more.”

Even so, Beau Palin ’14 was careful to point out the major gap in professional exposure afforded to hopeful Yale athletes.

“Athletes at [schools like] Alabama, Auburn … are given more credibility as they have performed against the highest level of competition,” Palin said. “An equally talented athlete at a lesser-known school does have more to prove to scouts because he has not necessarily competed against the nation’s best … it is more imperative for them to demonstrate their athletic potential than it would be for athletes at big-time schools.”

But current Yale athletes, in spite of this, cling to the hope that sheer talent will outweigh their school’s reputation for producing lower quality athletes.

“If you’re good, you’re good,” Bulldogs centerfielder Brent Lawson ’16 said. “If you’re good, they will find you.”

Contact ASHTON WACKYM at ashton.wackym@yale.edu .

// ANNELISA LEINBACH

F R I D AY DECEMBER 6

INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS

WEEKEND GIVES TO YOU:

Whitney Humanities Center // 8 p.m.

Get a sneak peek at Justin Timberlake’s folk turn.

5 Credit/Ds We wish.

PAGE B6

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B7

WEEKEND SNOWSCAPE

START

Let’s start this off easy. Do you clean your suite regularly?

No

s s e r p x KEND E

Yes

WEE

Every year, the WEEKEND Express carries Yalies through the roughness of finals and into Christmas break. But this train runs along a very peculiar track--each switch measures the goodness of students on board. With every bad deed, the Express turns further away from its destination. Will you make through the thicket to the land of the nice, where presents await? Or will your journey end in collision, lost in the coal-filled valley of the naughty?

Watch out! You’re potentially naughty. Have you hooked up recently?

Yes

No

Let’s make this harder. Have you called your parents?

No

Did you sexile your roommate?

Yes

Yes

No In it do you...?

Do you own thing

Do you go to lecture?

No

Take notes for friends

Yes

Was it at Mistletoad’s?

Yes

No

When you get an email your answer...

Oh, whatever Immediately To section?

WKND can ’t judge.

No

Have you sincerely asked a friend to grab a meal sometime?

Yes

No

You’re perfect!

Yes

Are you the section asshole?

Well, in this framework...

No

Nice!

Did you actually get one?

No Yes, in TD Yes

Naughty!

S AT U R D AY DECEMBER 7

BEES ’N’ CHEER

SSS 114 // 9:15 p.m.

You catch more bees with folk than with classical, we hear.

WEEKEND GIVES TO YOU: Six a capella singers spitting Beware of mono from the alto.

S AT U R D AY DECEMBER 7

JAZZ AT THE UNDERBROOK

Saybrook Underbrook Theater // 8 p.m.

The event description promises a “Double-Header!!!”

WEEKEND GIVES TO YOU: Seven Tinder matches

You get a match! And you get a match! Everybody gets a match!

PAGE B6

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B7

WEEKEND SNOWSCAPE

START

Let’s start this off easy. Do you clean your suite regularly?

No

s s e r p x KEND E

Yes

WEE

Every year, the WEEKEND Express carries Yalies through the roughness of finals and into Christmas break. But this train runs along a very peculiar track--each switch measures the goodness of students on board. With every bad deed, the Express turns further away from its destination. Will you make through the thicket to the land of the nice, where presents await? Or will your journey end in collision, lost in the coal-filled valley of the naughty?

Watch out! You’re potentially naughty. Have you hooked up recently?

Yes

No

Let’s make this harder. Have you called your parents?

No

Did you sexile your roommate?

Yes

Yes

No In it do you...?

Do you own thing

Do you go to lecture?

No

Take notes for friends

Yes

Was it at Mistletoad’s?

Yes

No

When you get an email your answer...

Oh, whatever Immediately To section?

WKND can ’t judge.

No

Have you sincerely asked a friend to grab a meal sometime?

Yes

No

You’re perfect!

Yes

Are you the section asshole?

Well, in this framework...

No

Nice!

Did you actually get one?

No Yes, in TD Yes

Naughty!

S AT U R D AY DECEMBER 7

BEES ’N’ CHEER

SSS 114 // 9:15 p.m.

You catch more bees with folk than with classical, we hear.

WEEKEND GIVES TO YOU: Six a capella singers spitting Beware of mono from the alto.

S AT U R D AY DECEMBER 7

JAZZ AT THE UNDERBROOK

Saybrook Underbrook Theater // 8 p.m.

The event description promises a “Double-Header!!!”

WEEKEND GIVES TO YOU: Seven Tinder matches

You get a match! And you get a match! Everybody gets a match!

PAGE B8

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND COVER

A DANGEROUS PSYCHOLOGY Have you ever noticed disordered eating habits among friends at Yale?

1%

Yes 5

9%

But the catalysts for his descent into disordered eating were emotional: He struggled with relationships with friends, his sexuality and concerns about his academic future.

With all of these things seemingly out of his control, Eric turned to food for stability.

His habits began as an interest in healthy eating. He dubbed himself a “foodie,” and soon became a vegetarian.

“For me, that decision was an excuse to just eat vegetables all the time and not much else,” Eric said.

As time passed, Eric became increasingly restrictive and obsessed with planning meals — what he was he going to eat, and who he was going to eat with. All it took was a cancelled dinner date or an unexpected change in a dining hall’s menu to send him spiraling into anxiety, feeling that he had lost control.

perception can feel like yet another difficult step on the path to getting better. He found that taking time to recuperate was one of the best things he could have done for his well being, and added that those of his friends who have also spent time away agree that the experience is beneficial.

“The time off was really, really awesome, I learned a ton about myself … I came back with 10 times more confidence than I had previously,” Eric said, smiling.

Unfortunately, Yale does not make the reapplication process to return from time off due to mental concerns easy, Eric said. Instead, this impediment makes the prospect of taking time off even less appealing.

In order to gain readmittance into Yale College, Eric was required to get passing grades in two courses he had to complete during his time off, write an application essay and convince his college dean, Mental Health and Counseling chief psychiatrist Lor-

No 4

EATING FROM PAGE 3

THE PEOPLE WHO COULD MAKE THE MOST DIFFERENCE — CLOSE FRIENDS AND SUITEMATES — OFTEN DON’T KNOW HOW TO ACT. The malnourishment caused by his restriction led to cycles of binging and purging — the body responds to starvation by seeking calorie-dense foods for survival. But after each binge, Eric felt a need to compensate for overeating. If he didn’t purge by vomiting, he ran eight miles to rid his body of excess calories and to ease his obsessive mind. “[It] was funny, because I felt like I wasn’t really deciding to do those things, but it was just happening,” Eric said. “Deep down I knew it wasn’t going to help and wasn’t what I wanted.”

Eventually Eric realized that he needed to take control, and that meant taking a year off to recover at home, where he saw a therapist on a weekly basis. He said that the time away made all the difference for his recovery.

According to Eric, that time off doesn’t seem like an acceptable option to many Yalies. Time away from campus, he said, only feels justifiable if you’re doing something career-focused; otherwise it gives the impression that you simply can’t handle Yale.

But the world doesn’t end if you can’t get everything done in four years, Eric said, though breaking that

raine Siggins and an assistant dean of students that he could be “a real student again.”

He didn’t find out that he was readmitted until mid-August, just weeks before he would have to return.

GETTING HELP Yale Health now employs one nutritionist. Under the student health plan, Andrea met with that one nutritionist, Lisa Kimmel, twice over a six-month period last year — a process she describes as cathartic and crucial to her recovery process.

But help isn’t consistently available. This year Kimmel works as part of Yale’s “Mind Matters” initiative and no longer provides nutrition counseling. Andrea said that adjusting to Kimmel’s replacement, Marita Holl, has been difficult. When she returned to school this semester and called to make an appointment with Holl in late October, she was asked if she could plan to come in January.

When she explained the urgency of her need for counseling, she got an appointment at the end of November. After the fact, she described that meeting as “disappointing.”

To those with a history of disordered eating, “recovery” is a process, not a cure, and it is one that

does not only depend on professional help. Andrea observed that students, and not just administrators, could do more to encourage a better environment for recovery.

“The only way someone with an eating disorder will decide to get better is with support and education,” she said, adding that we should “at least make it a discussion on campus — it’s just not discussed, along with most mental health issues.”

Chockley, too, said that other students influence the dialogue surrounding food. She pointed out that issues with eating habits are a lot

% 8 1 o

S AT U R D AY DECEMBER 7

Yes 8

FRESHMAN HOLIDAY DINNER

Commons Dining Hall // 5:30 p.m.

More aptly: “Lord of the Flies,” a live action performance.

2%

N

Do you eat differently at home?

more prevalent than most assume, and that those who do not suffer from them unwittingly make the problem worse.

If someone observed that she was “eating healthy” when Chockley was restricting, she felt a pressure to continue. If they commented that she had “a lot” of food when she felt stable, this instilled a sense of guilt and defeat, often leading to more intensely restrictive behaviors.

Skyler echoed Chockley’s concern about the ignorance of the student body, but added that Yale’s administration could better foster student dialogue on this issue. She drew a parallel to the University’s bystander intervention seminars.

“Yale focuses so much on teaching us how to intervene when your friend is about to get raped, but they teach us nothing about how to help a friend who is on [another] really bad path,” she said.

And so the people who could make the most difference — close friends and suitemates — often don’t know how to act.

When he first started to restrict his diet, Eric’s friends recognized that he had lost a lot of weight over a relatively short period of time. For a while, they didn’t address his weight loss or personality changes any further, only mentioning his problems obliquely, and saying that they never see him anymore. Eric could not share his burden with anyone else.

Eventually, his friends took action.

They decided to confront him about his weight loss and depression, but only after Eric’s life had been unraveling for months. Looking back, he said it would have been better for him if his friends had spoken up sooner, though he recognized blame on both sides of the conversation.

“On the one hand it was my unwillingness to involve people, and on the other it was people’s either unwillingness or inability to get involved,” Eric said.

But even those that have experience with these psychological conditions find it hard to balance respect for someone’s independence and concern for their well-being.

Lydia* was diagnosed with anorexia at the beginning of her sophomore year of high school and

came to Yale after being in recovery for two years. But she said that even now, she does not feel equipped to intervene when she sees classmates that exhibit disordered eating patterns.

“We’re friends with these people — the dynamic is different. Parents can intervene … but that’s not part of the job description for friends,” she said. “This is the time when people are supposed to start living independent lives, so how can you say to someone, ‘I don’t trust you completely to feed yourself?’”

FIRST WORDS Eric and Skyler still relapse under stress, but now that those around them are aware of the nature of their issues, they feel more able to face them. Still, to obtain the support of friends and family, they had to divulge one of their most personal secrets.

Before he took time off, Eric believed that most of his friends would subscribe to the common perception that eating disorders are image-driven and simply about starvation. He feared responses that would only address the physical aspects of his problem, such as “go eat some more ice cream.”

The best way to propagate an awareness of the complexities of the issue is to engage in more discussion about disordered eating, Eric said. He called on others who have struggled with similar unhealthy approaches to food to share their experiences with friends, if they’re comfortable enough to do so. “[Be] willing to be part of the conversation,” he said.

Ten minutes after Eric left our little table at Blue State, a girl who had sat at a neighboring table for the duration of the interview approached us. She asked what the interview was for, and the conversation soon turned to the silence surrounding eating disorders at Yale. Then, she admitted casually what many feel a need to hide.

“I had an eating disorder.” *name changed for anonymity Contact HAYLEY BYRNES and JESS HALLAM AT

hayley.byrnes@yale.edu and jessica.hallam@yale.edu .

WEEKEND GIVES TO YOU: Eight Hanukkah candles

Because pluralism and chocolate coins.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B9

WEEKEND HOMEBODIES

THE SOCIAL NETWORKS // BY WESLEY YIIN

// BRIANNA LOO

For a special occasion, I recently decided to make an exception to my typical weekend habits.

It was the Friday night before the Harvard-Yale Game, and the campus was buzzing with activity. I was where I always am these days — in the Reporters’ Room of 202 York St., the Yale Daily News building. Butthat night, the scene was a little different. The room — normally a site of productivity — was packed and lively.

Although I was not used to this vibe at all, I tried to enjoy myself. As people continued to trickle in, I stood to the side, sipping uncertainly from my drink — it tasted like radioactive bacon fat — while chatting up my fellow YDNers and attempting to meet some Crimsonites. “It’s a mixer!” a friend slurred into my ear. “Mix!” But the crowd grew, the lights flickered, the music blared and then someone went ahead and spilled beer on me. Suddenly, I became aware of where I was and all the people around me, and I froze. For the remainder of my time at the party, I stayed silent and stared straight ahead, with only my thoughts to entertain me.

What caused me to clam up like this? The crowds? The Cantabs? The uniquely putrid stench of the alcohol, body odor and fluid exchange mixed into one?

My all-too-self-conscious mind has run through this question time and again without reaching a conclusive answer. All I know is that many times in the past, similar situations have turned me — a shy but usually sociable person — into an archetypal INFJ, with Introversion in font size 72. As a result, after months of uncomfortable Fridays and recuperative Saturdays, I made the decision at the beginning of my second semester at Yale to adopt “staying in” as my default weekend status.

But the more pressing question that I continue to ponder every weekend (and Wednesdays — thanks, Toad’s!) is whether or not I’m missing out on a part of the Yale experience when I spend nights in bed or at the library. I worry that I’ll have fewer friends, memories and adventures to speak about once I graduate, or that I should be using these pockets of free time to “network,” as one close friend calls it, with some of the world’s future leaders.

On the eve of The Game, it didn’t take long for me to tire of the party. Pushing through

the crowd at 202 York, I made my way out of the building and started in the direction of Pierson. “Wesley!” I heard my name shouted from within, so I glanced back at the first floor window.

Inside, the crowd was still pulsing. Amid the moving bodies of dancers and drinkers, my caller was nowhere to be found.

As I gazed into the building from where I was standing outside in the cold, I wondered once again whether or not I was supposed to feel lonely. *** When I called Madeline Yozwiak ’14 late on a Wednesday evening, she was just finishing up a problem set. A little earlier in the night, she had been busy baking treats to surprise and congratulate a friend after her exam.

Two years ago, Yozwiak might have instead spent most of the day scrambling to finish homework in preparation for a night at Woad’s.

Yozwiak, like me, was unfamiliar with the concept of nightlife upon first arriving at Yale.

During her high school years, her closest friends from school lived 45 minutes away. The obstacle of distance meant that “going out” was simply not an option.

Upon arriving at Yale, Yozwiak said the party culture took her by surprise.

“There was a certain type of socializing that I didn’t expect,” Yozwiak said. “That’s not to say it was bad — it just wasn’t something that I was used to.” She added that much of the pressure to party is implicit. Even benign questions during Sunday brunch — “So what did you do last night?” — indicate a subtle stigma against staying in, Yozwiak noted, as students feel obligated to have stories prepared about crazy parties they attended the night before.

Such sentiments are often shared by similarly inexperienced students. But Katie Byrnes, assistant chaplain at St. Thomas More Chapel who assists with providing alternatives to partying at the Chapel’s Goldman Center, pointed out that Yalies from all sorts of backgrounds are often initially overwhelmed by the collegiate party culture.

“Students assume that everyone else is partying in this amazing Instagram life,” she said.

“They don’t realize that some of us are just at home doing laundry and watching TV.” Bernard Stanford ’17 — who lived and attended high school in New York City — agreed that the quick formations of party com-

S AT U R D AY DECEMBER 7

munities within the freshman class surprised him.

Even before they step into their first classes, freshmen are inundated with information and advice on Yale’s party culture.

This summer, the University premiered its online alcohol education course, which showcases Yale students demonstrating appropriate drinking practices.

Then, during Camp Yale, freshmen counselors shuttle students from workshop to workshop, covering topics such as campus safety, alcohol consumption and communication and consent.

While these efforts were clearly designed for the protection and safety of students, they go further than merely acknowledge the University’s party culture — they assume that it represents the core of undergraduate social life.

Both Stanford and Yozwiak found the party culture discomfiting. Yozwiak described her previous routines as exhausting — especially during stressful academic periods — as she often had to run from place to place or transition abruptly from working to socializing. Stanford is usually reluctant to socialize or take initiative in entropic party environments — a shyness that he attributes to a childhood stutter.

But while Stanford and his suitemates share similar habits, Yozwiak was a member of Yale’s sailing team, with whom she partied every Wednesday and on weekends when they didn’t travel. After Yozwiak quit her team halfway through her sophomore year, she did not know how to spend her free time anymore.

Every Wednesday that rolled past without a visit to Toad’s felt weird at first, she said.

“It took me a really long time — until the end of sophomore year — to realize that people were doing other things,” she said. Eventually, she found herself looking forward to spending time with talking with friends or studying together at Blue State.

This realization, she said, made her junior and senior years much more bearable.

Reflecting back on her freshman year, Yozwiak proposed that freshmen may find it difficult to navigate the undergraduate social scene because they feel that they have to pick one of two different paths to pursue: either to shed their nerdy innocence completely, or to completely reject partying on moral grounds.

It took Stanford a few days, me a few months and Yozwiak a year or two before we discovered that

THE START OF READING “WEEK” Everywhere // 12 a.m.

After all, there’s Adderall. JK!

there existed an entire spectrum of other possible social identities. *** Sometimes, Yale feels like the campus that never sleeps, a place with no shortage of evening activities. Weekend nights, the campus becomes peppered with hotspots that serve drinks and attract huge crowds while promising attendees a good time.

Pregames, frat parties, suite get-togethers, screws and University-sponsored events are just some manifestations of this trend. According to Madison Moore GRD ’13, who studied parties and nightlife during his time at Yale, such splintering of the campus makes sense.

“Everyone has [experienced] a nightlife culture or some sort of celebratory moment,” he said, adding that these moments may also include smaller social events: a dinner party, going to see a show with someone else or a small gathering of friends.

Most weekends during my freshman year, I ended up with some friends at Global Grounds — a cozy reinterpretation of the Dwight Hall space, laid out with tables, board games and food. It was where I went to find a calm refuge from the raucous atmosphere of Old Campus just on the other side of the door.

Across campus, similar spaces can be found. St. Thomas More has its equivalent, the Goldman Center, which offers movie screenings, discussion groups and other events in addition to food and a study space. While both of these spaces are run by religious groups, Byrnes said neither is restrictive in its target attendees or programming.

“The point of the [Goldman Center] was to create a space for students,” she said. “It doesn’t matter whether they are Catholic or not. Our mission is hospitality.”

For students who find that spaces like the Goldman Center aren’t far enough removed from the campus festivities, Cody Hooks ’14 suggests that they look into off-campus living. Hooks, who manages a weekend potluck group for students living off-campus, said being ingrained in the residential college experience — and, more broadly, in the campus culture — can be intense and tiresome. During his first two years in Trumbull College, Hooks attended some parties, which he enjoyed at the time. By junior year, however, he said he “got over college life.” Now, he spends weekends at home, going

to shows, at bars or seeing midnight screenings at the Criterion Cinemas.

Hooks emphasized that his potlucks were less about countering party culture than they were about community building.

He believes that many students who live off campus are looking for alternatives to the residential college construct, which is what he hopes to provide with the potlucks that he hosts.

Byrnes also believes in building alternative communities instead of avoiding or opposing traditional Yale parties. She hopes that freshmen who normally only attend parties or similar events because they feel the need to do so will consider the Goldman Center — a comfortable space and viable community where students are meant to feel safe and welcomed.

After all, Moore said, while nightlife and celebratory activities are often about entertainment and letting loose, they are also about interacting with new people and making social connections that normally would not be made.

“College isn’t just about taking classes,” he said. “It’s about learning how to be social.” *** I sat in a Pierson common room across from Pearson Miller ’14 and Alaric D’Souza ’14, two seniors who have been friends since freshman year. At several points in the conversation, they seemed to forget that I was there, their thoughts turning to memories of earlier years on campus.

They reminisced like an old couple, and sometimes completed each other’s sentences.

Although they weren’t suitemates freshman year, Miller and D’Souza found each other and a larger group of friends because they all lived in the same entryway. Approximately half of the them tended to stay in on weekends, Miller said, which made it easy for the group to bond and spend time together. Some nights they would play video games, but most of the time, the friends would just talk. In fact, they had so many subjects to cover that they compiled a list of conversation topics that grew as the year went on. Containing everything from “suicide” to “Which X-Men character would you be?” the list was inexhaustible.

Like several other students interviewed, Miller and D’Souza were reluctant to identify as exclusive non-partiers.

D’Souza’s habits have changed over the years — because he

enjoys dancing, he attended more parties sophomore and junior years, but has cut back again this year in order to complete medical school applications. Similarly, Lisa Ann Tang ’17 goes out to parties roughly every other weekend, but often prefers to spend time with friends by simply talking or watching movies in their suites.

Harvey Xia ’16, who usually chooses to stay in on weekends, said he tries to avoid characterizing the social habits of Yalies through “false dichotomies.”

“It’s not about drinking or not drinking, or partying or not partying,” he said. “It’s about college students trying to find their way through a culture that has predominant values [centered around partying].”

Miller, D’Souza and Tang all said they felt no pressure to party. In fact, all but three of the eight students interviewed said they felt no pressure to partake in any specific social culture at Yale, although they all acknowledged that they have friends who feel differently.

While partying is a social medium that most students seem to enjoy, Stanford noted, there are other options if you look for them. When he isn’t spending weekends with his suitemates, he takes part in the community of Yale Students for Christ, despite not sharing the religious beliefs around which the group is built.

“A critical mass of people enjoy [partying], so it can monopolize social interaction,” he said. “But, there is enough space left over for a non-partying culture [to exist] and to still have fruitful [relationships].” *** As I was packing my bag and preparing my belongings for a Thanksgiving break at home, I heard voices enter the suite. Suddenly, my door slammed open.

“Wesley!” my suitemates shouted. They had returned early from a Harvard-Yale party at the Afro-American Cultural Center.

Together, we snuck into the buttery for soft drinks and quesadillas. After returning to our common room, we put on “The Call,” a horrifying film starring Halle Berry.

Only 24 hours had passed since I left the News-Crimson mixer in a daze. Tonight, there was no confusion about how to feel.

I forgot about the packing.

After all, I was already home.

Contact WESLEY YIIN at wesley.yiin@yale.edu .

WEEKEND GIVES TO YOU: Nine deadlines extended

Due dates are just, like, so oppressive.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND COLUMNS

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: ROMCOM TO ALL-OUT DRAM // BY MICHAEL LOMAX It’s hard to overlook Matthew McConaughey’s devilishly good looks, and it would be remiss to say that his chiseled features and Adonis-like golden locks haven’t had some sort of impact on his early career roles. But with his turn as a homophobic AIDS victim in “Dallas Buyers Club” making the critical rounds, we have to start realizing that McConaughey is much more than just a beautiful face. Rather, he is, without a doubt, a future Oscar winner.

After graduating with a degree in radio-television-film from the University of Texas, Austin, a young McConaughey modeled in various commercials before landing the role of a pervy David Wooderson in the cult hit “Dazed and Confused” in 1993. Three years later, he would give us a taste of what was to come with an utterly dramatic performance as Samuel L. Jackson’s defense attorney in the southern vigilante tale “A Time to Kill.” He followed this with supporting roles in other late-90s dramas, including Steven Spielberg’s “Amistad.”

But after his breakout end to the

MICHAEL LOMAX CINEMA TO THE MAX millennium, he seemed to regress in the early half of the 2000s. Taking his dramatic acting chops for granted, Hollywood cast McConaughey in a string of unremarkable (though enjoyable and, more importantly, profitable) romantic comedies: “The Wedding Planner,” “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days,” “Failure to Launch” and “Fool’s Gold,” among others.

Throughout this period, McConaughey never stopped searching for those lead actor dramatic parts, with mixed results. “Sahara,” despite making a lot of money at the box office, failed to recoup more than half its expenses. “We Are Marshall,” though heartwarming at times, received mixed critical reviews. And very few of us (myself included) ever saw “Frailty” or “Thirteen Conversations” or “Tiptoes.”

McConaughey’s career really appeared to stall out towards the end of the decade. He appeared in another rom-com (“Ghosts of Girlfriends Past”) and had a hilarious supporting part in the smash hit “Tropic Thunder,” but he remained otherwise quiet for years.

MCCONAUGHEY’S MARRIAGE...MOST LIKELY STARTED HIS CAREER TURNAROUND. While I may be overstepping myself here, McConaughey’s marriage around this time most likely started his career turnaround. I mean, I don’t have children (and hopefully won’t for a while), but there’s no denying that having a baby changes your outlook on life: Simply put, you just start to see things dif-

ferently. It’s something that’s hard to notice in people, but you feel it personally. And I think McConaughey did, too.

With the birth of his third child, McConaughey has now embarked on a new chapter in his life, and his current slate of dramatic films proves as much, starting with “The Lincoln Lawyer” in 2011. He followed up this critical success with leading roles in “Killer Joe” and “The Paper Boy,” culminating this year with two profoundly great performances in the southern drama “Mud” and his most recent release “Dallas Buyers Club,” which is itself one of the best films of 2013 and could be McConaughey’s greatest performance to date.

It’s really these last two roles that have changed my perception of the one-time Sexiest Man Alive (2005).

For a long time McConaughey was a pretty person mired in roles fit only for pretty people. But starting with “Mud,” in which he plays an escaped ex-convict trying to reconnect with the love of his life (played by Reese Witherspoon), we are beginning to see a more serious, Academy-worthy

side of the Texan.

McConaughey’s good looks belie what is actually an actor of tremendous depth, and both “Mud” and “Dallas Buyers Club” prove this.

Today’s McConaughey eschews of rom-com one-dimensionality — those characters who pine in humorous ways for the loves of their lives for 93 minutes straight. His latest characters, on the other hand, are compassionate individuals caught on the wrong side of society, struggling to carve a place for themselves without the support of the mainstream.

The new McConaughey is rugged, not gorgeous: still charming, but no longer suave or smooth. That’s not to say he should avoid the roles that helped launch him into fame, but this new arc is one of unlimited potential.

He’s transcended his own norm and is becoming a dramatic jack-of-alltrades, making the sky his only limit.

And if his latest two features are any indication, I don’t think it’ll be too tough for him to reach.

Contact MICHAEL LOMAX at michael.lomax@yale.edu .

Dreaming of a White Wine Christmas

The Election of 2012: Up Close and Personal

// BY BRYCE WIATRAK

// BY SCOTT STERN

My older sister Kiera’s wine preferences have long been the butt of many family jokes.

Ever since she began drinking wine, she has only gravitated towards exceptionally sweet selections, often requiring us to purchase a separate bottle that meets her sugar quota.

Alas, after several years of poking fun at Kiera, one of her go-to varietals has grown to become one of my favorite white wines: Riesling.

While it is easy for some people to write off Riesling as simply fruit juice, Riesling can actually produce some of the most versatile and complex white wines in the world. You can find phenomenal Rieslings that are bonedry, super sugary or anywhere in between.

Today, I’m tasting two Rieslings that fall somewhere in the middle of that spectrum.

Both will satisfy sweet-toothed sippers like my sister, but also skeptics with their electrifying acidity and beautiful clarity.

Riesling is a cold climate grape that most famously makes its home in Germany. In my last column, I discussed the French Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée system, where wines are classified by quality and region. Although most of the wine world replicates the French model, in Germany, they do things a bit differently. German wines of the highest caliber, labeled Qualitätswein mit Prädikat (quality wine with attribute), are further subdivided based on the ripeness level of the grapes during harvest.

There are three divisions that any Riesling-lover should know: kabinett, spätlese, and auslese. Kabinett wines are usually the most light-bodied, and come from the first grapes to be picked during harvest. Spätlese, meaning late harvest, designates wines made from slightly older grapes, often bearing a tinge of sweetness. Auslese, or select harvest, indicates wines produced from the ripest grapes, often not harvested until late autumn.

Because grapes gain higher sugar concentration as they ripen, the sweetest wines will typically come from the grapes that stay on the vines the longest. Nevertheless, sugar and alcohol levels are inversely proportional. So, winemakers can produce drier wines from riper grapes, but they will bear higher alcohol content.

I’m starting off with a most classic German Riesling, Weingut Alfred Merkelbach’s 2012 Ürziger Würzgarten Riesling Kabi-

S U N D AY DECEMBER 8

BRYCE WIATRAK WINESDAY nett. Coming from the celebrated MoselSaar-Ruwer region, this Riesling boasts a refreshing acidity, balanced with enough sugar to appease my sister. For those of you who are afraid of sweet wines, this kabinett is a great gateway. The wine offers a hint of honey and petrol on the nose, followed by a riveting display of lemon, pear and green apple on the palate. A touch of sweetness lingers on the tongue, providing a delightful finish year round.

The second Riesling I’m drinking comes from a place much closer to home, our neighbor New York. New York State enjoys a centuries-old history of American winemaking, offering outstanding wines often at a more student-friendly price-point than California. The Finger Lakes region in upstate New York is Riesling territory, and today I’m trying Silver Thread’s 2012 Semi-dry Riesling.

Slightly darker in hue, this Riesling offers a similar bouquet to the Merkelbach, smelling of beeswax and honey. But, that’s where the comparison ends, as the Silver Thread greets the palate with highly floral notes countered with a gorgeous minerality. The wine exits with a dash of lavender and spice, reminiscent of Alsatian Rieslings.

Riesling is also an incredibly food-friendly varietal, proving a wonderful addition to almost any dinner table. One of the more recent trends among oenophiles is to pair Riesling with Chinese food, as the wine’s racy acidity can hold its own against spicy Asian flavors. And although many equate white wine with warmer weather, Riesling is actually an excellent choice for the winter months as well. Riesling pairs beautifully with fried foods, making it a perfect partner for latkes, but it will also happily accompany any Christmas ham.

Cheers to a Riesling-filled holiday season!

Contact BRYCE WIATRAK at bryce.wiatrak@yale.edu .

For months — years, perhaps — political junkies and bored randos waited with bated breath for the latest book by veteran journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann. Halperin and Heilemann’s new volume, “Double Down,” which tells the story of the 2012 election, is the sequel to their best-selling account of the 2008 election, “Game Change.”

“Game Change” details the maverick-ish primary campaign of John McCain, the primary slugfest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the choice of Sarah Palin and the resulting fallout, and the hope-and-changealicious general election. “Game Change” is fast-paced, entertaining and occasionally shocking, making the reader feel like an insider. In “Double Down,” Halperin and Heilemann attempt to recreate this energy, and, to some extent, succeed in doing so.

Halperin and Heilemann tried really hard.

They conducted literally hundreds of interviews (most off the record) with the most connected people in politics; they combed newspaper clips and television footage; and they dug up just enough juicy tidbits to keep the book spicy. They were confronted with one confounding problem, however, one that “Double Down”’s reviewers were insistent on driving home: This was, put simply, a less interesting election.

It would be hard to imagine a comparably exciting modern election to the one from 2008. The first viable black candidate, the first viable female candidate, two serious primary fights, the crashing wave of the financial crisis and the media hurricane of Sarah Palin. 2008 was a repudiation of the establishment; it heralded the rise of the “coalition of the ascendant” (Hispanics, young people, Asians, African Americans, etc); and it reintroduced the concept of “hope” to a generation overcome with cynicism. 2012, on the other hand, saw the election of a tired and far less inspirational incumbent running almost entirely on the fact that he was more of a human being than his rival, the New England plutocrat who looked like he was born to be president — and acted just that entitled. Paul Ryan, radical though he may be, was far less entertaining than Sarah Palin. Barack Obama was likely never going to lose to a man perceived to be His Highness Richie Rich, and “Double Down” shows that Obama himself was well aware.

But, like I said, Halperin and Heilemann tried. They began by weaving their story with two separate strands — the Democratic electoral planning period and the Republican primary extravaganza. In the beginning, a gleeful Barack Obama locates his long-form birth certificate to deliver a long-deserved knockdown to Donald Trump. His strategists fret over his unpopularity and the potential of Republican operatives to raise boatloads of cash in the post-Citizens United world. They briefly consider replacing Joe Biden with Hillary Clinton, though never too seriously, and it appears Obama was uninvolved. But mostly, they just watch bemused as Republican after Republican decides not to run.

On the Republican side of the story, Mitch Daniels, Chris Christie, Haley Barbour and,

CHRISTMAS CAROL SERVICE

regrettably, Sarah Palin, all decline to enter the fray. The polls then seesaw between Mitt Romney and a smorgasbord of increasingly wacky also-rans. Popping up and quickly falling down are Tim Pawlenty, Jon Huntsman, Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry and Rick Santorum. The bizarre pageant is the most entertaining part of the book, and Halperin and Heilemann illustrate this through a series of wildly entertaining scenes such as a hysterical Michele Bachmann, in true pageant queen form, sobbing, “They hate me! They hate me!”

In the end, though, it came down to Romney. Heading into the general election, the former Massachusetts moderate (rebranded heartless flip-flopper) (rebranded severe conservative) was consistently trailing Obama, and he couldn’t understand why. The authors illustrate how Romney sought over and over again the opportunity to remake himself, becoming more confident each time that this would tip the scales. Dogged by gaffes (such as the infamous “47 percent” comment), Romney crafted a series of comeback schemes, first with his vice-presidential pick, then with the Republican National Convention in stormstruck Tampa and finally with the presidential debates. The first two attempts failed; the third was nearly a success.

The dramatic climax of the book is the period of time after a surprisingly electric Romney destroys a wooden and sullen Obama in the first presidential debate. Romney’s months of preparation paid off, and the president appeared to falter for basically the first time. Obama’s aides sweated his loss, and Obama himself finally engaged in some selfreflection. In the end, though, he regained his composure, proceeded to trounce Romney in the next two debates, and handily won the election. To the period following the second debate, Halperin and Heilemann devote scarcely a dozen pages. With the aid of a less enthusiastic but no less numerous “coalition of the ascendant,” the silver-tongued Obama defeats his silver-spooned rival.

“Double Down” is just as well-sourced and well-written as “Game Change.” The authors indulge readers with the rhetoric of an insider — Obama is referred to as “44” throughout, Bill Clinton goes by “Big Dog” and the Michelle is “FLOTUS” — a tactic that allows for far more intimacy than most mainstream political journalism. The gods of elections gave Halperin and Heilemann lemons, and they made lemonade. “Double Down” only takes on a drier taste because last time Halperin and Heilemann were afforded the chance to make lemon meringue pie.

Contact SCOTT STERN at scott.stern@yale.edu .

WEEKEND GIVES TO YOU:

Trinity Baptist Church // 6 - 8:30 p.m.

Here we go a’wassailing.

SCOTT STERN READING BETWEEN THE LINES

Ten Buzzfeed Lists

After this point, you start seeing them JLaw gifs all over again.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY,DECEMBER 6, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND THEATER

THE ‘ACCIDENTAL DEATH’ OF CONVENTIONAL THEATER

// JOAN MARCUS

// BY EDDY WANG

“A c c i d e n t a l Death of an Anarchist,” an adaptation of the play

by Nobel Prizewinning Italian playwright Dario Fo, will blow you off your feet.

Fo wrote it in the immediate aftermath of the 1969 Milan bank bombing, when one of the crime’s suspects, a young railway worker and member of an anarchist group, mysteriously fell to his death from the fourth-floor window of the police station where he was being held for questioning. This event immediately triggered suspicions of foul play and political terrorism. The production,

which is staged in a mundane police headquarters in Milan, features a certified maniac (played by Steven Epps) who uses impressive, diverse impersonations and manipulations to steer the police toward confession.

I arrived at the Yale Repertory Theatre 10 minutes early.

Just after I took my seat, a police officer walked nonchalantly onto the stage, surveyed the set, sat down and began to fiddle with an accordion. Like the audience, he was also waiting for the show to start. After the lights dimmed, the man used an old-fashioned, corded phone to make the generic safety announcement that preludes every show. Soon, he is joined by a fellow police officer (sound designer Nathan Roberts), and the two of them provide live accompaniment throughout the show using a variety of instruments — including but not limited to an accordion, baritone ukulele,

toy piano and tenor banjo. Even before the first line is spoken, it is clear that the story will be a strange one.

AT ONE POINT THE MANIAC CALLS THE STAGE MANAGER ON STAGE TO COMPLAIN THAT THERE ARE TOO FEW ACTORS. The new American adaptation by Gavin Richards features impromptu breaks into song and dance, occasional slapstick violence and references to modern pop culture and politics. “Honey Badger Don’t Give A Shit,” the “Bush-Cheney Weapons of Mass Destruction Desert Shit Storm

of Lies and Deception” and The Voice are among the commentaries which keep the audience engaged. The cast-playwrightaudience relationship is severely defamiliarized: The characters are well aware that Dario Fo wrote their lines; they waltz up nonchalantly before the second act starts and wave sweetly to audience members; the maniac becomes his real actor-self, going offscript and off-character during a leftist rant; and at one point the maniac calls the stage manager on stage to complain that there are too few actors to perform all the roles in the play. But this unique approach drew me in, causing me to feel more attached to the characters. Before long, I started to enjoy their crazy humor, guffawing with the rest of the audience at the antics on stage.

The police are so comical, stupid and laughably incompetent that I could imagine the end

from the very beginning; I knew that they would manufacture their own demise. But because the plot is so predictable, it creates considerable leeway for the actors to be virtuosic. They engage in four-part harmonies, stand-up routines and a whooping, bro-mancing, jumpingup-and-down rendition of the “Anarchy Anthem.” Steven Epps gives a thrilling performance as the maniac; Jesse J. Perez (Bertozzo), Allen Gilmore (Pissani), and Liam Craig (Superintendent) are very convincing fools; Eugene Ma (Constables) manages to carve out a niche in the play, however small; and despite her petite stature, Molly Bernard (Feletti) holds her own in her Yale Rep debut.

This show is the perfect study break. Go see it. If it doesn’t loosen you up, nothing will.

Contact EDDY WANG at chen-eddy.wang@yale.edu .

A Dance Through the Fires of Love // BY MADELINE DUFF

If you have yet to take “Love, Actually” off the shelf of romcom sacredness this holiday season (or maybe you’ve already watched it and worry about overindulging), try tuning in to the Yale Cabaret’s production of Bound to Burn this weekend. The narrative structure even seems familiar: smaller plot strands instead of one cohesive story. Each of the three couples featured, though, communicates a different aspect of those amorous emotions that almost cannot be conveyed by words — the ones, perhaps, that can only be expressed through body language. Throughout the performance, none of the couples utter a single word. For those Hugh Grant fans especially fond of his Prime Minister dance sequence, you can expect your choreography appetite to be satisfied — just in a mellower, hot-chocolatey sort of way, until the pieces start to … you guessed it … burn your tongue a little.

Though the level of technique may perhaps not be “So You Think You Can Dance”-level, overall the dancers succeed in conveying intense, enthralling emotions. At first, I wondered if the show had been properly titled.

There was an adorable duo locking eyes, holding hands, looking lovingly at each other from across the stage.

Not to mention the soundtrack setting that stage: The Civil Wars’ “Poison and Wine,” which I had never heard before, but is now likely to take a spot in my Top 25 Most Played list.

This first pair, Elizabeth Mak DRA ’16 and David Clauson DRA ’16, complemented one another. Mak’s facial expressions especially carried me into the scene, even while the plot was difficult to understand.

Later in the program, we learn that Mak was “Valerie, the Breadwinner” and Clauson played “Tim, Her Husband.” In the theme of the show, however, an unlikely wordlessness in the normally theatrical Cabaret, I won-

der if these “role” words enhanced the atmosphere, or if these explanations are instead excessive. The subtlety in Mak’s movement revealed more about her personal state of mind. The second couple in the triptych, Chasten Harmon DRA ’15 and Daniel Reece DRA ’14, continued this theme of miscommunication for me — until, once again, looking at the program’s cast list.

Without reading it, I saw the two as classic examples of the jilted girl and flirtatious guy — as stereotypes, even.

Then, I read: “Jessica, A Free Spirit” and “Mark: Her Heart.” Was Mark (Reese) really her soul mate? If so, their opening pas-de-deux seemed a little too light-hearted, so to speak, slightly too playful to have transformed into a Jamie and Aurelia kind of love. I could maybe see Jessica jumping in a lake to save the opening chapters of Mark’s first novel, but I definitely can’t see Mark marching into her family restaurant or, you know, reciting Portuguese phrases on escalators. The third team, Steven Rotramel DRA ’15 and Rob Chikar ’14, had mastered the art of pantomime. Just as they m ay n o r m a l ly inflect certain lines of dialogue with more emphasis, then shift pianissimo, then scream, so they triumphed by illuminating the stage with emotional force,

F R I D AY

ANNUAL MESSIAH SING-IN

DECEMBER 8

Hallelujah! Hallelujah! #bless

their bodies the only instruments they needed. Rotramel stood downstage, gazing up with an expression of immeasurable satisfaction and awe. It was, simply put, beautiful.

Of course, as some love stories do, the “never saw true beauty ‘till this night” uplift ultimately unraveled and singed. Remember in the most recent film adaptation of Les Miserables when some criticized Russell Crowe’s untrained voice?

I thought his rawness even more emotionally charged than some of the “trained” voices of his comrades.

Rotramel touched me in

a similar way, though he clearly does have some dance background. As the couples’ pieces intertwined, he remained in the moment. Discovering later that he portrayed “Ryan, A Prostitute” opposite “Braden, His Hope” added another dimension to the story — but, as before, the power of their amorous arc glimmered through even in the absence of that information.

“Bound to Burn,” with all of the

inevitability embedded in its title, does not culminate in a coming-together of all its characters, or in a sweet kiss in an airport waiting room. It’s just not that kind of show. Its tale of love ends with more ambiguity, more tears, some home and redemption and in the end, maybe more gulps of reality.

Contact MADELINE DUFF at madeline.duff@yale.edu .

// ZUNAIRA ARSHAD

A love story, seen wordlessly

WEEKEND GIVES TO YOU:

Battell Chapel // 2:00 p.m.

Eleven more days

There are 36 exams administered on December 17. You can do it.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND BACKSTAGE

NEARER, MY PANDA // BY ANDREW KOENIG

Q: First things first. Where did you guys get the band name?

Elliah Heifetz: I was writing a paper on this painting in the art gallery for Nemirov’s class freshman year called “Hero and Leander.” I was talking to Max about the paper for some reason, and we really liked the name of the painting. We were just messing around with it and being stupid, and then came up with “Nero, My Panda.” It had nothing to do with the actual painting.

Q: Had the band already formed by then?

Max Gordon: That was spring of our freshman year. Elliah and I were regularly writing songs together. So I guess it was a project but we didn’t call it a band.

Q: And then how did the others get involved?

Paul Hinkes: I’m in the same singing group as Max … and we were hanging out one night, sort of swapping songs, talking, and I expressed my interest. Max also said that the band was still in need of a drummer. I was lucky enough to have been freshman year suitemates with Andrew, who I knew was a very talented drummer. We had our first rehearsal in the last month of our freshman year. The band was pretty much together by then.

E.H.: Our first show was the fall of last year — parents’ weekend in the Baker’s Dozen house’s basement. And that was when we also put out our first demos.

Q: Are you affiliated with a cappella?

Andrew Goble: I’m not. My association is very vague. But the others are.

M.G.: Paul and I are in the Baker’s Dozen.

E.H.: And I’m in the Duke’s Men. Q: Do you think your style as a band has been influenced by a cappella?

E.H.: Well, when we play live it helps that three of us sing regularly. If there are any parts of the song that need extra singers, we have just the guys in the group do them. We don’t need to seek outside singers.

M.G.: We like harmonies.

Q: What would you describe as your band’s sound?

E.H.: Um, [laughs] pop music. We listen to a lot of Katy Perry, a lot of punk music too, and rock music, also a lot of ’60s classic oldschool pop. It’s just girl American pop music with a wink, because we want everyone to have a good time.

Q: I listened to your guys’ single, “I Just Want to Sleep in My Own Bed,” on your website. It sounded very smooth and well produced. How did you guys get that level of quality?

M.G.: So, we’re working with a producer in the city, the Jedi Master. That’s what he goes by; Jeff Jones is his actual name.

Q: How did you meet Jones?

M.G.: I worked for him as an audio engineer the summer after my freshman year, and we’ve just developed a good working relationship since then.

Q: Who composes the songs?

M.G: Elliah and I write the songs.

But in terms of recording, in terms of putting it all together, we’re all playing different parts.

E.H.: The first songs we did we recorded first and then played live, but, with these songs, Max and I wrote them and then we played them live and then we recorded them. Playing them live with the band really informed what sounds worked and what we wanted to put on the record.

P.H.: The single “I Just Wanna Sleep in My Own Bed” was, in its first iteration, played live. We played it in Brooklyn over the summer. It was a much grittier, much less clean song than the final product. Live performances really informed the recorded version.

Q: What venues have you played in?

A.G.: Mostly New Haven ones.

Last year we played BDs, SigEp, Spring Fling. I feel like we played everywhere last summer. This fall we played at the BDs again.

P.H.: We’ve had some crazy gigs too. We played at Jack Wills’ clothing store over on York. They reached out to us, and wanted us to play there.

M.G.: We got some nice clothes from that.

Q: Did you guys ever find it difficult to find venues?

A.G.: I think one great advantage is that I’m president of SigEp so that’s a space I have. And those two guys live in the BD house, that’s a space we use, which isn’t that big. But I think an important thing is being willing to play in weird spaces. It ends up being a lot more fun. Even in the BD house we had it packed and there were 50 people who couldn’t fit in. It was just a fun atmosphere to play in.

P.H.: There’s something incredible about being in a room with 100 people that’s meant for 25 and being so hot that you have to wipe your guitars down. We talked about being influenced by 60’s pop. A lot of these bands got their start playing in the small — incredibly small — spaces that are not necessarily fit for a rock band to play in.

M.G.: And the nice thing is that everyone that’s staying there really wants to hear you play. (laughs) They’re overcoming a lot to listen to you play. When you’re in this big open space you can come because you have nothing to do, but these people know every single word. It feels like you’re just at a party and providing entertainment that everyone’s totally focused on.

Q: It sounds like you guys have gotten a lot of experience doing live shows, and now you’re doing the EP. What do you see as the next step in your trajectory as a band?

M.G.: We love making music that people can dance to, that people can have fun listening to, and we want as many people to enjoy that as possible.

E.H.: Getting as many people to have fun is really the goal.

A.G.: There are a lot of goals probably, but in terms of the day-today, the hope is of creating that experience, and I think if we’re good, if we do that correctly, the opportunities of showcasing our music to more people are there.

Q: Are there any difficulties or obstacles that you’ve encountered in being a band at Yale? How do you let people know about your shows?

E.H.: A lot of it is just making a Facebook event. If we put it on at a certain time of night, everyone’s going to go on their computers and everyone’s going be on Facebook and people are going see it.

Another way is, if we’re [performing at] a house that has a party on, people are going to go there anyway for the party. It’s just taking advantage of that and trying to make the party our show — trying to game the system of being a college band.

A.G.: I think our vibe as a band has lent itself well to big crowds, because it kind of feels like a collaborative experience. We’re feeding off their energy — we’re not playing with our heads down, like we’re recording. For the most part, I think the people who come to our first concerts are likely to come to our second and third concerts, and that has helped a lot in trying to create something that’s fun instead of something that’s more for us than for them.

M.G.: There’s no point in making something if someone isn’t going to enjoy listening to it. I think that drives a lot of what we do, both in the literal music that we make and in how we present it. It’s all meant to be enjoyable, to be fun, to be exciting, and I think that if you can’t hit those, then I don’t see much point.

Q: You guys are an eclecticsounding bunch. Do you each have specific genres or styles that you identify with?

P.H.: (nods to Andrew) Weezer.

A.G.: I love alt-rock and classic rock and I just like how they are drum-wise. That and hip-hop for me come to the forefront. The drums’ purpose is to serve up the other parts of the music. If I tried to make every song a résumé of what I can do on the drum set, nobody would be happy except for maybe me. I think some hip-hop does that really well, where even the beat works with the rhythm of the rapper, as do some of my favorite rock bands, like Weezer. I learned to play the drums listening to their songs. They’re so easy and yet there’s so much detail as to why they’re doing each thing and why it works with the music.

P.H.: My taste’s a little less refined.

I don’t have a specific genre I truly identify with. I love when a form is done well, whether that be hood stuff, or you know, on the far end, Katy Perry. One of our favorite songs right now is “Timber” [the new Pitbull song featuring Ke$ha]. It’s an amazing song.

Elliah and I are getting into this hard-rock band called Japandroids. They’re so good, they’re so different. Whatever the model is, when it’s done well I’ll want to listen to it.

E.H.: I would say the one genre I try not to listen to is country pop.

P.H.: I love country pop.

M.G.: I think “Prism” [the new Katy Perry album] is fucking amazing.

E.H.: The song “Birthday” on “Prism” is one of the best songs to come out of the past four years.

P.H: Headline, headline!

Q: Andrew, you mentioned that you were a high-school musician.

What’d you play?

A.G.: I played a lot of jazz, which was probably the most inspiring thing. Jazz is all about fitting in. It helps when I’m playing live, knowing how to create something that meshes and presents a uniform sound.

Q: Were the rest of you previously in bands?

P.H.: All of us were.

M.G.: Just a high school band.

A.G.: I wish I was in a high school band.

P.H.: My high school band was pretty shitty. We dressed up as ridiculous as we could and covered top 40 songs.

E.H.: I was in a really classic high school band. We listened to a lot of Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin — a lot of guitar riffing and shredding.

Q: How have you evolved since then?

P.H.: I think there’s a real desire in the group to be a cohesive unit.

Our songs our two-and-a-half minutes. There’s no need to spend 45 seconds on a guitar solo. It’s just the song, polished. Here’s the package and we’re very confident with it.

E.H.: It’s not about us. It’s not about the person doing the guitar solo or showing off on his instrument. We’re playing for people to listen to it.

P.H.: The best possible thing is for

the song to end and for people to want it to continue.

Q: How have you grown as a band?

P.H.: There’s a great feeling of having done our songs so many times before and getting to do them again.

E.H.: When things start to become inside jokes and traditions, you know you’ve existed long enough and hung out long enough that you’ve become what people call a band. I think that’s the biggest growth — from freshman year to being people who know each other and hang out.

M.G.: Yeah, we definitely shit on each other a lot more now.

A.G.: It’s nice to have someone fuck something up and for Max to be like, “You fucked that up” and for the person not to take that harshly. It’s good that we communicate on a very open level.

M.G.: We definitely have a more refined set of musical references that we can refer to, and that makes communication between all of us in rehearsals or when recording that much more efficient and that much more effective.

P.H.: And now when Max makes weird noises Goble knows what to play on the drum.

M.G.: I was making noise that I think a drum makes [Max makes a “boom boom shhh” sound] and Goble says, “Max, that’s not what I do.” But now — A.G.: Now he does the same thing but I translate. Sometimes he’ll say noises that just aren’t made by the drum. Usually I can guess what drum he’s looking for but sometimes … (laughs). We’re not as lost in translation as we were before.

Contact ANDREW KOENIG at andrew.koenig@yale.edu .

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THERE’S SOMETHING INCREDIBLE ABOUT BEING IN A ROOM WITH 100 PEOPLE THAT’S MEANT FOR 25.

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ero, My Panda is a student band at Yale that’s been together since the spring of 2012. Its members: drummer Andrew Goble ’15, guitarist and live vocalist Paul Hinkes ’15, vocalist and lyricist Elliah Heifetz ’15, and keyboardist and lyricist Max Gordon ’15, just released their EP this Thursday.

The band gathered in Heifetz’s home to talk about the year-and-a-half-long trajectory that has led them to this new release — starting with their crazy, esoteric band name.