May Highlights

	Trapeze artists practice on the Midway for their performance as part of FOTA 2004.

University of Chicago Festival of the Arts
Friday, May 13 through Sunday, May 22
10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Friday; noon-5 p.m. Saturday-Sunday.
Various campus locations. Visit http://fota.uchicago.edu for details.

This annual festival, first presented at the University in 1963, returns with its biggest festival to date, featuring more than 50 projects by faculty, staff and students. This year’s festival will consist of nine days and nights of installations, music and sound art, fashion design, video art, dance, photography, theater and performance art, sculpture, painting, and martial arts in both conventional and unexpected locations on campus. Highlights will include the University’s circus, Le Vorris and Vox, in the romanticism-themed Circus Chimaera; poetry readings; large-scale outdoor installations on the quadrangles; a festival of silent short films in conjunction with Fire Escape Films; an all-day showcase of rock bands from Hyde Park and greater Chicago; a gallery of student art engaging relativity, biology and mathematics; theater workshops with University Theater, including the plays Durang Durang and 32 Hours; and Psychle, a rock musical set in an asylum.

	Supernovae in the NGC 1569 galaxy, as photographed by the Hubble Telescope.

Rockefeller Memorial Chapel and the Department of Music
Concert: “Sacred Spirit of the Night in Song and Verse”
8 p.m. Saturday, May 21
Rockefeller Memorial Chapel, 5850 S. Woodlawn Ave. 702-7059. http://rockefeller.uchicago.edu. Donations accepted.

Constance DeFotis will conduct the Rockefeller Chapel Choir and Motet Choir in a concert of readings and music inspired by the heavens. The choirs will perform in Rockefeller Chapel, which will be lit by images from the Hubble telescope. The program will include works by Strauss, Brahms and Ton de Leeuw, and readings of poetry by Hopkins, Neruda, Oliver, Chet Raymo and Mark Strand, the Andrew MacLeish Distinguished Service Professor in Social Thought. Performers and orators include D. Nicholas Rudall, Professor in Classical Languages & Literatures and the College, Rebekah Camm, soprano, Eric Miranda, baritone, and University Organist Thomas Weisflog and George Radosavljevich, pianists.

	A scene from Oscar Micheaux’s film Within Our Gates (1920).

The Graham School of General Studies
“Movies in Bronzeville”
11 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday, May 21
DuSable Museum of African American History, 740 E. 56th Pl. To register, call 702-1722. For more information, call 702-8821 or visit http://grahamschool.uchicago.edu. $25.

Drawing on recent research by Chicago’s Jacqueline Stewart on African-American film culture in Chicago during the silent period, this short course will examine some of the key black film companies (such as those of William Foster and Oscar Micheaux) and theaters (the Pekin, Grand and Owl) that were located on the legendary “Stroll” of south State Street. The central yet controversial role that movies have played in the lives of black Chicagoans also will be explored. Stewart, Associate Professor in English Language & Literature and the College, will teach the course. She is the author of Migrating to the Movies: Cinema and Black Urban Modernity.

University of Chicago Folklore Society
Annual Fiddlers’ Picnic
11 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday, May 14
Hutchinson Courtyard, 5706 S. University Ave. 702-9793. http://www.uofcfolk.org/. Free. In case of inclement weather, call 702-9793 for alternate location.

This all-day, outdoor picnic will feature bluegrass, old-time, blues and Irish fiddle music, along with jam sessions and a fiddle contest juried by several special guest musicians. Musicians and non-musicians alike are invited to enjoy the music, and participants are encouraged to bring their instruments and snacks for a day of spring weather and music-making.