Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the 39th Annual Showcase of the Arts presented
by the Bloomington Chapter of the National Society of Arts and Letters. We're very pleased this afternoon
to have Carrie Buick Cadillac Pontiac GM Trucks as a sponsor of this event, which spotlights the Young
Artist Awards in the chapter's 2005 competitions in the arts. I think we should all give them a big hand.
I am Murray McGibbon, and I will be your host and the master of ceremonies for the program. Our first
presentation is by Vanessa Brinchley. Vanessa is a second year student in the MFA acting program at
Indiana University, and her IU credits include Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, The
Laramie Project, and The Cherry Orchard. Currently she can be seen in the musical Pal Joey at IU. She
has also appeared elsewhere in The King and I,
Pegamai Heart, The Turn of the Screw, and Pride and Prejudice. Vanessa received her undergraduate degree
summa cum laude in theater and political science from Utah State University, and she was Miss Utah in
the Miss American Pageant, where she won the Burt Parks Talent Award. She's been a recurrent performer
with the Utah Festival Opera Company and the Old Lyric Repertory Company. This summer, she will be a
member of the Acting Company at the Utah Shakespearean Festival.
Her audition piece contains musical selections from Follies and My Fair Lady, and a monologue from The
Lady and the Clarinet. Please welcome Vanessa Brinchley.
major, sorry, and a minor in creative studies in dance and technology, entered the dance world when
he began his studies at the university level. He has performed nationally with various performance groups
and at numerous regional events. Since his transfer to IU in 2002, he has been an active participant
in the contemporary dance program there. Ricardo has also had his video work showcased in several national
exhibitions and has won numerous awards. After graduating,
He would like to experience the professional world for a while before pursuing a Master of Fine Arts
in Dance. He will do a contemporary dance solo, possibly maybe, to the music
Tina is currently a Master of Fine Arts student in the Creative Writing Program at IU. She grew up in
Oklahoma City and served as a Peaks Core Volunteer Librarian in Zimbabwe. Her work is forthcoming in
the Mid-American Review and Quarterly West. After graduation, she plans to teach English in
an inner-resourced community in New York City. Kay will be reading two of her poems this afternoon.
is a French high wire act artist who, in August of 1974, as the World Trade Center towers were just
being completed, strung a wire between both of them and crossed eight times. Oh, Philippe Petit, you
skyscraper walker, pulling your wire first between bridges.
as if to deny the crossing its length, its fill. Only you with your wire rope stretched taut, your string
between twin towers, was it a childhood game to you? On each end, a tower not yet taut, two rusty jagged
lips of an old tin, your length of yarn. What did they say to each other on that windy August?
What vibration was afoot? But I know it wasn't like that. There were the 200 kilos of cable to sneak
to the 100th floor, two Cavaletti wires, block and tackles, your neatly ironed costume. Hiding under
tarps in the stairwell, you waited until the night guard passed.
Two people climbed the south tower. Comrades, you called them, though there was no war on. They only
waited with a bow and arrow. The first shot, an arrow with a fishing line tail, you're unable to find
in the dark. Stripping down, you buzz the roof like a child pretending flight until the line hooks your
right shoulder.
The rigging, the smile of the catenary curve tight-lipped for your crossing. You drop your shirt, which
tumbles through the air shaft to your friend's gasp. Your first step, your long, balancing pole.
You walk, then kneel, then lie down, face up to the overcast big top. You cross again, cross eight times,
diverting the police with each pivot. The pictures expose you laughing. Your wind-topped sandy mane,
your black slacks flagging. From below, you are a mourning dress, inverted on a clothesline, rising
up to meet the dead.
From above, no one knows. To a plane, you could be a quarter note, a minor key of ego, a staff over
the shifting grid of the city. Later, you'll say, your lungs were full of ecstasy instead of oxygen.
For now, you call out to the god of the balancing pole, of the feet, of the void, oh, Philippe,
Philippe Petit, is anyone's name large enough? The second poem I'll be reading was inspired while visiting
the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Southern California. And at the time, I was reading about carnival festivities
in the Caribbean.
and how, like our modern day Mardi Gras, they served as a sort of steam valve where people who were
often oppressed by their lives were allowed to go crazy for a little while in order to maintain calm
the rest of the year. Visiting the Kelp Forest exhibit,
The brochure pumps out its propaganda like the tank's wave machine vital for fish life. More than 100-plus
species are volunteers arrived in the raw seawater settled on the rock work. Behind three-story acrylic,
swaying Halloween orange kelp banners the water. No roots, stems, flowers, leaves.
Drying above, it is the drowned remains of Carnaval, unlooped, fallen, and trampled in the streets.
Schools of new sardines indifferently circle the span of tank lights like homeless around trash can
fires. Kelp blades, ribs, ridges ripple above the corrugations of shanty shelters. A diver drops in
from the right,
his second skin as silvery as the tunas. He cleans the tank. His attachments catching surges of almost
mechanized waves, his buoyancy regulator, his bristle-mouthed vacuum. The kelp forest exhibit grows
up to six inches a day. For hundreds of years, people have gathered kelp and its kin for fertilizer,
chemicals, food.
He must hear only his breath, amplified, removed from him, bubbling up a machine onto himself. The senoritas,
a brief flash of scaly darts, nibble at his numb neoprenees. Thank you.
Charlene Young, a native of Taiwan, is pursuing doctoral studies in piano at the Indian University School
of Music under the direction of Evelyn Brancardt. She has also worked with Seymour Lipkin, Robert Levine,
Arnaldo Cohen, and Susan Starr. After winning an IU concerto competition, she performed Beethoven's
second piano concerto with the IU Concert Orchestra.
More recently, she won the Camerata Orchestra Concerto Competition and will be playing the Prokofiev
Third Piano Concerto with it. She has also received second prize and the Mary Winston Small Memorial
Piano Award at the 2004 WAMSO Young Artist Competition in Minnesota and first prize at the Kingsville
International Isabelle Schianti Competition. A chamber musician as well as a soloist, she has performed
at the Sarasota Chamber Music Festival
and most recently with the esteemed violinist Ikhwan B. Today she will be playing Chasse-Neige by Franz
Liszt. There's a small change from your printed program.
After receiving a BFA in musical theatre performance from Western Michigan University, Anjanette Armstrong
began a career in New York City. A few of her favourite theatre credits include Eve in Children of Eden,
The Baker's Wife in Into the Woods, Janet in The Rocky Horror Show, Rosaline in Love's Labour's Lost
and Amy in Company. She also appeared in the NBC series Ed as the character Gretchen Huber.
She now resides in Bloomington with her husband John, who is an MFA student in the theater and drama
department at IU, as well as their eight-month-old son Jack. She will be performing selections from
Tartuffe, the role of Doreen, and Business Lunch at the Russian Tea Room, the role of Melissa.
Come here, you two, stop fussing and be quiet. We're going to have a little armistice. Now, weren't
you silly to get so overheated? Aren't you a simpleton to have lost your head? You're both great fools.
Her sole desire, Valere, is to be yours in marriage. To that I'll swear. He loves you only and wants
no wife but you, Marianne. On that, I'll stake my life.
Give each other your hands, you two. Yours first. And now a hand from you there. A perfect fit. You'll
suit each other better than you'll admit. I tell you, mothers are completely mad. Let's table that discussion
for the present. Your father has a plan which must be stopped. We'll use all manner of means and all it
Oh, as often as necessary, the day on which you have agreed to marry, you'll thus gain time, and time
will turn the trick. Sometimes, for instance, you'll be taken sick, and that will seem good reason for
delay, or some bad omen will make you change the day. You'll dream of muddy water,
as a dead man's hers, or break a looking glass. If all else fails, no man can marry you unless you take
his ring and say I do. But now, let's separate. If they should find us talking here, our plot might
be divine. Go to your friends, tell them what's occurred, and have them urge her father to keep his
word. Meanwhile, we'll stir her brother into action, and get Elmire as well to join our faction. Goodbye.
Oh, lovers! Lovers!
are never still. Be off now. No time to chat. You, leave by this door. You, leave by that. Christopher?
All of us at Zero Facts, we're interested in the old fashioned kind of movie making, where the characters
have dialogue, and thoughts, and emotions. You know, like four weddings and a funeral.
writers. I produced Sleezerama for the television last year. See it? It got great numbers. But it was
about a serial killer who becomes president, who finds his humanity only after he gets AIDS and dies.
We loved it. But we have heard Wilson actually wrote the first script. But that word people didn't like
it, so we had to have Bubba
and then come in and rewrite every single word. Well, you know, Landon understood. He thought we wanted
something serious, but we didn't. She brings a caviar scene. I have a meeting with Nora Ephron in 15
minutes. We want Nora to write a movie for Meg Ryan, where Meg's a widow who misses her husband desperately.
They have this really special kind of relationship. And then this man hears her talking on the radio,
really moved by what she says he wants to contact her with. But the switch is, it's her husband who
hears her on the radio. She's not a widow at all. He disappeared at sea just like Julia Roberts did
in, whatchamacallit, and then he shows up and he kills her. It's sort of like Sweet Listen Seattle meets
Psycho, you know?
Christopher Noctrab is pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Ballet at Indiana University with an outside
field in comparative literature. He trained originally with his mother in his native New York. During
his three years with the IU Ballet Theater, he's been featured in The Nutcracker, The Sleeping Beauty
Act III, Serenade, Glassworks, and Viva Vivaldi. Most recently, he appeared in the lead role of the
Jester in IU Ballet Theater's world premiere of Cinderella.
Christopher's many honors include the Kenneth C. Whittner Award for Ballet Excellence, the Music Dean's
Scholarship, and Mark Diamond's Award for Best Choreography. He will be dancing the male variation from
the pas de deux of Leo de Libre's Sylvia as choreographed by George Balanchine.
Prano Elizabeth Marshall is working towards a master's degree in music performance at IU and studies
with James MacDonald. A native of Maine, she graduated from the University of Southern Maine with a
Bachelor of Music Education. She has sung with the Portland Symphony, the Bangor Symphony, the Southern
Maine Symphony, and the Portland Opera Repertory Theater, including its summer program, Maine's Emerging
Artists, in 2002. Among her awards are the Louise B. Mayer Vocal Prize,
and the Emily K. Rand Award in Voice. She will be singing an aria from Rossini's La Pietra Peragone.
briefly so that you can get up and stretch and move about if you'd like to use the restrooms. These
are on the other side of the hall from the door through which you entered. I've been asked to ask you
to please be back in your seats in seven minutes time. We're going to continue our program ladies and
gentlemen with Emily Doak.
Emily is an MFA student in the creative writing program at IU, but previously she studied ballet at
the School of American Ballet and the North Carolina School of the Arts and Film at New York University's
Tisch School of the Arts. It was at NYU that she found her way into fiction writing through screenplays.
Her work has been recognized in a number of fiction contests. In 2003, she was a finalist in the competition
for the Katherine Ann Porter Prize for fiction of Nimrod International.
She was runner-up in the competition for Meridian's 2004 Editors' Prize for Fiction. In 2004, she also
received honorable mention in Hunger Mountain's Howard Frank Mosher Short Story Contest and was runner-up
in the BOM Magazine Fiction Contest. Her short stories are forthcoming in the journals Inkwell and Isotope.
Today, she will read an excerpt from the opening chapter of her novel, The Rock Hound's Daughter.
So this is from the beginning of my novel, The Rockhound's Daughter. Chapter 1, Old Yellow. I had my
mom's bird watching binoculars and was up on the fence, my sneakers gripping the bottom rung, my hips
leaning into the splintery top rail. I was watching the sky through the magnifying glasses, clear and
blue, big white cumulus, waiting to see a bird above the scrappy slash pines. Mom had told me often
enough that this wasn't the way you did it.
that you had to use your senses, listen and look, and bring up the binoculars only when you had a target
on the bird. The phone was ringing across the backfield. Then it fell quiet, heavy, hot, stringed bugs,
no breeze. Mom inside must have answered. I let go of the top rail and leaned over at the most precarious
angle I could till it felt like my feet needed to fly up behind me. I stayed balanced there on my hip bones
with the arched back of a swan dive. Holding the binoculars with one hand, my free arm I outstretched
like a wing and swung my head in arcs of magnified blue, swiftly soaring through patches of white. My
head felt light, and maybe, just maybe, I was not Penny Creed at all, but I was the bird. Penny, my
mother's voice soaring up to me in blue and white and the sharp sun to my side so I was flying north. Penny,
My name rippling through the heat up to me. Penelope, get in here now. I jumped off the fence, fell
far and straight and human to the dirt, and held onto the binoculars so they wouldn't thump against
my flat chest as I ran the backfield to our house, tall grasses itching my shins. We lived outside of
town towards Lloyd, but still inside the Leon County line, down a series of red clay roads that melted
to rivers when it rained.
My father was a geologist and found the property through his stream bed research. Our house sat in the
middle of an oxbow in a real meandering stream. It winded its way from Lake Miccosukee to the Gulf and
had no official name, but changed as often as street signs as it passed through different counties and
towns, Miccosukee Creek to Wasissa River to St. Mark's Estuary. At our house, the stretch of water had
no name, and so we called it Creed Oxbow.
It wrapped around the perimeter of our house and fields in a wide horseshoe that only became apparent
when walking the whole thing out on foot and arriving on either end back at the long dirt driveway to
our house. The ends pinched up close to each other there, and then each turned away in a switchback,
wiggling its course into the neighbor's property. My mom called our house Old Yellow, but it was painted
white now. Paul, my big brother,
had to spend his spring break painting it as punishment for something completely forgettable when he
did something even worse, he took off. He took off with the backside of the house still its old yellow,
the two sides completely done and the front trying to dry, wet with multiple coats of white. The next
day was to be perfect weather for painting, but Paul up and left. When I caught him fully dressed in
the middle of the night, I begged him not to go.
Oh, you'll see someday, he told me. What's so bad with it here, I asked, grabbing hold of his leg.
Let go, he shook me off and whispered past mom and dad's bedroom. You're just a kid. You can't see at
all. Yes, I can, I said to his back as he walked downstairs. But I was only eight then. Yes, I can,
he mocked me when we got to the back door. Paul, shh. Maybe he sensed I was upset.
because he leaned over and tousled my hair kind of sweetly. But then he straightened back up and shouted
to the empty kitchen, this place sucks. He slammed the back door. None of the outside lights were on,
so in two strides he disappeared in the night that didn't have a moon. I could hear mom's feet creak
the wood floor beside their bed upstairs, but she didn't move quick enough to have heard Paul. She was
unsure why she was awake. I waited by the back door
curling my toes on the linoleum, squishing my nose at the fresh paint smell that got slammed inside
when Paul left. Penny, what are you doing out of bed? Mom said when she finally scraped her slippers
downstairs and realized I was in the kitchen. I went to the window and couldn't see Paul. I thought
I heard something, I said. I told her I thought it was a raccoon. But she said, no, I thought I heard
a door. That was me. I opened the back door to demonstrate. I opened it to see.
Then I started acting real sleepy. You know, to see if there was a raccoon out there, I did a sort of
headbutt nuzzle past her legs and staggered upstairs before she could say anymore. I knew she would
follow to tuck me in tight again. That night, Paul stole our neighbor's credit cards. He let himself
in through old Mr. McDaniel's always unlocked front door. He crept up the stairs to the master bedroom
and opened the old man's top dresser drawer.
Mr. McDaniel slept all the while in the guest room down the hall, where he made his bed after his wife's
death some decade ago. In that lonely decade, Mr. McDaniel took to answering every piece of mail that
was delivered, including credit card offers. His dresser drawer brimmed full of approved yet unused
credit cards. All Paul did was dip his hand in that night, and he came out with a fistful. It must have
been overwhelming for Paul,
Because my father did not believe in credit cards. They weren't real money. They were nothing. Our household
worked solely with businesses that still accepted personal checks drawn directly from our bank accounts.
So Paul, with his fist full of fake money, must have felt defiant as he popped my parents' station wagon,
new blue, into neutral and pushed it out to the road before he cranked it. Or at least I waited up that
night as long as I could, tucked in so tight I couldn't turn over.
waiting to hear him take the car. But then again, maybe I did fall asleep, and he started it up right
there in the carport, because when I woke up, it was to a shriek downstairs, exclaiming that new blue
was gone, and it was full morning, and I had untucked myself, and was lying uncovered on my belly. It
was as if I could see through the solid floor that morning, to where my father, like every day at 8.17 a.m.,
not changing for spring break,
would have had his briefcase in one hand and paper lunch sack in the other. Both his hands full, Mom
would have opened the door. That morning, he dropped his lunch and stood paralyzed with the bright yellow
backside of his house looming above him, because what he saw when he looked past the deck was nothing.
The carport was empty.
Sarah Wilkins graduated from IU in December 2004 with degrees in dance performance and English. In the
summer of 2003, she trained for several months in New York City, working mostly at the Dance Space Center.
She spent the summer of 2004 training at the American Dance Festival, where she had the honor of performing
the repertory of John Jaspers and Ming Yang. This coming May, she will be in China for two weeks, where
she will assist in teaching and perform the choreography.
Then in July, she will be relocating to New York City to pursue a career as a contemporary
dancer, choreographer, and artist. For us this afternoon, she will dance a piece entitled Unfold,
choreographed to music of J.C. Lowe and Dredge.
Elizabeth Falconberry, who hails from Bermuda, is a sophomore at Indiana University working on a double
major in musical theater and English. At IU she's had roles in Sweet Charity and Batboy, and she's currently
appearing in Pal Joey. Her non-IU credits include Chicago, High Society, and Les Miserables. She will
spend this coming summer in Daytona Beach, Florida, performing with the Seaside Musical Theater. Her
audition piece offers musical selections from falsettos
and Kiss Me Kate and the monologue from Where's My Money?
For more at Indiana University, Michelle Mohawold is pursuing a BS in ballet performance with an outside
field in English literature. Before joining the IU Ballet Theater, she trained with the Continental
Ballet Company in her native Minnesota, and she has attended such nationally recognized summer programs
as the American Ballet Theater in New York. During her two years with the IU Ballet Theater, Michelle
has performed in Serenade, Glassworks, Viva Vivaldi, The Nutcracker, and Cinderella.
Today she will dance a variation from the pas de deux of Leo Dalib's Sylvia as choreographed by George
Balanchine.
Yumiko Nishio-Yalkai is currently in her first year of work on a performer diploma at the School of
Music at Indiana University, where she is studying percussion with Antony Sarone and timpani with Gerald
Carlos. Born in Kochi, Japan, she began to play percussion in the high school band when she was 15 years
old. As a high school and university student, she performed as a guest with the orchestra ensemble Kanazawa,
the Shikoku Philharmonic Orchestra,
and the Kochi Friday Wind Ensemble. She also played a graduation concert at Kurashiki Sakuyu University
and a new musician concert in Kochi in 2003. In 2004, she received the H.S. Klaw Scholarship and the
Avedis Ziljian Percussion Scholarship. She will perform marimba pieces by Eric Semet and Ludwig Albert
and will be accompanied by Jeff Franta.
Fantilan, a first-year MFA student in the Department of Theatre and Drama at Indiana University, will
represent the Bloomington Chapter at the National NSAL Drama Competition in May in Honolulu. Born and
raised in Salt Lake City, he discovered theatre in the ninth grade and never turned back. Before coming
to IU, he received a BFA in acting from Utah State University, and he worked at many professional theatres
in Utah, including the Utah Festival Opera, the old Lyric Repertory Company, the Hale Center Theatre,
the Pioneer Theatre Company, and the Grand Theatre. Among his credits at IU are roles in Dracula, Happy
Birthday, Wanda June, and the recent Scarlet Letter. He is also a proud member of the Golden
Key International Honor Society and received first place in its international acting competition. This
coming summer, Eric will be working with the Utah Shakespearean Festival. Today, he will offer us selections
from Sheridan's The Rivals, The Role of Lord Falkland,
and Peter Schaffer's Amadeus, the role of Amadeus. Well, sir. But you were saying that Miss Melville
has been so exceedingly well. What then? She has been merry and gay, I suppose. Always in spirits, eh?
By my soul.
There is an innate levity in woman that nothing can overcome. What? Happy? And I away? Why, Jack, have
I been the joy and spirit of the company? Have I been lively and entertaining? Have I been full of wit
and humor? Well, I'll contain myself, perhaps as you say, for form's sake. I'm not sorry that she has
been happy. No, no, I am glad of that.
But she has been dancing too, I doubt not. Now, disappointment on her! Defend this, Jack! Why don't
you defend this? Country dances, jigs, and reels? A minuet I could have forgiven. I should not have
minded that. I say I should not have regarded a minuet, but country dances. Soons! Had she made one
in a cotillion, I believe I could have forgiven even that.
to be monkey-led for a night, to run the gauntlet through a string of amorous, palming puppies, to show
paces like a managed filly. O Jack, there never can be but one man in the world whom a truly delicate
and modest woman ought to pair with in the country dance, and even then the rest of the couple should
be her great uncles and aunts. If there be but one vicious mind in the set, it will spread like a contagion,
The action of their pulse beats to the lascivious movements of the jig. Their quivering warm breath
sighs impregnate the air. The atmosphere becomes electrical to love, and each amorous fog darts through
every link of the chain. I must leave you. I own. I am somewhat flurried, and you, you, you confounded
booby, have perceived. Damn your news!
about real people, Baron. And I want to set it in a real place. A boudoir. Because that, to me, is the
most exciting place on Earth. Underclothes on the floor, sheets still warm from a woman's body, even
a piss pot brimming under the bed. I want life, Baron, not boring legends. I'm sick of all your elevated
themes. Elevated, elevated. The only thing I mentioned, elevate, is his doodle.
Excuse the language, Baron, but really, if you are honest, each one of you, which of you isn't more
at home with his hairdresser than Hercules? Or Horatius? Or your stupid Danaius come to that? Or mine?
Mine, Idomeneo, King of Crete, all these anguished antiques? They're all bores. Bores, bores! All serious
operas written this century are boring.
What a perfect quartet. I'd love to write it, this second of time, this, now as you are. Herr Prefect
thinking, impertinent Mozart, I must speak to the emperor at once. Herr Chamberlain thinking,
ignorant Mozart, debasing opera with his vulgarity. Herr court composer thinking, German Mozart, what
can he finally know about opera? And Mozart himself in the middle thinking,
nice fellow. Why do they all disapprove of me? That's why opera is important, because it's realer than
any play. The dramatic poet would have to put each line down one after another to make us hear everything.
The composer can put them all down at once and still make us hear every word. Astonishing device, a
vocal quartet. I tell you, I want to write a finale lasting half an hour. A quartet becoming a quintet,
A sextet, a septet, on and on, wider and wider, all sounds multiplying and rising together and then
together becoming a sound entirely new. I bet that's how God hears the world. Millions of sounds ascending
at once, rising and mixing in his ears to become an unending music unimaginable to us. That's our job.
That's our job, we composers, to combine the inner minds of him and him and him and her and her, thoughts
of chambermaids and court composers, and turn the audience into God. I'm sorry. I talk nonsense all
day long. It's incurable, Astanzee. My tongue is stupid.
I'm sure we wish him well in Honolulu. Jinhwan Beun is working toward a Master of Music degree in Vocal
Performance at IU. He received a Bachelor of Music from Seoul National University of Music and Career
and a Performer Diploma from Indiana University. In addition, he has completed the St. Louis Opera Young
Artist Program. While at IU, Jinhwan has appeared in productions of Lucia de la Mamua, La Traviata, Falstaff,
and most recently La Boheme. He has also sung roles with the Indianapolis Opera and the Nashville Opera,
and he's been engaged by the Florida Grand Opera for 2005-2006 to perform main stage roles and to cover
others. Jin Hwan has received a number of honors. He has been a finalist in the Austin Lyric
Opera Competition, and a semi-finalist in the Washington International Competition, won the Primavera
Award in the Bel Canto Competition 2004, and took the top prize
in the IU travel grant competition this spring. Today he will sing an aria from Puccini's La Boheme.
This concludes our performances. I'm always reminded at this time of year what a wonderful place Bloomington
is to live. I would now like to introduce David Albright, President of the Bloomington Chapter of NSAL,
who will preside over the remainder of the program, and I wish you all a very good afternoon.
Thank you, Murray. First of all, I would like to express my
deepest appreciation to Murray for a job well done. Let's give him a big round of applause. I also want
to thank our sponsor for this year's showcase, Curry Buick Cadillac Pontiac GM truck. We'd hope to have
Kerry Curry, the owner of
with us today, but he had to be out of town. However, he is with us in spirit. This event would have
been impossible without the dedication and hard work of Tina Jurgensen, who is our competition coordinator,
and the area chairs and co-chairs who ran the competitions that produced
44 award winners that we're honoring today. I want to pay tribute to them by discipline as we hand out
the awards. Let's begin with the visual arts. There are three co-chairs, Kathy Koronek, Lydia Finkelstein,
and Jane Otten. And Kathy will be presenting the awards
for this area today. Thank you, David. As I call your names, would the visual arts winners please come
up? Ricardo Alvarez, Jared Landberg, Molly Mitchell, Hun Jun Chun, Ann Potter,
Melanie Lawrence, David T. Hannon, and Ollie Brareton. I hope all of you will go down and see the work
in the gallery of these artists and others. They were a wonderful show this year. To Ricardo Alvarez
for the Alan K. Kahn Memorial Award and the Pygmalion Merit Award.
Jared Landberg receives the Carter and Schnicki Merit Award. Oh, okay. Okay. To Molly Mitchell for her
twist tie coat.
The Grace Dyer Memorial Award and the Klein Merit Award. Thank you very much. For Hong Jun Jun, and
I hope I pronounced, I tried. The Chris Khan Merit Award. Thank you very much.
Also, I forgot to mention that Ricardo Alvarez also received the Pygmalion Merit Award, and Melanie
Lawrence received another Pygmalion Merit Award. I forgot to include those. Sorry. To Ann Potter, for
her Beatrice, the Alma Eichermann Memorial Award.
Okay, now Melanie Laurence for the Neuroprimo Merit Award and the Pygmalion Merit Award for her conversation.
And for the Rosemary Frazier Merit Award, David Hannon for his work between the fields.
And our top winner for the Career Chapter Award is Oli Brereton for his video Sign of the Times.
Congratulations. Congratulations to all the winners and I'd like to thank Lydia Fechelstein, Jane Otten,
Beth Molnar,
Maya Michelson, Rachel Greenhoe, and Bob Appelman for all their help in setting up this show and for
getting the judges. And the judges were Rudy Pizzotti, Mary Hambly, and Nan Brewer. Thank you very much.
Our dance chairs were Joanne Athanas and Mary Stroh. And Mary will be presenting the awards today.
Thank you. This was a groundbreaking year for dance and then NSAL competitions. For the first time,
we held two competitions. One was in ballet, one was in contemporary dance. The ballet competition was
held the end of January in the ballet studios at the IU School of Music. And a week later, the contemporary
competition was held in the IU School of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation Dance Studio.
Judges for the ballet competition were Jane Hachia Weiner from the Butler Academy of Dance, Bruce Simpson
from the Louisville Ballet, Michael Tevlin from the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. And judges for
the contemporary competition were Larry Attaway from the Butler Academy of Dance, Elizabeth Monnier
from Fort Wayne Dance Collective, Patty Willie from the Terre Haute Dance Academy.
Many people assisted with the planning and running of both competitions, and in particular, I would
like to thank Violette Verde, Glenda Lucina, my co-chair, Joanne Athanas, who couldn't be here today,
Elizabeth Shea, Laura Poole, Mike Lucas, and David Albright. Now, if the dancers would please come forward,
ballet and contemporary dancers.
Yeah. And unfortunately, all of them couldn't be here today. Let me just start with the Ballet Awards.
First of all, to Lauren Collier went the Stroh Chapter Award. And unfortunately, Lauren had to go to
a rehearsal.
as well as Claire Blatz, who won the Athanas Organ Merit Award. She is at rehearsal as well.
And Erin Jin, who won the Verdi Chapter Award. All three of them are rehearsing for a choreographic
showcase later this week. Sarah Durham, is she here? Yes, good. The Barbera Merit Award for Ballad.
And the Chapter Award went to Christopher Nochtrab. And the Lila and Stephen Hughes Merit Award went
to Michelle Mahowald. In Contemporary Dance,
uh... the stro shea merit award went to molly burkett the athanas merit award went to andrea martin
uh... the shiner merit award went to rachel belati and unfortunately rachel couldn't be here
to accept this. The Roy Battenhouse Memorial Award went to Ricardo Alvarez. And finally, the Jane Fox
Merit and Chapter Award in Contemporary Dance went to Sarah Wilkins.
to all of you. Mera Norris was the chair of our drama competition and she will be presenting those awards.
Drama winners, on stage. As they are coming up, I want to tell you that we have our audience today
who won the national competition several years ago in music as a representative of the Indiana chapter.
Michael Bowell, who is the father of one of our winners today. Michael Bowell, Michael.
But we have a saying, dying is easy, comedy is hard. And it is hard. It is hard in the context of a
complete play in which you have three acts in which to establish the comic situation, set up the comic
characters and dialogue. It is exceedingly difficult when you have to do that in five minutes. Without
the context of the play,
and create two contrasting comic characters. These winners today not only accepted that hard challenge,
but excelled. And we're very proud of the winners of this competition. And please greet them. The winner
of the Borgenstein Memorial Award is Jessica Lynn Rothert.
of the Collins-Jakins-Coner Merit Award is John Robert Armstrong. The winner of the Hersamalas Merit
Award is Alexander Ross Meisner. Vanessa Ballem Brinchley.
is the winner of the Lyneth Brockett Carol Moody Franz Nigg Memorial Award. And of course she's a double
winner in both musical theater and in drama. Anjanette Hall Armstrong is also a double winner in musical
theater and drama.
And she is the recipient of a Laura Schneider Memorial Award. And yes, they are a pair. They are our
third drama couple. And the one who will come visit us in Hawaii in May in the national competition
The winner of our Mrs. Randall Wells Memorial Award, Eric Ventura.
Elizabeth Albright serves as chair of the Literature Committee and she will present the awards in that
area. Dying is easy. Following Marilyn Norris on stage is hard. Will all the literature winners please come up?
Wonderful. We had 37 literature entries this year, and the judges felt that they were a wonderful, wonderful
group. The judges were Dorian Gossie, Mary McGann, and Roger Finxton. And I'm delighted today to present
these awards. Our first winner is 15 years old. And this is a special award because we don't really
expect him to compete with people in the MFA program at IU.
And so after the judging was done, I asked the judges, we had several high school students in the competition
and they picked out Carson Day as a person whose poetry was excellent for a high school student and
felt that he needed this high school encouragement award. Carson?
Misty Lee Harper is a two-time winner in our competitions. And the last time she won, she went to the
national competition and won second place in what, $6,000 or something? So she was a very happy winner.
This year, she won the Will H. Hayes Jr. Memorial Award for her poetry. Misty. And Anne Elizabeth Timberlake
has won the O'Mara Wilson Merit Award, Anne.
Daniel Castro has won the Albright-Peercy-Drews Merit Award. Kay Keener, whose first name is Kay without
a period, has won the Roy Battenhouse Memorial Award in Literature.
And our top award, the Chapter Per Award, goes to Emily Elizabeth Doak this year. And by the way, her
novel is finished, and she's going to use this as incentive to polish it this summer. Emily. Congratulations
to all of our winners.
Our music co-chairs, and boy did they have a long, long competition, were Stan and Hillary Hamilton.
And Hillary will present the awards. Hello, musicians.
Allison, I guess our performers didn't come. Please come. Did our performers stay? Oh, yes. My husband
Stan and I were initiated into coordinating the music competition this year with the wonderful help
of Dee Lane, David and Ruth Albright, and Tina Jernigan. We had an exciting two-day competition with
49 competitors.
You read in the detailed, wonderful newsletter by Ruth Albright about our superb judges. They were David
Canfield, composer, David Zube, professor of composition, Fred Fox, Julia Copeland, Brandsby, Catherine
Lucas, Sheiko Nariki, Marion Kajaka-Bates, George Caller, Roger Havernack, and Roy Samuelson.
We also had wonderful help with room management from Ruth and Jim Witten, Ruth and David Albright, and
Tina Jernigan. And you read about our sandwiches. I know you're jealous. You've already experienced
the lovely voice of Elizabeth Marshall, who had to leave due to being in the University Singers this
afternoon. She won the Caldwell Merit Award. Another winner this afternoon was Jamie and
Barton, who also was singing with the University Singers. And she won the Donald Felton Memorial Award.
So both of those people have already received their certificate. Allison Wonderland-Basich has been
awarded the Stravolopoulos Chapter Member Merit Award.
Xia Yuxin has been awarded the Hatfield Jacoby Merritt Award in Music, and this is a violinist who is
not here today. Benjamin Boren won the Kornick Tatlock McDonald Merritt Award, and Benjamin is a pianist
who is not here today. Chai-Lin Yang won the Margaret Mueller White Memorial Award
in piano. Umiko Nishioka won the Ralston Merit Award for the Most Outstanding Instrumentalist. And Yuen Huan Yun
won the chapter career award for the most outstanding vocalist. Last but by no means least, George Penny
was our musical theater chair and he will present those awards.
While the winners approach, we had a very exciting contest this year with 22 participants. The judges
were Tony-nominated and Emmy winners, Jonathan Vanderkhoff and Jim Moore, and our third judge was Vince
Leota from the IU Opera Theater. On with the winners. The winner of the Carl Jernigan Award on Jeanette
Hall Armstrong.
The Scott Burgess Jones Tribute Award goes to Thomas Matthew Hirschner, who unfortunately is not here
today. The Albright Bachman Merit Award goes to Amy Elise Linden. The Caldwell Merit Award, Vanessa
Balem Brinchley.
And finally, the Chapter Career Award, Rebecca Falconberry. A hearty congratulations to all of our winners.
That concludes our formal program. I want to thank you all for coming, and I want to invite you to join us
downstairs in the lobby for a reception. Anne Call and her helpers have put out a nice spread for everybody.
And I also would like to ask you to be sure and go into the gallery to see the exhibition, which includes
the top award winners. One final thing, may I ask the award winners
together briefly up here for a group picture and to take care of one minor administrative matter. Thank
you all and I hope we see you again next year.