“With new venues, Boca takes lead role on cultural scene - Pbpulse” plus 3 more |
- With new venues, Boca takes lead role on cultural scene - Pbpulse
- Cultural committee hails former Camden mayor - Courier-Post
- Putting a finger on cultural differences - Vancouver Sun
- Families Celebrate Easter With Multi-Cultural Service In Tulsa - News On 6
| With new venues, Boca takes lead role on cultural scene - Pbpulse Posted: 04 Apr 2010 08:28 PM PDT  Manjunath Pendakur, dean of Florida Atlantic Universityís Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, at the site of a new multi purpose building at FAU in Boca Raton. (Bill Ingram /The Palm Beach Post) For decades, Boca Raton has been something of a cultural second-stringer to West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale. The pink-hued city could tout its abundance of pricey stores and restaurants, but it fell far short in arts venues. That may no longer be the case. With the opening last month of a 750-seat performing arts center at Lynn University and a multiuse cultural facility at Mizner Park, and the slated opening this year of a four-screen movie theater complex for foreign and indie cinema at Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton is poised to become a cultural hub unto itself. These newer facilities join established ones, including the Mizner Park Amphitheater and FAU Kaye Performing Arts Auditorium, making Boca suddenly a destination for everything from symphonic concerts to full-scale Broadway shows. And that's not factoring in such attractions as the Boca Raton Museum of Art and Caldwell Theatre. "It's a natural evolution," said Charlie Siemon, a longtime Boca attorney and cultural booster who was behind the plans for the Mizner Park Amphitheater and serves as president of the new multiuse Mizner Park Cultural Arts Center, located in the former space of Mort Walker's International Museum of Cartoon Art.
With its concentration of arts-loving retirees and families seeking entertainment opportunities, Boca seemed primed for a plenitude of venues. And at various points, plans have been discussed for new facilities, including a Kravis Center-style, $40 million-plus concert hall at Mizner Park. But the rough economy of recent years has made it difficult to realize any large-scale cultural ambitions. It also has made it difficult for some existing groups, most notably the Caldwell Theatre, to balance their budgets. So Boca's cultural evolution appears to be rooted in modest venues that take less money to build and that fill specific niches within the community.  Jan McArt and Jon Robertson at the new Keith and Elaine Johnson Wold Performing Arts Center at Lynn University in Boca Raton. (Bill Ingram /The Palm Beach Post) Consider the new venue at Lynn University, the $14.9 million Keith C. and Elaine Johnson Wold Performing Arts Center. It's not the opera house-scale of the 2,200-seat seat Kravis or 2,700-seat Broward Center in Fort Lauderdale, but it's plenty bigger than the school's existing theater, a 200-seat recital hall. That makes it the perfect venue to accommodate the school's burgeoning theater program, led by local arts legend Jan McArt, and robust music program, formerly connected to Boca's world-renowned Harid Conservatory. It also makes it the professional-caliber midsize venue that Boca long has lacked. Previously, local arts groups, including the Lynn orchestra, often had to settle for performing in high school auditoriums. "This kind of completes the picture," said McArt, who plans on presenting a few student shows a year in addition to welcoming touring artists and programs. (Although the venue hosted a private concert by Bernadette Peters recently, it formally opens on April 17 with a performance by Mitzi Gaynor.) It completes the picture without putting any large financial burden on the university. More than half the money for the facility came from the namesake donor. In the case of the new Mizner Park Cultural Arts Center, the cost is even less — $1.5 million. The money came from Palm Beach County in an effort to keep the space alive as a cultural destination after the cartoon art museum, the previous tenant, shut down in 2001. While nowhere near as ambitious as the Lynn center, the Mizner Park one is a flexible space that can be used for everything from off-Broadway-style theater to gallery-style art shows. The center has hosted events connected to the recently concluded Festival of the Arts BOCA and will be the site for a Florida Atlantic University series celebrating great writers. Potentially on tap: a summer cabaret series. Siemon is seeking funding to host as many as 50 events next season. But the venue that may end up most putting Boca on the cultural map is FAU's Living Room movie theater complex, which is part of a building under construction at the school's Schmidt College of Arts and Letters. The project is designed to bring the best in foreign and independent cinema, from current movies to retrospectives, to an area that usually devotes one screen in a multiplex to challenging film fare. The theaters, which each seat up to 50, will double as classrooms for FAU's film studies program. Best of all for FAU: The $3 million project didn't require any fund raising. That's because it's a joint venture with Living Room Theaters, a for-profit Portland, Ore.-based art-house operator. Living Room contributed $1.5 million to FAU for the construction; the state of Florida matched the amount. When the theater complex opens in December, Manjunath Pendakur, dean of FAU's Schmidt College, predicts it will become a big draw, especially with Boca locals. The FAU educator is not surprised at the city's evolution as a stand-alone destination for the arts. "We have a very well-educated community that is hungry for culture," he said. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Cultural committee hails former Camden mayor - Courier-Post Posted: 04 Apr 2010 05:43 PM PDT CHERRY HILL — When Dana Redd took Gwendolyn Faison's place as Camden's mayor, Faison thought she would have plenty of time on her hands. "I thought I'd be retired after the mayor's job, but I have more to do than ever," Faison said. Dressed in her signature red, the 85-year-old shook hands and exchanged hugs with all who came in through the doors of the ballroom at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Cherry Hill on Saturday afternoon. It was the Philadelphia Cultural Committee's fundraising luncheon and although Faison was one of three women honored during the event, she volunteered to distribute tickets and check the guests in. "This group is representative of New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware," said Faison, who serves as president of the committee. "We're interested in continuing with the arts. That's the first thing they cut out in the schools, so we're trying to dump some money into it to keep it going." The event featured performances from the Latin Jazz Ensemble and the Philadelphia Dance Company's D/2, Philadanco's semiprofessional dance company with members between the ages of 16 and 28. The money raised during the event is used to provide scholarships for teens interested in pursuing a career in the arts. Also honored during the event were Philadelphia dance instructor Sydney King and Creative Arts High School choir director and musician Suzzette Ortiz. Providing incentive for the arts is a cause Faison first embraced nearly 50 years ago. "To invest in the arts is to invest in our future," Faison said as she accepted her award. It is not her only cause. Faison serves as the youth adviser at the Tenth Street Baptist Church and is an active participant of the greater Camden Partnership and the Cooper Ferry Development association. She is also a member of the National Congress of Black Women and the National Hook-up for Black Women. She served on city council for 16 years and spent nine years as mayor and went from being the first African American woman to serve as council president to Camden's first elected female mayor. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Putting a finger on cultural differences - Vancouver Sun Posted: 04 Apr 2010 02:58 PM PDT Hold up two fingers. It's an international symbol for two, right? Wrong. If you make the same sign in Germany or France, they count three. There, the count always starts with the thumb. "It's well known in Denmark, if you go to Germany and you order two beers, you get three," said Elena Nicoladis, an experimental psychologist at the University of Alberta. "The gestures are something we consider so transparent, you think you can just take them from culture to culture, you think they're going to understand you." Turns out, people in English Canada consistently use two fingers, like a peace or victory sign, to symbolize two. The Germans and French always use their thumb and one finger, like the sign for a gun. French Canadians use either; Nicoladis doesn't know why. She and German university lecturer Simone Pika co-authored a paper on the finding in the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology. But the point of the research isn't just to help tourists. Nicoladis studies how children use and learn signs, especially the baby signs eager parents teach their kids before they learn to talk. To say "more," babies are taught to tap the tips of their fingers together. For milk, their hands mimic milking a cow, even if they've never seen a cow. Even children who can't yet speak can hold up two fingers to show their age, but try holding up a thumb and finger to ask a child if they are two. Or try asking an English Canadian three-year-old, "How many is this?" and hold up a thumb. Most, likely you'll get nothing but a blank look. "Ultimately," said Nicoladis, "I guess we're trying to figure out 'How do children learn language, conventions, and to become a member of the community in such a way that they learn and use t he cultural tools that we all have around.' " Some psychologists theorize symbols that look like what they represent, such as flapping hands for a bird, are easier for kids to learn, but studies like the one Nicoladis did don't support that. In her work, only bilingual German-English children could make the jump to understand even a single pinky finger could mean "one." estolte@thejournal.canwest.com Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Families Celebrate Easter With Multi-Cultural Service In Tulsa - News On 6 Posted: 04 Apr 2010 02:15 PM PDT NewsOn6.com TULSA, OK -- Families across Green Country came together to celebrate this Easter Sunday. But, the Good Shepard Lutheran Church, 8730 East Skelly Drive, wanted to bring more than just families together. The church says its multi-cultural service welcomes people from all different cultures. "We look forward to a day that was revealed to John, when people from every nation, tribe, language, gathered together to sing God's praises with one voice. So we're practicing on that a little bit," said Reverend Leonard Busch, Good Shepard Lutheran Church. Besides the traditional Easter service, Sunday's worship also included elements from Southeast Asia, Western Africa and Latin America. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
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