June 2010 Blog Posts (18)

Are you a Gleek yet?

I have caught a couple of episodes of Glee recently. After hearing so much about it, I had to give it a go. People always said it was totally unique and yet they had trouble explaining what the show was about. I saw this as a good sign. I have to say that though the show is very funny, there is no plot and the acting is pretty poor… but the dancing! Oh the dancing! I really just watch it for the dancing and… Continue

Added by Create Culture on June 28, 2010 at 1:00am — No Comments

Create Culture Dispatch from Vancouver

I'm writing today from Vancouver, a city I am visiting with family to honor my parents on their 40th wedding anniversary. We are really enjoying our stay. One event we have particularly enjoyed is the Dragon Boat Festival held in Falls Creek just south of Vancouver's Chinatown. The races are both sport and art. It feels appropriate to watch races steeped in tradition while honoring my parents on this special occasion. These races… Continue

Added by Create Culture on June 24, 2010 at 6:00am — No Comments

Bringing Thai String Puppets To Life

Once upon a time, recently has a one young group to not knowing about it string puppet came together to do what they love, that is the string puppet of Thai. Do you know than a string puppet is a beautiful and have a life on the stage. How the string puppet these have a life up?

We started from zero isn’t knowledge about how to control or… Continue

Added by C.Piewnam on June 23, 2010 at 9:30am — 8 Comments

Traveling to Ecuador: the people, the rituals and el pollo

Having lived in Manhattan for a number of years, I feel I am at least aware of Spanish culture. So, while this trip to Ecuador is both my first to the country and to South America, I am not without some devices. However, I have to admit that even the flight over held some interesting excitement.

Scene:older woman next to me is speaking in soft, but more desperate tones to the women around her. To her left by the window is a pregnant woman who keeps looking at the back of the plane. To… Continue

Added by Kathy Walter on June 21, 2010 at 9:55am — No Comments

Summer Solstice is here! How are you celebrating?

Bonfires, sacrifices, feasts and strange celebrations: it must be Summer Solstice!

I am looking forward to Make Music New York's full day of concerts across New York City to celebrate the longest day of the year. I don't think anyone will be burning anything, but you never know in New York. What's happening where you are and what are you planning to do?

Here is a selection of images…

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Added by Create Culture on June 20, 2010 at 9:30pm — 2 Comments

Building Bridges: Artmaking in New York City, Los Angeles, and Suharekë, Kosovo

Hello Fellow Culturalistas,

From May 14 to the 22nd my friend and colleague, Terry Lenihan and I traveled to Kosovo to conduct visual arts workshops with children and youth at the Fellbach-Haus in Suharekë, a small town south of

Prishtina. Prior to our trip to Kosovo we ran several different art workshops with groups of Kindergarten through 8th grade students in our respective cities, Los Angeles and New York City, to start off our project.… Continue

Added by cindy maguire on June 17, 2010 at 12:30pm — 3 Comments

My Thai Amulet is Perfect

After I graduated from college I worked in construction for several months trying to figure out what I was going to do with the rest of my life (for the next six months or so). I was fortunate because we had a good family friend who was working as a psychologist with ex-pats employed by an oil company with operations in Southeast Asia. She was located out of Bangkok and invited me to stay with her for as long as I wished. I took her up on… Continue

Added by Create Culture on June 17, 2010 at 6:00am — No Comments

Life's a Beach in Senegal

I went to Senegal to discover music. And I found Yoro – amazing heartfelt music written in the local Wolof language. What I also found is the tiny fishing village of Yoff.

Over the course of a few days, I observed the community from sunrise to dusk and the inseparable bond that they shared with the ocean. Early morning started with fishermen heading out to…

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Added by Ashok Sinha on June 16, 2010 at 5:13pm — 2 Comments

The Art Pages - Serving a Community in Zambia

The idea was a collective one and the fact we all came to the same conclusion independently just goes to show how in-sync we all are. My colleague Zenzele Chulu was not long back from his residency in Cameroon where he had been inspired by the work of Gody Leye and the Art Bakery who have their own newspaper, very simply produced. I had just come back from North Carolina where I became deeply enamoured of…

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Added by LizW on June 16, 2010 at 5:00am — 3 Comments

Urban Tap in Paris, France

June 9th, 2010

On a rainy evening, Tamango hosted a show for the French music television channel Mezzo. With multiple camera men swarming the stage and about 300 or so people crowding the room, Tamango was in especially fine form. Tamango owned the stage and motioned for his collaborators to join him one by one. Percussionist Daniel Moreno, tabla player Mosin, the great saxophonist David… Continue

Added by kaoru watanabe on June 15, 2010 at 6:38pm — 1 Comment

Urban Tap in La Havre, France

June 8th, 2010

La Havre, France, a port city in Northern France has two theaters right in the heart of town, Grand Volcan and Petit Volcan (the big and little volcano). These two theaters, designed by the great Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, are adjacent concrete upward sloping forms, as if Frank Gehry designed some miniature nuclear power plants.

The group I am performing with is Urban Tap, a group of musicians and dancers…

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Added by kaoru watanabe on June 15, 2010 at 6:16pm — No Comments

From Song to Noise: Should the Vuvuzelas be banned at the World Cup?

If you have tuned in to watch a World Cup game since the competition started last Friday, you may have thought something was wrong with the sound on your TV, or that there was a massive beehive behind the screen. Actually what you hear is the sound of thousands of Vuvuzelas, which are plastic horns used in stadiums in South Africa. The sound that comes out of a Vuvuzela… Continue

Added by Create Culture on June 14, 2010 at 6:00am — 3 Comments

Traditional Yurok river culture meets actors-in-training: Dell'Arte International's Rural Residency

At the end of every school year at Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theatre, the first-year students undertake a Rural Residency. The RR is a 10-day trip to a rural community in Northern California where the students offer a work exchange to the community and create a site-specific performance for that community at the conclusion. They camp out, cook, rehearse, etc as a collaborating ensemble, without faculty presence. It is a transformative… Continue

Added by Joan Schirle on June 12, 2010 at 8:12pm — 1 Comment

Aoka in Transition: Ubatuba and Paraty, Brazil, April-May 2010

The Aoka team recently traveled along the coast of Southeastern Brazil where mountains lush with Atlantic rainforests merge with pristine beaches. We engaged with the three Afro-descendant and fisherfolk communities of Camburi, Campinho and Fazenda in order to get a sense of their rhythm of life and see how some of their needs and desires for community development can be met through sustainable tourism. We sat down in forest areas, village squares, porches and a 19th century flour… Continue

Added by Karen Demavivas on June 12, 2010 at 12:04am — No Comments

CC Interview: The Elk and Nature as Culture

The Elk is a musician-outdoorsman-visual artist from San Francisco, CA. His art focuses on songs recorded in real time, and the exploration of natural spaces. He is currently at work on a new CD/DVD release for early fall, mixing original songs with HD video of natural scenes throughout… Continue

Added by Create Culture on June 10, 2010 at 6:00am — No Comments

Top 10 Summer Cultural Festivals

It's here! Summer is here! And with summer comes the slew of summer cultural festivals around the world. If you are going to be participating in, or attending a cultural festival this summer, make sure to send in a blog post of your experiences on the CultureBlog.

Here then is a list of the top 10 (as… Continue

Added by Create Culture on June 7, 2010 at 5:00am — 7 Comments

What art could possibly be beautiful at 4 AM?

I consider myself a morning person. But, not even the prospect of steaming hot chai motivated me at 4 AM. This was the time my friend in Kolkata decided we needed to rise in order to get to the flower market. This market is the main one that supplies Kolkata for festivals, temples, special occasions or just every day home prayers. As we sleepily piled into our black and yellow cab, the sun was not even willing to get…

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Added by Kathy Walter on June 4, 2010 at 7:10pm — 4 Comments

Design for the other 90%

A year or two ago I saw the exhibit "Design for the other 90%" at the Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum, in New York. It was an excellent exhibit that I highly recommend to the artist/designer interested in working with world cultures to solve issues related to poverty. I see the exhibit is currently at the National Geographic Society Museum in… Continue

Added by Create Culture on June 3, 2010 at 6:00am — 1 Comment