performance - THE RECORD

Senior Project

I began working on The Rising when I was traveling in Eastern Europe. Originally the idea was to write a series of songs about war, but almost everything I was coming up with felt contrived and irrelevant. It was so frustrating that I almost gave the whole thing up, but then I got to Poland.

I had several very intense and important things happen to me while I was in Poland and they defined my focus from then on. I began reading about the Nazi genocide, Jewish resistance, and Jewish culture. In a bookshop in Kazimierz, the Jewish neighborhood in Krakow, I picked up “Survival in Auschwitz” by Primo Levi, “Words to Outlive Us” about the Warsaw Ghetto and the uprising that took place there, “A Hole in the Heart of the World: The Jewish Experience in Eastern Europe After WWII,” “Smoke Over Birkenau,” and a book of stories of Jewish Mystics throughout the centuries.

I began to write. I had some words and guitar parts at first, then gradually the songs came together. I wanted them to be for a band so I wrote for electric guitar, bass, and drums.

When I was 17 or 18 I saw a video recording of Metallica playing with the San Francisco Symphony. Since then I’ve wanted to orchestrate songs. I figured my Senior project was a good time to do just that. Continue reading Senior Project

AEA Digest: Pick your Destination

By Eva Erickson and Stacey Johnson
If you followed the many colorful flyers plastered around campus, you would find yourself in the Antioch Education Abroad (AEA) office, surrounded by foreign food, information, and a crowd of advisors and students sharing their stories from far-away places. This gathering at least shows that AEA, even in the face of the college’s instability, is thriving as usual.
Continue reading AEA Digest: Pick your Destination

Dances With Vacuums

“Giraffe or Oyster?” asks the masked dancer. “Tales,” commands the sergeant, after flipping a coin. “No, Heads!” protests the dancer as she proceeds to assume the oyster position. At first glance, you may not think that this is dance. You may even feel a bit confused as to what on earth is going on. Then you realize: this is Antioch – organic, improvisational, and chaotic yet somehow orderly – it’s exactly as it should be.

The lights were kept at a dim setting in the South Gym Monday night for Antioch’s-a-Happenin’. Performers and viewers – encompassing students, faculty, alumni, community members, and locals – casually conversed while the performers imagined prospective movements to fill the space between the sparse pillars of structure.

The dancing that night was entirely non-traditional and 90 percent improvisational. In fact, the whole production only had about three hours of preparation. The oldest male dancer, a dance enthusiast from Columbus, learned of the event just a couple of days before and volunteered last second.

The first dance, the wave dance, underwhelmed me at first because all it consisted of was performers walking, running, and crawling forward and backward on stage. I judged too soon; it wasn’t too long before I witnessed a well-aged woman limbering quite elegantly throughout the space, followed by an interpretive vacuum duet dance, that for some unidentifiable reason made the entire audience giggly.

In another satisfyingly quirky act, the audience was asked to reduce their emotion vocabulary to sighs (depression), screams (panic), “oh no!”s (despair), “huh”s (cynicism), and “whatever”s (apathy). Then we essentially had a verbal drum circle, or beat-box orgy, with our new vocab.

Other dance performances included a wind-structure dance where each dancer took turns communicating with one another by moving into a shape and making a face at the people in the shape.

All of the dance pieces were, of course, serenaded not by pianos and long violin notes, but by cowbells, Congo drums, and the oddest trombone noises you’ve ever heard. Despite the weird sounds, the event was a happenin’. With an ample number of dance lovers willing to pay the five or ten dollar entrance fee, and splurge on “Save Antioch” merchandise, the event brought together a total of 200 dollars for the College Revival Fund.

Lust with Levi

Dear Levi B.,

I have a small problem. Okay – a big problem. I have a big, big crush on one of my professors. Obviously, I am a student. I have trouble paying attention in class, and I’m sometimes too nervous to talk in our
discussions. I know it sounds crazy, but I feel like we might be a good match. Help!
Signed,
Pining for Professor
Continue reading Lust with Levi

On Board with the Chair

Q&A with BOT chair Art Zucker on College, Core and Common DNA

By Kim-Jenna Jurriaans

BOT, ULC, Toni Murdoch, Art Zucker, John Feinberg; these acronyms and names fl y around frequently, but largely remain an enigma to many residing on campus. Who are these people and what do they do? The Antioch Record sat down with chair of the Board of Trustees Art Zucker ‘55, to talk about the roles of the Board, his memories as an Alum and the future of the College.

Continue reading On Board with the Chair