New York City is packed with amazing culture and inspiring art, but sometimes it’s difficult to break the Morningside-bubble and experience it all first-hand. “Where Art Thou” is a weekly guide to interesting and notable lectures, events, and performances for the literary/musibwogcally/theatrically-inclined on campus.

Saturday, February 18th

  • Bhangra in the Heights X, 7:30 PM, Roone Arledge Auditorium – “Columbia University Bhangra is proud to announce our tenth annual Bhangra performance showcase on Saturday, February 18, 2017. Bhangra is a dance form native to Punjab, a state in northern India, and Bhangra in the Heights has a commitment to showcasing the best Bhangra dance teams in the tri-state area. Get ready for a night of stunning routines, vibrant colors, and dazzling energy!” – Tickets here; $5.50 with CUID, $7.50 day of

Monday, February 20th

  • An Evening with the Monochord: Global Perspectives in Music, Math, and History, 6:15 PM, Second Floor Common Room in the Heyman Center – “Music theorists Guangming Li, Joon Park, and David Cohen each examine how early philosophers used the monochord to address musical and mathematical problems from the sixth century BCE to the fifteenth century. Relying on archeological evidence and music-theoretical texts, Li will discuss the derivation of a chromatic scale in the Warring-States Period (475-221 BCE). Park will compare insights in ancient Greek and 15th century Korean court music to show how the monochord shaped conceptions of musical space as relating to motion. Cohen will examine the role of the monochord in research on harmonics from Pythagoras through Ptolemy.” – Free
  • Modern Design Education: An Epistemological Account, 6:30 PM, Wood Auditorium in Avery Hall – “Zeynep Çelik Alexander is the third annual Detlef Mertins Lecturer on the Histories of Modernity. . . Her work focuses on the history of modern architecture since the Enlightenment. After being trained as an architect at Istanbul Technical University and Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, she received her PhD from the History, Theory, and Criticism Program at MIT. . . The Detlef Mertins Lecture on the Histories of Modernity is an annual lecture in honor of the life and work of Detlef Mertins (1954-2011). The series is organized by Keller Easterling, Felicity Scott, Barry Bergdoll and Dean Amale Andraos. Previous speakers include Lucia Allais and Craig Buckley.” – Free and open to the public.

Tuesday, February 21st

  • The Varsity Show’s West End Preview, 8:00 PM and 10:00 PM, Diana Event Oval – “Each year in February, The Varsity Show performs a selection of songs and scenes to provide a sneak peek of what we’re working on. Come meet the cast of V123 and get a glimpse of this year’s show!” – Tickets here

Wednesday, February 22nd

  • The Prison in Twelve Landscapes, 8:30 PM, Lehman Auditorium in 202 Altschul – “A film about the prison system and its life in the American landscape.” A discussion will follow the screening. – Free and open to the public

Thursday, February 23rd

  • Poetry Reading: Josh Bell and Roger Reeves, 7:00 PM, Room 501 in Dodge Hall – “Josh Bell is the author of No Planets Strike and Alamo Theory. His poems have appeared in A Public Space, Boston Review, The New Republic, The New Yorker, Tin House and elsewhere. A recent recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, he has taught at Columbia University, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and elsewhere, and is currently Briggs Copeland Lecturer on English at Harvard University. Roger Reeves’ first book, King Me, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2013. Reeves has been named a Cave Canem and is the recipient of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, a Hodder Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Whiting Award. He teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago.” – Free admission
  • Complex Issues: Triangle of Resistance, 1:00 PM, the LeRoy Neiman Gallery in Dodge Hall – “MFA Sound Arts Director Miya Masaoka discusses the album Triangle of Resistance, critically acclaimed by the Wall Street Journal for its “deeply expressive hybrid style,” including its musical and sound structures, timbres, and the creative process derived from the experience of incarceration of her family during WWII in the Japanese-American Internment camps.”  – Free registration here
  • When Ivory Towers Were Black, 1:00 PM, the LeRoy Neiman Gallery in Dodge Hall – “Sharon Egretta Sutton (M.Arch ’73) in conversation with Reinhold Martin, Mabel O. Wilson, and Senator Bill Perkins. When Ivory Towers Were Black (Fordham University Press, 2016) tells the untold story of how an unparalleled cohort of ethnic minority students earned degrees from Columbia University’s School of Architecture during the Civil Rights Movement. The book follows two university units that steered the school toward an emancipatory approach to education, in particular the school’s Division of Planning, revealing fierce struggles to open the ivory tower to ethnic minority students and to involve them, and their revolutionary white peers, in improving Harlem’s slum conditions.” – Free and open to the public
  • Poetry Reading | Adam Zagajewski, 7:00 PM, Room 501 in Dodge Hall – “A Polish poet, novelist, translator and essayist, Zagajewski was awarded the 2004 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and the 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize Lifetime Recognition Award. His poem “Try To Praise The Mutilated World,” was printed in The New Yorker and became famous after the 11 September attacks. He is currently a faculty member at the University of Chicago and a member of its Committee on Social Thought.” – Free

Friday, February 24th

  • 1st Annual Showcase: “Tonight We Dance”, 7:00 PM, Lerner Black Box – “CU Generation is a hip-hop dance group inspired by Asian pop and hip-hop music. Originally founded as Columbia’s one and only K-pop dance crew, CU Generation has expanded to incorporate diverse styles of hip hop and music. They celebrate the cross section of Asian culture and hip-hop and aim to give Asian culture a voice through Columbia’ dance community. For the first time ever, CU Generation will be hosting its own showcase: “Tonight We Dance.” Join the group as they premiere the original choreography of team members as well as famous dance covers from Asia!” – Tickets $5.50 here
  • Brenda Patterson: A heteronormative to homoextraordinary recital, 8:00 PM, Sulzberger Parlor on the 3rd floor of Barnard Hall – “In this program, Barnard/Juilliard graduate and Metropolitan Opera singer Brenda Patterson, an “out” mezzo-soprano, invites the listener to experience the power and intimacy of art song when it is offered without emotional translation. Using Schumann’s classic song cycle, “A Woman’s Love & Life,” set with new texts by contemporary lesbian poet Emily Moore, Patterson at once effaces and revivifies Schumann’s original masterpiece, reclaiming it as a modern, fully inhabitable work that speaks to our contemporary realities. This cycle will juxtapose against selections from Hector Berlioz and American songwriter Ricky Ian Gordon to explore related themes of intimacy and loss, from poet Théophile Gautier’s romanticized 19th Century “love that dare not speak its name” to the AIDS crisis of the 1990s. Renate Rohlfing will provide accompaniment on the piano.” – Free admission

Featured image via www.undergrad.admissions.columbia.edu