Emory is bustling with many exciting arts events this month. Highlights include Brave New Works, a weeklong festival of brand-new theater featuring a 48-hour playwriting event; legendary saxophonist Bob Mintzer joining the Gary Motley Trio for Emory’s annual Jazz Fest; and classical guitarist Pablo Sáinz Villegas performing “American Trio,” a concert that combines tango, bluegrass and Venezuelan rhythms.
Visit the full Arts at Emory calendar for the complete schedule of events.
Dance
Emory’s Dance and Movement Studies Program celebrates their alumni, the “pillars” of the program who continue to move and act with intelligence and sensitivity in a variety of fields. Emory Dance Alumni Weekend Feb. 7-9 will include panels, classes, performances and discussions that highlight movement’s power to heal, educate, inspire and transform lives in a variety of professions. A free performance by local alumni will be Saturday, Feb. 8, at 7:30 p.m. in the dance studio of the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts.
Film
Emory Cinematheque continues its spring 2020 series, “African-Americans in American Film.” This month, Academy Award-winning actor Louis Gossett Jr. will be on hand to introduce his films “A Raisin in the Sun” and “An Officer and a Gentleman.” The screenings are every Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. in White Hall 208 and are free and open to the public.
As part of Embodied: A Celebration of Human Health and the Arts, the Film and Media Studies Department presents a series focusing on human health on film. The first two films in the series are “The King’s Speech” on Thursday, Feb. 6, at 7:30 p.m. in White Hall 208 and “Alive Inside” on Tuesday, Feb. 18, at 7:30 p.m. in White Hall 101. These screenings are free and open to the public.
Finally, the Photography at Emory series begins with a lecture by photographer and video artist Carlton Mackey on Tuesday, Feb. 18, at 6 p.m. in the Visual Art Building. This series brings visiting artists to campus to address photography in the broad sense of its practice as contemporary art and media.
Music
On Friday, Feb. 7, at 8 p.m. in Emerson Concert Hall, legendary jazz musician Bob Mintzer joins the Gary Motley Trio in concert. This event is part of Jazz Fest 2020. For tickets, call 404-727-5050, buy tickets online or visit the Box Office.
Later in February, the Emory Chamber Music Society of Atlanta continues its celebration of Beethoven’s 250th birthday with a Piano SonataThon, where musicians tackle the 32 piano sonatas composed by the master. The sonatas will be played in three concerts on Sunday, Feb. 23, at 2 p.m., 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. in the Emerson Concert Hall. This event is free and open to the public.
Pablo Sáinz Villegas: Americano Trio comes to Emerson Concert Hall for a Candler Concert Series performance on Saturday, Feb. 29, at 8 p.m. Sáinz Villegas has become a worldwide sensation known as this generation's great classical guitarist. With what the New York Times describes as "virtuosic playing characterized by irresistible exuberance," Sáinz Villegas thrives over a continuous search for innovative ways to inspire diverse communities. The evening begins with a solo program, then Sáinz Villegas brings together the Americano Trio to travel across the Americas on a musical journey weaving through nostalgic tango, vivid Venezuelan rhythms and harmonic American bluegrass. To purchase tickets call 404-727-5050, order online or visit the Schwartz Center Box Office.
Concerts on Emory's Oxford College campus will feature guitarist Daniel Benitez Perez on Monday, Feb. 10 and dynamic ensemble Seraph Brass on Wednesday, Feb. 12. Both performances are free and will be in Williams Hall.
Theater
Brave New Works is a weeklong playwriting festival presenting brand-new theater on campus. All events take place in the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts Theater Lab and are free to attend with registration. Upcoming events include Brave New Works: 4:48 x 2020 on Saturday, Feb. 8, at 2 p.m. Four Emory alumni playwrights write four brand-new plays in just 48 hours, and a cast of Emory alumni actors brings them to life. Find the entire schedule of Brave New Works online.
Following Brave New Works, Theater Emory premiers “Wooden Nickels” Feb. 26 through March 1 in the Mary Gray Monroe Theater in the Alumni Memorial University Center. Written by Emory faculty member Joseph Skibell and directed by Tim McDonough, the play follows two brothers as they tell the story of their father and his eccentric con-man cousin, Jack Tiger. For tickets, call 404-727-5050, buy online or visit the Box Office.
Oxford Theater will perform "Medea" by Euripides and adapted by Rachel Cusk at Tarbutton Performing Arts Center. Four show times are available the weekend of Feb. 26 through Feb. 29; tickets are $8 each.
Michael C. Carlos Museum
In a conversation titled “Guising as God,” Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger of Emory’s Department of Religion and Harshita Mruthinti Kamath of the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies discuss the practice of vesham (using clothing and ornamentation to guise and disguise) across a range of Indian contexts. Drawing on their individual fieldwork, Flueckiger and Kamath will focus on the transformative potential of vesham, including the possibility of becoming god. The conversation concludes with a consideration of the transformative possibilities of vesham in the exhibition “Transcendent Deities of India: The Everyday Occurrence of the Divine,” including the photography of Manjari Sharma and the ornamentation of the paintings of Raja Ravi Varma. The conversation takes place Wednesday, Feb. 12, at 7:30 p.m. in Ackerman Hall of the Michael C. Carlos Museum. It is free and open to the public.
Creative Writing
The Emory University Creative Writing Program Reading Series continues with a reading by Katie Condon and Josh Wilder on Tuesday, Feb. 18, at 6:30 p.m. The reading will occur in the Woodruff Library’s Jones Room.
Condon is the author of “Praying Naked,” winner of the 2018 Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize and forthcoming from Mad Creek Books. Her recent poetry appears in or is forthcoming from The New Yorker, Tin House and Prairie Schooner. Wilder’s work has been developed, commissioned and produced at regional theaters and festivals across the country. He has won numerous awards and is the first national recipient of the Jerome Many Voices Fellowship at The Playwrights’ Center. The reading is free and open to the public.
Art History
This month, the Art History Department hosts lectures across a broad range of subjects. Heather Hyde Minor of the University of Notre Dame presents a lecture on Giovanni Battista Piranesi on Thursday, Feb. 20, at 6 p.m. in Ackerman Hall of the Michael C. Carlos Museum. On Friday, Feb. 21, at 4 p.m. in Ackerman Hall, Anthony Grafton of Princeton University gives a lecture entitled “Images in the Margins: Renaissance Readers Draw the Meanings for their Texts.” All of these lectures are free and open to the public.