Good afternoon. Whoa, that's hot. Not to be all Saturday night live or anything. Anyway, good afternoon.
I'll stick to my script. And welcome to the 47th Annual Showcase of the Arts, presented by the Bloomington
Chapter of the National Society of Arts and Letters. My name is Eric Anderson, Jr., and it is once again
my distinct honor and pleasure to serve as this year's Master of Ceremonies.
As a part of their mission to identify, encourage, and assist young talent, local NSAL chapters across
the country, 19 in all, hold a series of competitions each spring in the areas of dance, drama, musical
theater, literature, music, and visual art. And the winners of the Bloomington competitions,
the spectacularly gifted young men and women who have been invited to perform for you today, will be
receiving more than $25,000 in awards. You are going to witness a wonderful array of talent this afternoon.
And the best part to me is these young men and women are just at the start. And NSAL's passion and commitment
is to give them that boost of encouragement, confidence, and cash to keep pursuing their art. And I
have to say the Bloomington chapter has a pretty good track record so far. Just thinking off the top
of my head, a couple that I happen to know personally, remembering last year's musical theater winner,
Sharnette Beatty, who in the days of moving to New York City earlier this year, booked the role of Dina
Jones in the musical Dreamgirls at the highly esteemed Gallery Players in Brooklyn. Why not?
And previous vocal winner Sean Davies is waiting as we speak to hear the results of her performance
in the incredibly prestigious invitation only Richard Tucker competition. So if there's one thing you
can say about the Bloomington and I say it is that they have impeccable taste. So moving on.
to the performances themselves. Our first performer this afternoon is Maria Jose Romero Ramos, was pursuing
a master's in violin performance at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music with Professor Kevork
Marrocian, and is a recipient of the Jacobs Fellowship, and hails from Valencia, Venezuela. She has
been a member of professional orchestras, such as the Plano and Irving Symphony Orchestras, as well
as the Sphinx Chamber Orchestra, and recently performed with the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra as winner
of their concerto competition.
Today she brings us the Sonata for Violin and Piano in G minor by Claude Debussy, accompanied at the
piano by Daniel Ennamorato.
former hails from Huntington Valley, Pennsylvania. Currently a freshman studying ballet at the Jacobs
School, Laura Gruner received her dance training from the Philadelphia Dance Theater under the direction
of Joy Caponi. Laura has attended summer programs at American Ballet Theater, Houston Ballet, and Boston
Ballet on scholarship. She was a Youth American Grand Prix finalist from 2005 to 2011. And in 2012,
Laura was a featured cast member on the Ovation Original television series, A Chance to Dance.
This afternoon, she will be performing
Estirado choreographed by Joy Caponi. Please welcome Laura Gruner.
Thank you, Laura. Next to this stage, we welcome Todd Ulworm, a freshman at Indiana University majoring
in musical theater. He's been involved with community theater in his hometown of Crown Point since he
was in the second grade. And while at Indiana, he has appeared in the university player's production
of Zombie Prom, several group recitals at the Jacobs School of Music, and the IU Department of Theater
and Dramas, currently running production of Sunday in the Park with George, performing the roles of
Franz and Redmond. He also plays the cello
claims he can be heard whistling on a tune anywhere he goes. Today, accompanied by Nat's degree on piano,
he will perform musical selections from Barnum and Next to Normal and a monologue from Men Suck. Please
welcome them both.
You think, how many times have I sat in this stupid apartment choking down the same takeout dinner and
watching the same show that I never found funny? Two minutes. Tonight, I'm going to go out. I'm going
to put on nice shirts and clean jeans, and I'm going to go out to the bar and buy myself my favorite
drink. A Seabreeze, right? There's a lot of Seabreeze. You sit there, and you drink your drink, and
you think your thoughts. What happens? Some guy who thinks playing high school football made him God.
Comes up to you smelling of cheap air and cigars, and wants to take you home with him. Thinks that you're
melting in the presence of the hot blood of an American man. They never notice the plastic spine, forced
laughter. There I go again, trying to separate myself from them, but I am one. A man. Accident of birth.
Perfect for you, I could
such fantastic performance. Now we turn to the written word. Hibba Krish is from Beirut, Lebanon. And
while in her past life she may have taught logic and ethics at the American University of Beirut, she
is currently a Master of Fine Arts candidate in creative writing at Indiana University. She has served
as fiction editor of Rusted Radishes, which is the Beirut Literary and Arts Review, and layout editor
of Mid-East Mirror Daily. She loves Nietzsche.
awkward humor, Levantine cuisine, modal quantification, and scarves. Her fiction appears in Hayden's
Fairy Review, the Evergreen Review, the Banyan Tree, and Rusted Radishes. Today, she reads a selection
from her short story, Tin Beirut. Please welcome Hiba Krishn.
The story is called Tin Beirut. It begins with an epigraph. The world is a tin bowl. Flick one part
and it shudders altogether. Lebanese proverb. Beirut brimmed with pigeons, with virgin bananas and chimeras
in the years after the civil war. She was a castaway, a blunderer with traces of lazuli ripe on her
eyelids from better days gone past.
Some of those born into our streets passed through grimly, waiting for their boats to leave port on
a happier morning. Others stayed, spilling their wares, fresh and new, with post-war gleaming onto sidewalks.
They sat in undershirts and tasseled scarves through the afternoons, with their teas, their tobaccos,
spitting into the streets to relieve pumpkin seeds of their shells.
They hung their hearts on the walls and the backs of kitchen flats and chased away the acrid taste of
gunpowder with dreams. It was early in the afternoon that Dalila sat in her flat and destroyed wedding
dresses. She frayed their hems and tore them into strips, dipping them into vats of dye. They turned
dark as the dust-filmed blinds that blocked the sunlight from her veranda doors.
She pinned them to the lines spooled taut between her windows and they fluttered like cruel banners
and sucked the hope from young girls who eyed them from the street. Boys passing below looked at them
too and thought of them and desired things to do with their errant floppy quiet.
A boy trailing down the street beneath Talila's window, six years old, Farid, on his way to see his
father in the sweet shop with a paper bag of charcoal briquettes sawing canyons into the inner skin
of his elbows.
The charcoal would feed a roaring back alley fire to boil the syrup. There would be a napkin folded
around something crumbling and cloying tossed into his palm. There would be a 500 Lebanese pound coin
smooth like a stone in his pocket to buy something concurrently salty with. He walked with his head
to the sky knowing the maneuvering of these streets by a lazy heart. He looked up to the ragged banners
beneath Delilah's window and thought about shimmying up the street lamp pole
the banner slapped against, this pole rough and sticky enough for traction, which he could climb to
collect the streaming grain black, to twist it into turbines, to knot it into ropes, to string between
windows and the flats of Camp Sabra, lines of communication of deliverance, of invisibility against
the night, to reenact the grim and glorious guerrilla of the occupied south, to bring himself home to
Palestine.
But he would have to lay his charcoal prize too temptingly against that pole no good. He gave his shoulders
a shudder and moved on. Dalila watched him beneath her window.
watched the grace of his lingering, his bird-peck dance of hesitation before he picked up pace with
a hitch to his brown shoulders, a hitch to the cling of his brown arms against heavy paper. He turned
the corner in a shimmery haze and was gone, and with him gone also the twinge deep in Derrida's belly
for the right to lay her hands against shoulders that narrow.
Dalila, with her arms and legs as sturdy as telephone poles, her fingers webbing and gloating through
the gowns that lined up at her door, careful and clean in plastic bags. She commissioned the prostitutes
of Beirut to bring her dresses so she could destroy them with lusty vengeance. The prostitutes had nails
that scarred the bags with runs like their pantyhose. This was good.
The first defilement of each gown's purity, the next sped to the tune of Dalila's jaws working, cracking
mastic between her teeth, clack clack, clack clack like a freight train.
Her hands moved in time with the urgent spurting and quelling somewhere in her innards, feeding the
strength of her forearms. She ripped, stripped, dyed, and dried, and snapped each banner taut before
hanging it, leaning out of her sill with the mark of jaw that only an older and heftier woman could have.
This was the only type of set to a face that could chase away the whispers of the indecency of a bosom
hanging out of a window in Beirut daylight, watching every young being in the streets below. And Delilah
watched. She watched the one prostitute leave who had just delivered her dress and lingered perhaps
too dreamily down the eight flights of steps. This girl, her ankles ambled, this rayya with fingers
too lazily closed around the bills that Delilah proffered,
But she showed up at Delilah's door with the most exquisite dresses and towel, delicate and floating
as froth. Boutique owners and their cleaning wenches were sweet to her, willing to believe
such a creamy-faced girl a bride. Wrestling away, the unbidden twinge again nested somewhere against
her ribs this time. Delilah turned away from her window and back to face her steaming vats. In the street
below, Raya stopped partway to the corner
Her hands were glad to be rid of the spurning plastic of the garment bag its son spent rubber burn.
She whisked a cigarette from her wristband, a lighter from her bosom. She never wore dresses with pockets.
A devil lurked too readily in a pocket and nudged its contents into street gutters or unfriendly hands.
She looked back and up at the drab streamers sluicing from Dalila's window and smoked. This Dalila was
a woman long-away spurned in love
agile in her malice, her old family money and new, warm money rotted in the bases of clay flower pots
in the corners of her flat and lay wedged in the brassiers of the whores of Beirut. Raya suddenly remembered
the old Lebanese saying and allowed a slow shudder to course up her legs and deplete at her hip bones.
She took only a moment to absorb it and resumed her walk.
Raya tapped her cigarette against her thigh, mindful of the burn, and tossed it away as she made her
way down the street. Because cigarettes were too indecent and not for the persona she wore for this
daytime work, wedding boutique owners should forget her face, wan and lustful as any typical brides,
before they had the time to replace the dresses she coaxed from their windows. She meandered through
the streets of Hamra and stopped between a chocolaterie and a shop selling pinstriped men's suits.
The sleazy electric sign belonging to the boutique across the street fizzled off with an exhausting
finality. It must be 3 p.m. and time for the afternoon's power outage. Because this was a country where
street lights and shop signs glowed extravagantly in the daylight and the hours where there was power
and where long power cuts left citizens bursting to repair diesel guzzling generators to keep their
businesses running and to keep up the dizzy spin of their ceiling fans.
Thank you. Thank you, Eva. Next up, we have Katie Zimmerman, an Indiana University freshman
from Pennsylvania, a ballet major with an outside field in business.
Katie has been training in dance, primarily ballet, along with modern and jazz for the past 12 years.
Today she will be dancing the wedding variation from Paquita.
beautiful. Our next honored performer is Brianna McClellan, a senior majoring in theater and drama at
Indiana University. She was most recently seen as Pauline and Maggie Cassidy at the Bloomington Playwrights
Project, a production I had the immense pleasure of music directing, if I may say so. She has also been
found on stage at IU performing roles in A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Three Musketeers, Hey Fever,
Little Night Music, and Blood Brothers.
In the Indiana Festival Theater's inaugural season, she was seen as Muriel in Odd Wilderness and the
courtesan in Comedy of Errors. Brianna was crowned Miss Indiana University last year and competed at
Miss Indiana this past summer. Originally from Chesapeake, Virginia, Brianna will perform today as Desdemona
from Othello and Sally from Valhalla.
Iago, what shall I do to win my lord again? Good friend, go to him, for by this light of heaven I know
not how I lost him. Here I kneel, if ever my guilty trespass gains his love, either in discourse of
thought or actual deed, or that mine eyes, mine ears, or any sense, delight at them in any other form.
I do not yet.
though he do shake me off to better be divorcement. I love him dearly, comfort, for swear me, unkindness
may do much, and his unkindness may defeat my life, but never taint my love. Some people think that
I had feelings for James Avery, but that is just
Not true. Before he went away, there was something he used to say that I will never forget. He would
say that he had been studying the situation since kindergarten and had made lists and charts and even
held a personal pageant. And he finally determined that I was the prettiest girl in all of Dainesville.
He said that the prettiest girl can bring people hope and brighten their day. It wasn't that such a
nice thing to say. I mean, especially coming from a delinquent.
And so now, whenever I look in here, I see Eleanor Roosevelt. Oh, of course, pretty. I mean, don't get
me wrong, Mrs. Roosevelt worked so hard to help the poor and end the downtrodden, but can you imagine
how much more she could accomplish if she were pretty? And I know there's inner beauty, but inner beauty's
really tricky because, well,
You can't prove it. You've been thinking a lot about this. About youth and beauty and all the different
religions. I mean, Buddha, he was chubby. I mean, face it. And Confucius was all old and scrabbly. You
can't even have a picture of Muhammad. Was it the teeth? I don't know. But Jesus, Jesus, he's always
really, really pretty. With beautiful hair and shiny teeth.
It's like God was saying, look to Jesus for tips. There was that German guy, Adolf Hitler, and he thinks
everyone should be beautiful and blue-eyed and perfect. Well, that's wrong too, because who would be
the best friends? I'm not trying to be vain or prideful. I just always think back to what James said
in one of his letters.
He said there are two things that matter in this world, youth and beauty. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Rihanna, for the fabulous performance. Not to mention the fabulous shoes. To conclude, the
first half of our showcase, after which we'll have a 10-minute intermission, we present sopranos Sandra Periord.
a native of Saline, Michigan, Sandra is in her third year of undergraduate studies in vocal performance
at the Jacobs School in the studio of Alice Hopper. Most recently, she performed the role of the fairy
godmother in Massenet-Saint-Guyon with RU Opera Theater, having performed previously in productions
of La Boheme and Candide, as well as the roundabout opera for kids' production of Into the Woods. Accompanied
on the piano by Carolyn McClellan, Sandra will be singing The Silver Swan by Ned Rorum and an aria from
Donatetti's Linda de Chamonix.
We now move on to the second half of our program, beginning with the art of creative fiction. Leslie
Marie Aguilar was born and raised in Abilene, Texas. She received her Bachelor of Arts from Texas Tech
University where she graduated summa cum laude. She has served as the poetry editor of the Harbinger
Journal of Literature and Art and was a finalist for the Steven Ross Huffman Memorial Poetry Award.
She is also a recipient of the Lewis McNutt Fellowship and the Indiana University Graduate Fellowship.
Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Bellingham Review, Emerge Literary Journal, Rattle, and
San Pedro River Review, among others. She is currently an MFA candidate at Indiana University, where
she is an Associate Instructor of Creative Writing. Please welcome Leslie Aguilar. Thank you for that
introduction, and thank you all for being here this afternoon.
I'm going to read three poems, the first of which begins with an epigram from John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
And it is, you were only waiting for this moment to arise. Blackbird Penance. The blackbirds in the
withering pecan tree behind my childhood home never quite made it into the trash can after my father
shot them with his BB gun.
Instead, they would cling to telephone wires hoping for a resurrection that would rise up in the form
of a stalled dive down towards the alley road below. I found a dead squirrel in that trash can once,
and wondered how it got there, because birds aren't different than squirrels. Blood from the body is
blood from anybody, and birds aren't different than squirrels, father, but I am waiting for the right
moment to tell you.
Remember, when I was smaller, how you would sing Blackbird as you shined your military boots. I would
watch your work worn knuckles move back and forth over the leather and wonder who had sunken eyes and
broken wings. In a different version, I imagine the Blackbird as a gun that hides in your closet the
night I come home too late. It rattles its wings against the cage of your hands and breaks them over my body.
My blood is your blood, Father, and I am waiting for the right moment to tell you. The five black birds
tattooed across my ribs use their blue-black beaks as knives to carve out a place for you. They are
a reminder that you are mine, and I claim you. So this next poem I'm going to read is from Mr. Otis
Clint Frazier and his angels.
So this is called 30 for big O. The day a boy becomes a man takes 30 years, I heard someone say, to
an old man with wrinkles folded into his green eyes, like the veins of the leaves I wore in my hair
the day we met. Now I wake up every morning to the strength of his grandson's arms pulling me closer
into himself, like the quilts that swallow me during the night,
That September night when I wasn't sleeping, the frigid air as a final breath was enough to contain
the silence of his mother's breathless words. I pretended not to hear gone, but he was like a child
again in my arms as I cradled his head like the babies he hoped I would carry.
In my hands, I held his sticky face, hot with tears, shed over a man who was his father's father, a
foundation for the family that called him Papa. In Strawn, where grass grows higher than basset hound
legs, the chain link fence was built to keep the children in. Today, that boy is a child learning to
become a man. He learns that absence is pressure mounting in his lungs, making it harder to breathe.
During the night, as I fold myself into his shaking body, his jaw clenches in response to an anger misplaced
onto an absent God. That boy waiting to become a man remembers me saying he needed to be 30. It would
be easier if he were 30. And this final poem that I'm going to read is after the poet Rodney Jones,
and it's entitled Resurrection Fern.
Together, we drive south down US 277, listening to a song by Iron and Wine. We share a slow way of listening
to folk music as you drive your Jeep Grand Cherokee towards Dead Man's Curve. I hear the whining guitar
with its useless longing, then the bearded man singing, and imagine what could have happened.
picnics in cotton fields, bridges built above dry creek beds, and the wild hog that ran off with Beauregard
the bloodhound. Apache fog bursts across the cracked windshield, and I gasp for breath back as your
cigarette embers glitter down black asphalt and highlight things going by. Coronado's camp, two blinking
caution lights, two accidents in December, trips off the nearby bluff, too many close calls.
Our ghosts will say we gave the world what we saw fit. Stubborn boy with big green eyes, you see valleys
in the small of my back as I arch toward the moon as I undress beside the ashes of all the animals you
buried on the hill. Zeke the ferret, Leonardo the turtle, and Lizzie the lizard that lived in the cross
ties behind your house.
We are more a pair of railroad tracks in sunflower fields than the pecan tree wound around in baling
wire. We are supposed to be somewhere, anywhere else, but the fallen house across the way keeps both
of us in its blue jean pocket like the gold coins you stole when you were just a boy. My attention glides
from one lane to the next, and I am not myself without the low hum of your mustached voice.
So as we pass Dead Man's Curve on our way home, I play this song again, two times and then again. We
are a lucky pair in the dark Texas country, singing along, taking a trip off the bluff just for fun.
Thank you.
Thank you, Leslie. Those were wonderful. And as someone on the edge of 30, I found the second one especially
touching. Our next performer is Evelyn Gaynor, who is a second year MFA student in acting at the IU
Department of Theater and Drama, where she has made a wide range of appearances in productions such
as School for Scandal, The God of Carnage, When the Rain Stops Falling, Cabaret, and A Midsummer Night's
Dream. Hailing from Acton, Massachusetts and holding a BFA in acting from Syracuse University,
Evelyn offers us today performances as Ruth from the Norman Conquest and Queen Margaret from Henry VI, Part III.
A little top. Give. Do you know what I mean? Do you understand me? Oh, you really are the most frustrating
person to talk to, Tom. I feel like one of those real socialists.
you know, on those wheels that they have in cages, you know, the ones that are just spinning round and
round like mad, getting nowhere. I think your brain works all right. I think what must happen is it
receives a message from the outside, but once that message goes inside your head, it's like an unfiled
internal memo in a vast,
civil service department. And it gets shut from desk to desk with nobody taking responsibility for it.
Let's try a few simple reactions, shall we? I love you, Tom. I love you. I love you, Tom. No? All right,
I know. I hate you, Tom. Do you hear me?
This is an attempt to communicate. You really have the most disastrous effect on me. Did you know that?
I have a desire to put on my glasses and take off my clothes and dance naked on the grass for you, Tom.
And I will put on my glasses not, as you say, to improve the shape of my face, but to test your reaction,
if any. And as I whirl faster and faster than light,
painting off my lenses, flashing messages of passion and desire. I would hurl you to the ground and
rip off your clothes, and we would make mad, hot, torrid, steaming love together. How does that grab
your tongue? Oh, God. Oh, I'm so sorry. I am exhausted. I tried my best. I'm so sorry.
What? Was it you who would be England's king? Was it you that reveled in our Parliament and made a preachment
of your high descent? Where are your mess of sons to back you now, the wanton Edward and the lusty George?
And where's that valiant, crook-backed prodigy, Dicky, your boy, that with his grumbling voice was wont
to cheer his dad in mutinies? Or with the rest, where is your darling Rutland? Look, York, I stained
this napkin with the blood that valiant Clifford with his rapier's point made issue from the bosom of the boy.
And if thine eyes can water for his death, I give thee this, to dry your cheeks withal. What, hath thy
fiery heart so parched thine entrails, that not a tear can fall for Brutman's death? Alas, poor York,
but that I hate thee deadly, I shall lament thy miserable state. I prithee grieve to make me merry,
York, stamp, rave, and thrash
to make me sport york cannot speak unless he wear a crown, a crown for york and lort. Bow low to him.
Hold you his hands whilst I do set it on. Ay, merry sir, now looks he like a king. Ay, this is he that
took King Henry's chair, and this is he was his adopted heir. And will you pale your head
and robbed his temples of the diadem, now with his life against your solemn oath. Oh, tis a fault too,
too unpardonable. Off with the crown and with the crown his head. And whilst we breathe, take time to
do him. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Evelyn. Returning now to dance, we welcome to the stage Layla Hazelwood, a senior contemporary
dance major at Indiana University. She's a native of Indianapolis, where she began her dance training
at the age of eight at her mother Vanessa Owens' Kenyatta Dance Studio. She has studied ballet, modern,
tap, jazz, and African dance, just to name a few. And upon graduation, she plans to pursue a professional
dance career.
Layla was the 2011 and 2012 first place recipient of the National Society of Arts and Letters Dance
Competition. In 2011, she went on to compete at the national level in Birmingham, Alabama, representing
the Bloomington Chapter in the choreography competition. Layla will be dancing a piece she choreographed
titled, Me Oh My.
People turn and stare. I really don't care. I would give my everything to keep you, boy. It breaks my
heart when you're not there. I'll stage a ballet on a table top.
Almost fingers.
A magic carpet.
First we welcome to the stage Maddie Shay Baldwin, a sophomore BFA musical theater student at IU. Originally
from San Diego, California, she has appeared at IU as Vendla in Spring Awakening and Maureen in Liz
Estrada. Other credits include Heidi in the recent University Players Production of Title of Show and
Bombshell at the Bloomington Playwrights Project. And on a personal note, I've had the incredible pleasure
of working with Maddie in productions of The Truman Show, Maggie Cassidy, and The Boy in the Bathroom,
all of which were also at the BPP.
She can be seen on television every Friday at 4.30 as the co-host of WTIU's The Friday Zone, and will
soon be performing in swing with the Indiana Festival Theater this summer. With musical selections from
Nine to Five and Promises, Promises, as well as a monologue from Women of Manhattan, please welcome
Madi Shea Baldwin and once again, pianist Nat Segrie.
that's like the hardest thing to get to with another person. Well, it took me time and I struggled and
I strove and I succeeded at last at revealing my innermost, my most personal soul to him. He just sat
there with a coconut sand like he was watching television waiting for the next scene. Here
I was congratulating myself on being able to show myself, show my naked self to a man, but what was
the achievement? I chose to show myself to a wall.
He was a wall and was really alone, showing myself to nobody at all. Even when I called him out and
I made this speech at him, and I got all pink in the face and noble and shit, he just said, all right
and left. What did I delude myself into thinking was going on between us, and that's how he could take
an ending? I mean, to tell you the naked truth, I'm not even sure there was a Jerry.
I think I just worked myself into crazy passion and fell in love with the wall right there. Me crazy
loving it because I needed to love and not a human man. I could not import everything out into a really
truly human man and him just stand there and take it and give nothing back. But when I get too far gone
in that direction of thinking and alone here some nights I do,
to look there and see those sneakers on the floor.
is Jennifer Gruner, a junior at IU from Huntington Valley, Pennsylvania, who is working towards a bachelor
of science in ballet performance with an outside field in communications and culture. She received her
ballet training at Philadelphia Dance Theater and has attended summer programs at the School of American
Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Miami City Ballet, and Chautauqua. Jennifer was a youth American Grand
Prix finalist from 2005 to 2010 and has performed with the Pennsylvania Ballet and the Nutcracker and
the Sleeping Beauty.
While at IU, Jennifer has been featured in Paul Taylor's Company B, in Cloven Kingdom, Joshua Bergasse's
Baker Dances, Balanchine's Concerto Brocco, as Princess Florine in The Sleeping Beauty, and as one of
the principal women in Peter Martin's 8 Easy Pieces. Today, Jennifer will be performing a variation
from Paquita.
Our next featured performer, Lydia Umlauf, currently attends Indiana University's Jacob School of Music,
where she studies violin with Alexander Kerr. Lydia has been a finalist and won awards in several music
competitions and has been invited to play many recital performances, including in the Young Steinway
Concert Series and with the Lafayette and Muncie Symphony Orchestras. Lydia plays a 1916 Carl Becker
violin on generous loan from the Rachel Elizabeth Barton Foundation.
And on that instrument, she brings us today Sonata No. 7 in C minor by Ludwig von Beethoven, accompanied
at the piano by Alexei Artemyev.
Our final performer this afternoon is Jeremy Johnson, a baritone at the Jacobs School, who could be
found on stage at the MAC in roles such as Mazetto and Don Giovanni, Chouinard and Labanouem, Hormhab
and Philip Glass' Akhenaten, and Gladhand in West Side Story. Last summer he appeared as Sarah Mantio
and Maestro Spinaloccio in the Princeton Festival's production of Johnny's Geeky.
He sang the role of Peter in the touring production of Don Freund's Romeo and Juliet, has been a featured
soloist in Haydn's Die Schiffung, Bach's Johannes Passchen, Britten's Rejoice in the Lamb, and Liszt's
Die Seligkeiten, and this summer he will be a Gerdin Young artist with the Opera Theatre of St. Louis.
I should add that I have the enormous privilege and pleasure of accompanying Jeremy this afternoon,
and as I make my way towards the piano, I hope you will welcome him to the stage to sing for us Richard
Strauss' Morgen and Largo al Factorum from Rossini's Barber of Seville.
me for that wonderful performance and to all of you for being such a wonderful audience. We've come
to the portion of the afternoon then where I will gladly hand the podium over to the Bloomington Chapters
co-presidents Ruth Albright and Dennis Organ.
not necessary to say, but I'm Ruth Albright, co-president, and this is Dennis Organ, co-president. This
is the 47th Annual Showcase of the Arts for the Bloomington Chapter of the National Society of Arts
and Letters. We were founded in 1966. Our parent organization was founded in 1944. And I think it's
incredible that for 47 years, we have presented young artists in a public performance.
and given well over $500,000 in awards. This afternoon, we're giving $25,000, too. I did 57 certificates.
There are 57 winners in eight different disciplines. Murray Robinson, our treasurer, wrote 54 checks.
So it's quite a deal. It's quite a deal to get to the place of being able to put this show on. We have
two very special guests in our audience today.
I would like to have them stand. Lee, could you turn the house lights up a little bit so that people
could see them? Catriona Tudor-Earler, who's the national NSAL president, is here visiting our chapter
today. In addition, Judy Park, who's the second vice president of the national organization, is here today.
And we're just delighted to have them come and see what we do. Because we do more competitions than
any of the other chapters in the country. We do them in all of the disciplines every year. And we're
so happy that we can do that and that we have such generous donors. I want to present the musical theater
awards. George Penny.
Terry LeBoult, Ray Feldman, and Liza Gennaro, the entire department, are all in New York for the senior
showcase. Eight seniors went to New York. Oh, I don't know, Friday, Saturday, whatever. I'm on Facebook
with a lot of these young people, so I can keep track of what they're doing. And I have been getting
terrible, terrible Facebook entries from the four that went by bus. And I can tell you, don't do it.
Don't even think about it.
Anyway, some of these young people will not be here today because they are in New York and Brooke Wood,
who was our top winner, was not able to perform today because she is in New York, but we wish them luck.
They will be presenting their showcase tomorrow and Tuesday for casting agents and agents, casting directors
and agents and other people who can help them get their careers started. So our first
Oh, would all of the musical theater students please come up, the ones who are here, so that we can
present your awards. The first one, whom I know is not here, is Kurt Semmler. And we're delighted that
he has won his second NSAL Award. Claire Drews, are you here? I have not gotten to know Claire Drews
yet, but hey, I'm coming for you. Claire has won the Governor of America Award,
This Memorial Award is Emily Schulteis. First favorite of mine, I've had a crush on him for two years
and only wished I was 50 years younger, Taylor Crouser. He won the opener Pete Ralston Memorial Award.
The winner of the David E. Albright Memorial Award, which of course is near and dear to my heart
David, who's my husband and a wonderful man, is Badie Shea Baldwin. The winner of the Robinson Merritt
Award is Todd Alburn. The chapter career award, our top awards in each category is Brookwood.
who isn't here today, but she is going to perform for our chapter at our Red Rose Luncheon on May 5th.
So we will not let her get off scot-free. She's wonderful, so we will enjoy seeing her again. And now
I'll turn it over to Jenny. I'll call upon the other competition chairs to present wards to their respective
award winners. Before I do, I would like to add a special note of thanks to Eric, our emcee, for bringing
his multidimensional talent to bear upon our proceedings and his commitment to the arts. He really gives
it a lot of class. And if I may, I would add a brief note of collective
An anonymous thanks to all the people who served as judges. All of these eight areas demand the highest
caliber of knowledge and skill and background in the arts. We have to go obviously well beyond our chapter,
even beyond Indiana University sometimes to get these people. Every area requires almost always at least
three, sometimes there's a fourth. They come from Cincinnati, Columbus, Ohio, Indianapolis, Louisville,
and other places within and beyond the state. And they do it as a labor of love. There's no payment
for this other than something for their mileage. And they do it out of commitment and just respect,
I think, in part two for Indiana University and its varied departments in the arts. And I wish we had
time to name them all, but we won't do that. You'll see their names in the program.
Okay, um, I think it would be appropriate to start with visual art. So, uh, because that is the area
of national focus this year. And if you haven't already had a chance to see the exhibitions in the arts,
they're still, I think, going on on the slideshow outside. So I'll call upon Katherine Johnson-Roore
to do the honors for this.
Thank you, Denny. And I want to thank Julie Roberts, the gallery director here at the Waldron. She was
a huge help and really did a beautiful job installing the show. I hope you all had a chance to see it
in January. But if you didn't, it is playing on the slideshow. Would all the visual arts winners who
are here please come down? I know that a few of you couldn't come, but I saw a few familiar faces.
Our chapter prize winner is Lisa Wicca, who will be representing our chapter in Pittsburgh this year,
so we wish her luck. Lisa won the Granville Wells Memorial Award. Keegan Miles Adams won the Ilkner
P. Ralston Memorial Award, and he's not here today. The Alma Eicherman Memorial Award goes to Chad Copeland.
Janelle Beasley won the Christ Merit Award. Jenna Jacobs won the Alma Eicherman Memorial Award. The
Klein Merit Award goes to Amy Denald.
Rachel Baxter won the Grace L. Dyer Memorial Award. Kara Kalani won the Alan Kahn Memorial Award, which
is for photography. We also had three very generous awards from Pygmalion's Art Supplies here in Bloomington.
So these are gift certificates for art supplies, which should come in handy. Rebecca A. Jones won a
Pygmalion's Award.
Also Seth Dalton and Rachel Baxter. So thank you very much. And congratulations. I now call on Ann Marie
Parker for the distribution of the ballet certificates and awards.
I'd like to present five awards, and with the ballet dancers, please come on down. Austin, Christopher,
Katie, and Jennifer.
Gwen Aber received the Irina Svetlova Memorial Award as well. However, she has an audition today. Christopher
Langer, I would like to present another Irina Svetlova Award. Thank you. And Catherine Zimmerman received
the Joan Athanus Memorial Award. Thank you.
goes to Jennifer Krueger with the Joan Athens Memorial Award. Thank you all. And now for the
voice competition when award winners, Alice Marie Cox and Jim Cox, who coordinated that event.
Could the voice winners please come forward? We had a wonderful competition this year, and I'm so glad
that you got to hear two of them sing. The winner of the Elkner P. Ralston Award goes to Riley Svatos.
The winner of the Jacobi Merit Award was won by Lauren Walker, a mezzo-soprano from Ball State.
Unfortunately, she's performing there today, so she couldn't be with us. The winner of the Davis Merit
Award goes to Tasha Koontz. Tasha's not here either, okay. The winner of the Gene Branch Memorial Award
goes to Anastasia Talley.
The winner of the Cox and Cook Merit Award goes to Joshua Conyers. The winner of the Donald Felton Memorial
Award goes to Sandra Perriot. And the Chapter Career Award goes to Jeremy Johnson.
Thank you, everyone. And Celine Carter, will you come and do the honors for the Contemporary Dance winners?
Thank you. Hello. Could I please have all the Contemporary Dance awardees join me please?
The first award I'm presenting is the Marina Svetlova Memorial Award, and that goes to Julian Ramos.
The next award is the Shiner Merit Award, and that award is to Joe Musial.
We have another Marina Svetlova Memorial Award to Kate Anderson, and she's in Jerusalem working with
Elizabeth Shea, setting a piece on the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance Ensemble, so she can't be
with us. Also, we have another Svetlova Memorial Award for Lorena Sanchez, who is not present today.
Next is the Joanne Athanas Memorial Award to Laura Gruner.
And finally, the Chapter Career Award to Leila Hazelwood. Thank you all so much. I just wanted to say
that this is Leila's third
top award in a row, and we're so proud of her. And also, in case any of you are wondering, Laura Gruner
and Jennifer Gruner are sisters. So we were a little confused at first. We had two Gruners, but they
are sisters. Now for the literature awards, and so I'll ask Rick and Lois Hall if they will do the honors.
We had 38 entries, four wonderful judges, and they picked the real cream of the crop. And I would ask
that the literature winners come forward, please. That's not all of them, but the others
apparently are not all here. I'll mention the ones that aren't here because they did win nice awards.
The Margaret Kessling Award went to Dallas Nicole Woodburn. The Marjorie Borkenstein Award went to Natalie Lund.
The Margaret Piercy Memorial Award went to Sarah Greb. The Ledford Carter Memorial Award went to Keith
Leonard. And we have our two top winners here. Hibba Christ won the Joanne Athanas Award. Appreciate
that. Great job.
And the chapter award went to Leslie Marie Aguilar. Great poetry. Thank you.
The chair of the instrumental music competition could not be here today, so in her stead I will ask
the instrumental music winners to come forth and I will have the pleasure of passing to them
their certificates and awards. To Lydia Grace Umloff.
Tom Merritt Award and Joanne Athens Memorial Award in Instrumental Music. Congratulations. The Helen
and Linton Caldwell Memorial Award in Instrumental Music to Maria Jose Romero Ramos. She had a three
o'clock recital or something that she had to play in.
The Drews Merit Award in Instrumental Music, Sarah Chen. The Donald Neal Memorial Award in Instrumental
Music, to Mahalo Zvordovich.
The Mira Merritt Award in Instrumental Music to Alexandra Catelyn Mullins. The Barbera Merritt Award
in Instrumental Music to Sing Mison. In case I mispronounced that, I guess it won't be known.
And then the McDonald Merit Award Instrumental Music to Anna Eileen McMelty. Thank you. Okay, with the
drama winners,
The Caldwell Memorial Award in Drama goes to Grant Nezgotsky. Congratulations. How can anyone ruin your
name? The Hagerty Merit Award in Drama to Emily Harp. The Harris-Somalis Merit Award, Mara Leffler.
The Ilkna P. Ralston Memorial Award to Adam Gregory St. John. The Lineth Brackett, Carol Moody, and
Fran Snig Memorial Award, Nathan Robbins. The Laura Shina Memorial Award, Brianna McClellan.
And the Chapter Career Award in Drama to Evelyn Gaynor. Thank you all for coming. And please don't forget
we have a reception following and we'd love to shake some hands with some winners, I think, and congratulate
them in a very personal and direct way. Thank you all for coming.