Artifact Intelligence

Students are using a rich array of original artifacts in their studies at Bryn Mawr

By Yi Gao                                                      

Learning with primary source materials is hot at Bryn Mawr College.

Working with authentic artifacts, rare books or archival documents fascinates students and generates interesting ideas. In recent years, the traditional, teach-centered classroom has become dynamic laboratory in which students can physically handle original materials.

Japanese prints, Quaker historical documents, pottery, sculpture and rare photographs are just a few of the items now available to students.

“Though professors have used primary sources in teaching for decades, it’s much more popular over the past four or five years,” said Marianne Weldon, collections manager of Bryn Mawr Special Collections. According to Weldon, special collections librarians have spent considerable time and energy improving the visibility and accessibility of the College’s collections and building collaborations with teaching faculty across multiple disciplines.

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This semester, Erin Schoneveld, Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Haverford College taught her class Ukiyo-e: The Art of Japanese Print with Bryn Mawr’s collection of Japanese woodblock prints. Weldon assisted with her classes several times. Weldon said Professor Schoneveld thinks incorporating actual primary materials into teaching “fuels lively discussion and cultivates critical thinking.”

Bi-Co (Bryn Mawr College and Haverford College) faculty and students benefit from special collections of both colleges. Bryn Mawr’s special collections are more diverse and broad while Haverford is especially renowned for its Quaker collections and photograph collections.

Xingya Wang, a Bryn Mawr College senior student majoring French, said she took a war photography class at Haverford and had the opportunity to see some precious photographs of American Civil War.

“Their collection of war photographs is fantastic! Everyone was very excited! And it’s good that we (Bi-Co) share resources,” said Wang.

“Yes, I think our learning is more practical and interesting than when I was a freshman,” said Wang.

Many classes engage students with primary sources. On the other hand, students more actively use the college’s collections to do research. There are two important elements in the development of this trend.

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The first one is the digitization of special collections.

According to Eric Pumroy, Seymour Adelman Head of Special Collections at Bryn Mawr College, big libraries and institutions have been digitized their collections since the late 1980s.

Bryn Mawr College’s Special Collections, since it is a small institution with less funds, started establishing digital records of collections in the late 1990s. However, not until 2008 did Bryn Mawr begin making special collections accessible on the Internet to the public.

“It was a complicated work,” said Pumroy. First, Special Collections bought the collections management software called Embark. Second, librarians migrated the existing data to the new system. Then they cataloged the rest of the collections. Besides, collaborating with Swarthmore College and Haverford College, they established TriArte, a special database of 33,500 art and artifacts from Tri-Co.

For digitizing art and artifacts, librarians should not only enter information but also upload high-quality images. Pumroy said for some “special” three-dimensional objects, they need to produce 360-degree pictures.

No. 4

Pumroy said several digitization projects are still going on but 90 percent of the work has been done. Undoubtedly, the acceleration of mass digitization highly improves the availability and visibility of special collections. Faculty and students can search online, find the artifacts needed, send a request and get the objects to analyze in person.

Bryn Mawr College’s encouragement of experiential learning is the other major element. This change can be seen within the History of Art Department.

“I am happy to see that more art history professors incorporate practical learning” said Poppy Pu, a senior student majoring in art history. She said that when she was a freshman, she really wanted to take art history classes at University of Pennsylvania since some of them are taught in Penn Museum. “Though at that time in some classes we could saw authentic objects, we were rarely asked to do an independent research on the objects or to produce an exhibition” said Pu.

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Things changed over the past three years. In Fall 2015, Bryn Mawr announced a new Museum Studies Program which allows students to gain practical hands-on experience in Bryn Mawr Special Collections or even in museums in Philadelphia. Courses such as The Curator in the Museum and Contemporary Art in Exhibition provide students a full experience with primary sources. Thanks to the pilot program, every semester Bryn Mawr has several student-curated exhibitions on view in the Rare Book Room of Special Collections.

Pu said many upper-class art history major students use special collections to do their own research that is part of their theses. “It is amazing! Working with primary sources helps our studies a lot and makes them much more interesting,” she said. “I am a bit jealous of the freshmen. They can get this experience in their first year.”

Guide: All items are from the Bryn Mawr collections.

Item 1. Color woodblock by Katsushika Hokusai. Title: The Great Wave, from the series 36 views of Mount Fuji.

Item 2. Artist: Utagawa Kunisasa (1786-1864) Title: View of Hodogoya, from the series 53 Stations of the Tokaido Road, ca. 1838.

Item 3. Polychrome Glass Aryballos (Oil Flask), Greece/East Mediterranean, 6th Century BCE.

Item 4. Bronze Bust of Napoleon. Artist: Achille Collas, (1795-1859) after Antoine-Denis Chaudet, ca. 1838-1859.

Item 5. Portrait of M. Carey Thomas, President of Bryn Mawr by Frank C. Benning (1893-1983), 20th century.

 

The Smuggled Dumplings Caper

How a Bryn Mawr student gets food from her home in China

Caught by Customs

By Yuqi Zha

On her long flight from China to the United States, Alice Tang, a rising senior at Bryn Mawr College, had a nightmare.

In her dream, she was walking past the Customs Check at the JFK International Airport, New York, with a heavy 28-inch piece of luggage.

Her face was covered with a pair of dark purple sunglasses and a cotton mask. Her strange appearance drew the attention of the officer at the U.S. Customs.

Tang got nervous and walked faster. Despite praying thousands of times in her heart, what she tried to avoid finally happened—a customs officer approached her and asked her to stop.

“Excuse me Miss, passport please,” said the officer.

Tang handed her passport over.  The sweat in her hand made it wet.

“What’s in your luggage?” The officer looked at her bag with suspicion.

“Just…clothes, cosmetics and books,” Tang almost shouted, trying to cover her fear, “nothing special!”

“I would like to inspect your luggage. Follow me please,” said the officer.

As the officer was going to take the luggage from her hand, Tang took her luggage and ran with all her strength towards the exit. But, she could not escape.

Ten seconds later, she was dragged into the most horrible place in the U.S. for international students and immigrants, the so-called “dark room”—the reception room of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The travelers on the same flight with Tang looked at her sympathetically while she was screaming, “No! You can’t take the spirit of home away from me!”

This was how Tang described her nightmare to her friend, Amber Lin, as the two stepped off the plane.

It was the seventh time Tang had flown from China to the U.S., returning from her home to the college after vacations. Like in her dream, her luggage was loaded with food from home.

“You still have a chance to throw them away after you get your luggage but before you enter the Customs Check. I can help you with that,” said Lin,  also a rising senior at Bryn Mawr College and the best friend of Tang, who always traveled with Tang.

“No way!” refused Tang without a doubt, “That dream was stupid! Who will wear a pair of sunglasses and a mask? You should be as normal as possible.”

“Okay…God bless you,” sighed Lin.

“I have succeeded six times. I won’t fail,” said Tang firmly, like a warrior who is going to the battlefield.

Her experiences of the past three years had made her a professional “smuggler” of the spirit of home—the homemade dumplings and rice dumplings made by her grandparents, in a well-packaged heat-preserving bag with ice packs. She was ready to face the same challenge and risk everything for her love again.

       * * *

The kitchen at Tang’s home in Nanjing, China, was crowded with raw food materials: shiitake mushrooms, black agarics, reed leaves all soaked in water, sticky rice soaked in soy sauce, salt and sugar, two giant pieces of pork shoulder and streaky pork on two separate cutting boards. It was the busiest day for the grandparents of Tang—two days before Tang’s flight to the U.S.

It was 8 a.m. A burst of rapid and crisp sounds coming out of the kitchen marked the beginning of their complicated work. Chengjian Hu, the grandpa of Tang, was chopping the pork shoulder for the meat filling of the dumplings. He first cut the meat into thin slices, then into strips, then into very small cubes. Finally, he picked up two knives with both of his hands, hitting the cutting board swiftly and accurately, as if he was a professional drummer hitting the drum with two drumsticks. This awe-inspiring drum solo lasted for half an hour and produced a big bowl of perfectly cut meat mash.

It is not very common for Chinese people to make the meat mash by hand anymore, because they can easily get machine-cut meat mash at any supermarket or food market.

“Our little Tang is a picky gourmet,” said Lihua Chao, Tang’s grandma, with a warm smile. “She can tell the difference between machine-cut meat mash and handmade meat mash. She said the handmade meat mash tastes much better. So we insist on making the meat mash by hand.”

Tang, who was packing her luggage in her bedroom, replied with a playful grin, “The handmade meat mash has the magic taste of love.”

Tang’s parents were too busy to take care of Tang. Therefore, after the birth of Tang, her grandparents moved to live with them. It is her grandparents who prepared healthy breakfast, sent Tang to school in the morning, picked up her from school and cooked a delicious dinner in the afternoon every day in Tang’s childhood.

“I can’t live without the food my grandparents cook,” said Tang.

* * *

While Hu was preparing the meat mash, Chao was cutting the streaky pork into thick strips for the rice dumplings. She soaked the strips in soy sauce, salt, sugar ,and spices.

“To make the perfect rice dumplings that I like the best, the correct piece of streaky pork with exactly 40% fat is the key,” said Tang while peeping at her grandparents’ work, “Could you imagine the meat, saturated with soy sauce and spices, melting on your tongue?”

As Chao started to fry the pork strips after an hour, the alluring smell of meat and spices quickly filled the whole house.

Tang popped her head into the kitchen and asked, “Grandma, may I have a piece of pork strip? They smell so good!”

“Your small greedy cat”, Chao patted on Tang’s forehead, “Go play your computer games. Don’t mess around in the kitchen.”

Tang had a hard time tearing away and she kept looking to the direction of the kitchen while playing on her computer.

“Oh my God, I am going to be drowned in my saliva,” complained Tang helplessly.

  * * *

At the end of the day, around 5 p.m., the heat-preserving bag was filled with 20 rice dumplings and 30 dumplings. The rice dumplings were made with soy sauce soaked sticky rice and fried streaky pork, packed in reed leaves and wrapped up with cotton thread. The dumplings were made with the mesh of pork shoulder meat mixed with minced shiitake mushrooms, black agarics and salted egg yolks, packed in hand-rolled dumpling skins.

“This…whu…is…Hea…whu…ven!” panted Tang, as she gobbled a hot dumpling just out of the pot.

“Impatient gets hot bean curd,” said Chao accusingly, as she filled a bowl with hot dumplings and put it under the air conditioner to cool them faster.

It is a Chinese saying that means haste makes waste.

Half of Tang’s luggage was filled with the heat-preserving bag along with other snacks.

Tang put the luggage, which was so full that it might burst open any time, on the weight scale and was desperate to find that it was 28 kg, — 8 kg more than the limited weight of international flights.

“Oh no, why does it happen again?” squeaked a panicked Tang.

Of course, it happened every time.

After struggling for an hour, Tang managed to lower the weight to 22 kg.

“I am sure it will be ok,” said Tang, exhausted.

She gave up a couple dresses, cosmetics, and books, but the half with food remained completely untouched.

    * * *

“Passengers on flight Cathay Pacific CX888 from Hong Kong to New York, you can claim your bags on carousel 1 in Terminal 8,” said the baggage claim announcement.

As Tang ran towards carousel 1, she shouted in Chinese, “My dear rice dumplings! My dear dumplings!”

Lin panted, “I hope our bags have arrived successfully.”

Their travel this time didn’t go smoothly because of the bad weather. Their flight from Shanghai to Hong Kong was delayed and they missed their next flight. Therefore, they had to stay in Hong Kong for a night and caught the same flight the next day. It is easy for bags to get lost or delayed in this kind of situation.

“I can’t bear to lose them,” Tang groaned, as she watched bags coming out on the carousel anxiously.

“Were the rice dumplings and dumplings the only things you care about in your giant luggage?” said Lin, rolling her eyes.

“If I lose my clothes, cosmetics, stationaries or books, I will feel sad,” said Tang, thinking about the question seriously, “but if I lose the spirit of home, I will die!”

“So yes! They are the only things I care about,” said Tang, confirming herself.

Lin walked to the other side of the carousel to check the bags there, knowing that it was not possible to persuade Tang to throw the dumplings and rice dumplings away before they entered the Customs Check.

“All right, the seventh time,” muttered Lin to herself.

* * *

Tang was walking past the Customs Check at the JFK International Airport, New York, with a heavy 28-inch piece of luggage.

Tang merged into the flow of international students, returning from home all over the world to their campuses in the U.S. They had different colors, different cultures, and different languages, but they all brought with them the expectation and love of their family in some forms.

One officer at the Customs Check looked at Tang. She looked back with a polite smile.

No one paid special attention to her.

Twenty meters, ten meters, five meters. She walked not too fast, not too slow, keeping the pace with other students around her.

Tang walked out of the exit of the baggage claim hall. She made it!

“See? Easy enough!”said Tang proudly while waiting for the pickup service, “I never fail because I am doing something sacredly. It’s the spirit of home!”

Lin looked at her overly excited friend, sighed and smiled.

There will be an eighth time.

 

The Hackathon at the Museum

Contestants gather each year to create apps for the Museum of Art

By Sean Woodruff

Visiting the Philadelphia Museum of Art often feels like stepping back in time. Its galleries are filled with 2,000-year-old ceramics, 100-year-old paintings, and statues crumbling with age.

But in a backroom of the museum, the environment feels more like a Silicon Valley startup than a 142-year-old fine arts institution.

A dozen people sit in front of computers, their screens a flurry of movement. If you look closely, you can catch glimpses of paintings by Monet and Degas as the programmers toggle between windows of complex code. The coders are here as part of the museum’s Hackathon, a six-week long competition to design innovative new apps that integrate technology with art.

The team that comes up with the best app will take home a grand prize of $2,000.

“It’s really about finding new ways to connect people to the art, and finding new ways to connect with each other,” says Ariel Schwartz, Associate Director for Interactive Technologies at the museum.

According to Schwartz, the program been a big success so far. What started as a small weekend event three years ago has grown to include almost 100 contestants.

Today, the museum is hosting a “Hacklab”, where the teams can test out their apps in the galleries and collaborate with museum staff.

Snacks and soda line the tables at the edge of the room, but they are left mostly untouched. The coders are too busy discussing plans with their teammates and tapping away at their keyboards.

***

Lacy Rhoades furrows his eyebrows. An app developer by trade, and a recent Philadelphia transplant, Rhoades thought the Hackathon would be a great way to get to know people and contribute something to his new city.

But his team has been struggling to come up with a workable idea. The biggest challenge, he says, is walking the line between engagement and distraction.

“I don’t want our app to be too game-like,” he says. “I don’t want people’s eyes to be glued to a screen.”

Earlier in the afternoon, Rhoades spent some time exploring the museum, which gave him the inkling of an idea. He was struck by how much of a personal relationship he felt with certain galleries.

“After I walked through the museum, I felt that I was changed, but also that the museum was changed in a way too. I want to catalog that feeling,” Rhoades says. “I want to create a collective virtual memory for the museum.”

Rhoades envisions an app that can track people’s journeys throughout the galleries. “Imagine seeing the virtual footsteps of people who have walked here before,” he says.

Visitors will also be able to publicly tag and comment on art pieces they feel particularly connected to. This way people can look at the app and get a sense of the history of personal connections within each gallery.

He’s excited about his idea, but he rubs his eyes as he thinks about the work left to do.

“I’m a bit of a procrastinator,” he says. But admitting that seems to give him a renewed sense of urgency and he turns back to his computer screen.

***

At the next table over, Yilin Wu lets herself subtly smirk. “We have a great idea,” she says. She speaks quietly, but without mumbling—she deliberately enunciates every syllable.

Their app, called Art Mind, is a recommendation system that will match people with works of art that they will enjoy.

“It’s like Tinder for art,” she says, “It will help you find the works of art you’ll love.”

The app will show visitors 10 works of art before they enter the galleries. People then swipe right or swipe left depending on whether they like each piece. Based on those preferences, the app will use a complicated machine-learning algorithm to build a custom museum tour for each person.

Even more impressive is that the algorithm learns over time. So the more that people use the app, the better it will get at recommending art.

If Wu’s team has time, they also wants to implement a forum feature, so that people can start discussion threads about each art piece.

But even if they don’t get a chance to implement that feature, Wu is confident that her team will make it past the preliminary judging round on May 16th.

***

Another team sits in the corner, deep in discussion. They are debating the best layout for their user interface. Rob Mruczek strokes his bright orange beard, which almost seems to glow underneath the fluorescent lighting.

His team has integrated their app with the music streaming service Spotify to create a social network based on music and art.

“The idea is that people can share songs that they associate with specific works of art,” Mruczek says. Other people can then vote on those songs, creating a crowdsourced playlist to pair with each artwork.

One benefit of a music focused app is that it encourages people to look at the art instead of down at their phone.

The app also provides a way to bring a piece of the museum back home with you. Now, once you listen to a particular song, you can think back to the work of art you saw while listening to it at the museum.

Mruczek scrolls through the app they have built so far with satisfaction. It looks polished and professional.

“Music and art are both really personal, so we thought it would be great to combine the two,” he says.

***

Schwartz, the organizer of the Hackathon, beams as he walks away from the clatter of keyboards and back towards his office. He’s proud of the way the Hackathon has grown, and is inspired by the contestants’ imaginations.

“We never know how fresh minds will attack the challenge, and we’ve been rewarded every year with approaches we’ve never thought of,” he says.

With so many innovative and ambitious projects, it’s hard to know whom the judges will award the $2,000 grand prize.

But the judges aren’t the only ones to select a winner. On May 25th, the five finalists will have the chance to showcase their apps to the public. Museum visitors will then get to choose the recipient of the $500 People’s Choice Award.

Regardless of who wins, Schwartz thinks that everyone involved in the Hackathon is important. To him, it’s not just about the final product, but about community building and creativity.

“We’re turning around the thinking of what a museum does, and should do,” says Schwartz. “It’s really exciting.”

 

The New Ballet

New forms, new varieties step away from traditional ballet

By Anika Varty

Barefoot dancers run on stage to meet each other in distinct groups. They step precisely to the dramatic instrumental music. These performers are not limited by the rules of one specific style. Instead, they are just dancers, expressing themselves through movement and mesmerizing an audience.

Dancers and choreographers have always been protective of style. Being able to communicate the style of dance you are going to perform can be helpful: Dancers want to know about the company they are auditioning for. Performers want to know what choreographers are looking for. Audiences want to know what they are paying to see.

But what happens when pioneers of dance blur the lines of style?

While new styles of dance have always stemmed from changing and fusing existing genres, choreographers and artistic directors throughout the United States have recently been intentionally bending genre. For many, doing so lets them express fresh stories through movement.

Here are some of the latest examples:

Hiplet™:

Perhaps one of the clearest examples of marrying two seemingly conflicting styles is Hiplet, which combines classical pointe technique with urban dance styles like Hip Hop. One of the main intentions behind developing Hiplet was to make Ballet more accessible by using music that is familiar to audiences who might not otherwise attend Ballet performances.

“In order to stay relevant with young people, you have to do what they’re doing now,” says Homer Hans Bryant, the creator of Hiplet.

The Chicago Multi-Cultural Dance Center (CMDC), the birthplace of Hiplet, focuses on empowering people through dance. Because the center is also a dance school, this goal means working to accept any student with talent, regardless of their socioeconomic background.

Homer Hans Bryant

The creation of Hiplet has helped CMDC with enrollment and popularity. Bryant says social media has played a huge role in spreading the style. With 136,000 Instagram followers, he’s probably right.

The style began with a Ballet technique created in the early 1990’s called “The Rap Ballet.” Dancers performed popular dances like the running man en pointe, set to rap music. As artistic director at the time, Homer Hans Bryant began toying with different Hip Hop movements, and eventually developed and trademarked the Hiplet technique.

“When you think of classical Ballet, it’s ethereal. It’s usually white people doing this beautiful stuff on the tip of the toe. They become like robots,” says Bryant “Here you have some kids of color, with strong classical Ballet training and a lot of street funk.”

After spending a year posting videos of dancers in class practicing Hiplet, Só Bailarinos shared a video on Facebook. Soon after, BuzzFeed produced a video covering the Hiplet™ story. Good Morning America soon called to bring Bryant and some Hiplet dancers onto the show.

CMDC is still the only contemporary Ballet school that teaches Hiplet, though the technique has become a worldwide phenomenon. CMDC regularly receives calls from studios and dancers across the United States, and says they are working to share the technique with as many dancers as they can.

Ultimately, their goal is to develop a professional Hiplet company, which will go on tour to share the unique technique.

CMDC is also hoping to begin certifying dance instructors to teach Hiplet. Doing so will hopefully protect dancers from the potential risks of Hiplet. According to CMDC, dancers must have very strong knees and ankles to safely practice Hiplet.

Kun-Yang Lin/Dancers

Kun-Yang Lin/Dancers (KYL/D) is a contemporary dance company based in South Philadelphia. KYL/D often presents work questioning national identity.

“I think KYL/D is a great example of a professional contemporary dance company which has strong Eastern influences,” says Katie Moore, Business Development Manager of KYL/D.

By drawing on Eastern philosophies and simultaneously calling on contemporary styles, the company challenges the limitations of identities through its work.

Kun-Yang Lin/Dancers

Artistic Director Kun-Yang Lin continues researching throughout Asia to bring a personal and multicultural approach to his work. The dancing that KYL/D creates produces a hybrid performance of Eastern and Western cultures.

“We’re definitely contemporary, but I don’t like the word fusion,” says Moore.

“Yeah, because sometimes we go to a restaurant, and we hear ‘oh this is Chinese fusion.’ So we feel that oh this is not authentic Chinese food. But I think we are doing very authentic work, we’re just very contemporary. We don’t define ourselves by any specific style,” says rehearsal director, Lingyuan (Maggie) Zhao.

“I think the most important thing, is to make that connection,” says Zhao. “Kun-Yang is always telling us that movement is similar to language: it’s how you communicate. I think we are not really focusing on one certain language, because our purpose is to make that connection.”

The KYL/D dancers are skeptical of the word “fusion” because it might imply that they are losing aspects of each style and influence that they call on. However, the company is actually focused on communicating authenticity. By not being bound to a concrete style, KYL/D hopes to present the authenticity of their dancers through Kun-Yang Lin’s choreography.

“With Kun-Yang’s style, it’s a whole new way to dance,” says KYL/D dancer Liu Mo. “You just have to find out who you truly are and be you on stage. At that moment, you don’t have to think about if it’s classical movements, it’s just the way you communicate and move.” The dancers at KYL/D focus on being their real selves as they collaborate to create authentic pieces of art.

“It’s not about memorizing. It’s not about my brain. Dance is visceral,” says Lin, noting the importance of recognizing dance as a physical form of storytelling and expression. An immigrant himself, the space between east and west and the space between innovation and tradition are consistently significant themes in his work.

KYL/D calls on influences like Buddhist and Taoist ideologies to shape its performances. Lin’s choreography weave movements from tai chi and chi gong as well as shapes from calligraphy and meditation practices throughout their work. Paired with cross-cultural research, artists in KYL/D hope to use dance to integrate the body, spirit, and mind through dance.

BalletX

BalletX is Philadelphia’s premier contemporary Ballet company. BalletX presents original choreography aimed at broadening the boundaries of classical dance, hoping to make its performances interesting to all audiences. Ballet has always been seen as a form of high art, and working to develop the style into something that captivates diverse audiences means bringing tradition and history into this contemporary moment.

The company was founded by Christine Cox and Matthew Neenan in 2005. Cox now leads the group as Artistic and Executive Director. Promoting explicit experimentation while requiring impeccable technique, BalletX consistently pushes boundaries of classical Ballet.

According to the company, “these contemporary pieces challenge BalletX’s dancers with the innovative possibilities of Ballet in the 21st century.”

Matthew Neenan Ballet X

BalletX shows tend to attract younger audiences than the more classical Pennsylvania Ballet. While the technique BalletX dancers use is deeply rooted in traditional Ballet, the movements, costuming, and music can be quite experimental.

BalletX and the Pennsylvania Ballet live on opposite sides of Broad Street. They print ads in each other’s programs. These two Ballet companies keep the style alive in Philadelphia. The Pennsylvania Ballet keeps tradition alive in familiar tutus, while BalletX remixes convention to transform the genre. Both companies share the same general goal of creatively and artistically telling stories through dance, but the way they approach this task differs greatly.

Though all of the BalletX dancers are classically trained, performances are anything but traditional. The company pairs traditional costumes with modern movements, or complements familiar classical music with unexpected costuming.

Rhythm N Motion

The trend of fusing genres together has spread far beyond professionals. Unhappy with the lack of classes offered in underrepresented styles through their dance department, students at Swarthmore College established a dance group called Rhythm N Motion (RnM) in 2002. RnM focuses on highlighting styles primarily from the African Diaspora.

At first, the group focused on styles like Umfundalai, Hip Hop, and Salsa. However, in recent years, the student-run group has been performing more and more pieces that call on multiple influences.

“Bending genre lets choreographers pursue our group’s mission through their work,” says Artistic Coordinator Arianna Bernas. “For a lot of dancers, we can learn about different styles and call on our peers’ strengths by working on these fusion pieces.”

RnM has grown into a Tri-College group, welcoming members from Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Swarthmore Colleges. The group organizes a showcase each semester, and often hosts workshops open to any student in the Tri-College Consortium. In the last few semesters, more student choreographers seem to be combining multiple styles in their pieces. RnM recently presented a piece that fused Bhangra and Hip Hop. They have also performed multiple pieces that showcase both Contemporary and Umfundalai vocabularies.

Rhythm N Motion

Although current members remain committed to the original mission statement centered on promoting underrepresented styles of the African Diaspora, current members say that some alumni have resisted fusing traditional African styles with contemporary western vocabularies. According to current dancers, some previous members of the group worry that bringing in western styles, even through fusion pieces, risks straying from RnM’s mission.

Because the group was established by students of color who could not find the tools they needed to tell their stories through dance in their department, identity has always been an important part of RnM.

Bernas says that bending genre lets choreographers and dancers call on their own identities and experiences.

Backlash

Each of these dance groups has faced backlash for pushing against the constraints of tradition. Challenging classical dance styles receives criticism for many different reasons.

Many ballerinas have criticized Hiplet, claiming that the style is dangerous for the dancers. Because classical Ballet focuses on extensions and straight lines, a lot of dancers assume the bent knees and distinct posture used in Hip Hop will leave Hiplet dancers at risk of knee and ankle injuries. However, Bryant has noted the risks of trying new things en pointe, and only teaches Hiplet to students who already have strong Ballet technique. So what is the backlash really about?

Naming dance styles and keeping them distinct maintains the elitism present in western high culture. Because so much of blending genres serves to make styles like Ballet more accessible, artists committed to broadening their audiences are often working to bring aspects and aesthetics of specific dance styles from high culture to pop culture.

The Bigger Picture

Many choreographers and artistic directors working towards fusing styles do so to broaden their company’s audience or to push dance to hold narratives previously silenced by the confines of distinct styles. Both of these aspirations serve to modernize classical styles to keep them relevant to both audiences and dancers. Dance has always been a method of storytelling, and challenging strict distinctions of genre seems to highlight stories some artists are now trying to share.

Basically, we love putting things in boxes. We love having concrete definitions so that we can understand things by classifying them. Whether we are talking about people, places, dogs, or food, labels help us separate things into groups.

Dance is no different: for years, we have looked at styles of dance as concrete limitations of what each discipline can be. Each time a new style is born, we are quick to name it and define it.

 

Creating these labels lets us think about new styles in terms of existing ones. Strict definitions comfort us; we know what’s what and can name anything we see. We can easily communicate our likes and dislikes, and dancers can explicitly state their strengths and weaknesses.

But dancers who are bending genre ask that we think about dance more broadly as a form of communication. Strict rules of style can make storytelling less authentic and force dancers to focus on limitations instead of storytelling.

 

The Rise of Handmade Tattoos

Tattoos are popular at Bryn Mawr, particularly stick and poke style

By Rachael Lightstone

Frankie Bliss looks like a stereotypical hipster-style college student. She wears denim overalls and an oversized jacket; choppy blonde bangs fall messily over her thick-rimmed glasses. The tiny tattoos which speckle her arms catch the eye as she lifts her hands to make a point or to brush away a stray bit of hair.

A multitude of bees dot her left arm. Tiny flowers and designs speckle the other. A miniature skateboard adorns one wrist, and a line drawing of the famous painting The Kiss peeks out from her sleeve. Bliss reported that she wasn’t sure exactly how many tattoos she has, but it was up to fifteen.

“Not many of mine have really significant meaning to me, other than I just really like them”, she said. “I think it’s a really cool representation to have things I love visibly on my skin… I love them and they help me love myself more.”

Bliss is not alone. Today, it is fairly common for young adults to have tattoos. A 2010 report from the Pew Research Center found that nearly 40% of millennials had a tattoo, and most of them had more than one. And according to the National Institute of Health, almost three-quarters of tattooed people got their first ink during the traditional college years, 18 to 22 years of age.

Bryn Mawr students’ reasons for getting tattoos vary as much as the people themselves. Cassandra Paiz, class of 2021, chose hers from her favorite artist’s Facebook page offering half-off on certain designs. Cassie Paul, class of 2018, got hers as a memorial to her dog that passed away. Anna West, class of 2021, chose her favorite flower as a reminder of home.

For many of them, empowerment was the major force behind their choice.

“I’ve always been really into reclamation of your body and your skin,” Bliss said, “because I’ve always felt very uncomfortable with my body image and myself, and I felt like one really good way to do that was through putting art that I liked on my body.”

Some students, who asked to remain unnamed, said they placed tattoos over self-harm scars as a way of healing and reclaiming that part of the body.

For West, getting a tattoo was the perfect way to heal after a bad break-up. “Honestly, I’ve been through lots of therapy, but that’s the best way I’ve found,” she quipped. “The most therapeutic was just getting a tattoo.

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Hungry for Chicken Feet Stew

Chicken Feet Stew

Chinese students know who to call when they want homemade food.

By Yuqi Zha

It was 12 :05 a.m. Jackie Liu, a Chinese freshman at Bryn Mawr College, was still working in front of her desk. Words flowed out of her fingertips into the document on her laptop screen. The page count at the bottom showed she has finished 3 pages—2 more pages to be done for this assignment, which was due in 9 hours.

Some strange noises distracted her attention. Her stomach was growling.

At the same time, WeChat (a social media app like FaceBook popular among Chinese) messages were popping up on her phone screen relentlessly. It was time for Liu to do something about her hunger.

Liu opened WeChat and entered a WeChat group named Pangpang Lulu, which is the origin of all those messages. There are a couple of hungry Chinese students like Liu in that group, needing some energy to fight against their homework in this long lonely night.

The sole purpose of this group, now having 38 Chinese students, is to place orders collectively at a private Chinese home kitchen in Philadelphia, called Pangpang Lulu, which provides them with Chinese cuisines that cannot be found elsewhere.

Pangpang Lulu was opened on the 1st of February, 2018, located in an apartment near Temple University. Pangpang Lulu doesn’t have a storefront—it offers take-out and delivery services only, including late-night delivery, covering all regions in Philadelphia.

It is the only place that specializes in making spiced stew dishes, which are popular traditional dishes in China. Without the rental cost for a storefront, the prices of its dishes are affordable to students, with entries ranging from $10 to $13, and it quickly became popular among Chinese students in Philadelphia.

“We started Pangpang Lulu solely out of love for spiced stew dishes,” said Leslie Mou, one of the co-owners of Pangpang Lulu, who is also a junior at Temple University. “We think it is a shame that we can’t find such delicious Chinese dishes in Philadelphia.”

Mou came from Chengdu, the capital of Szechwan, where spiced stew dishes are very popular —and very hard to make. The key to success is the spiced soup base that is used to stew the meats for hours. It usually contains more than 10 different Chinese spices and even Chinese medicines.

In China, each restaurant specialized in making spiced stew dishes has its own recipe for the soup base, which determines the different smell and taste of the dishes. Like the recipe for Coca-Cola, the recipe for the soup base is the core trade secret of those restaurants.

The most common spiced stew meats are chicken feet, pork feet, pork ears, pork tails and other animal internal organs, which people from other countries usually dislike. But the Chinese love these stews.

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Big Screen Revival

College students stream video, but still enjoy the movie theater experience.

By Steve Lehman

In the age of online streaming, college students are going to local movie theaters more than you would expect. In fact, they’re going even more than they used to.

A recent study from the Pew Research Center shows that 61% of young adults use online streaming services as their preferred method of watching TV. When you have access to thousands of movies online for the monthly price of one traditional theater ticket, why go to the theater at all?

Isaac Kahan, a Haverford College junior, has some answers. While he enjoys streaming movies on his phone just like any other college student, Kahan also frequents the Bryn Mawr Film Institute (or BMFI) and other nearby theaters.

“I like the movie theater experience,” he told me in his apartment on Haverford’s campus, about a 10-minute bus ride down Lancaster Avenue from the BMFI. “I like how you can… go into another world for a little bit. And it feels like you’re doing something more productive than just watching a movie in your room.”

Why does he go the BMFI specifically? Because it’s easy. Kahan and other Haverford students can either walk or take the bus to Bryn Mawr, while Bryn Mawr College is around the corner from the theater.

Statistics some local theaters are actually thriving. Philly.com reported that the Bryn Mawr Film Institute “represents a rousing success in the digital age” due to “tapping into the movie-loving community in its backyard.”

The BMFI, an independent and non-profit movie theater, is selling more memberships to students now than in the past few years. Patricia Russo, membership manager for the Bryn Mawr theater, said that they “see a positive trend” in student membership sales.

The increase isn’t accidental: the BMFI is pushing for more student involvement. Possible reasons for the increase in student memberships include local business discounts, an annual College Night, and more community partners such as colleges and secondary schools in the area. “We’re doing as much as we can to bring in students,” Russo said over the phone.

This isn’t unique to the BMFI. Four local movie theaters managed by the parent non-profit Renew Theaters, based in Doylestown, each saw a steady increase in student ticket sales over the past three years, according to Renew Theaters’ Membership Manager Lauren Nonini.

Based on data provided by Nonini, student attendance at the Princeton Garden Theater leapt from 4,318 in 2015 to 10,344 in 2017, while the Ambler Theater, County Theater, and Hiway Theater saw similar — though less dramatic — increases over the same time span.

Streaming is convenient and easy, but Netflix can only go so far. Some college students want more out of their movies, especially if it means a way to relieve stress, get off campus, and not think about school for a while.

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Libraries Live On

Bryn Mawr’s Ludington Library remains a vital part of the community

 

By Deeksha Raina

On a Wednesday afternoon in the Ludington Library in Bryn Mawr, there isn’t a single empty table in sight. Every table, including the ones tucked away in remote corners of the library, has at least one occupant, ranging from small children laughing over a picture book to college students furiously typing away on their laptops, head bobbing to whatever tune is blasting through their earphones.

In the airy indoor reading porch, an elderly couple sits together sipping on coffee and thumbing through their books. A few tables away, a high school student practices speaking in French with her tutor. Despite it being a weekday afternoon, the library is  bustling and full of life.

The Ludington Library, one of the libraries of the Lower Merion Library System (LMLS), is just one of many that have managed to keep the library relevant to the community in the new digital age.

Roz Warren, a library assistant at the Bala Cynwyd Library, another library in the LMLS, noted, “In the old days, when there was no internet and you had to write a report or research paper, you would come into the library to find research material. But now that’s not really the case.”

Public libraries are no longer document-centric, shifting towards a user-centric model instead. It’s no longer about the books that libraries have. Rather it’s the range of services one central location can provide for its community.

Today, libraries provide so much more than just books and dvds. The Ludington Library, among others, provides community members with meeting rooms, access to computers, wifi, tax forms, and even baking pans shaped like teddy bears and trains. And of course, the library provides students with a much-needed quiet environment to study.

The Ludington Library is not alone in these changes. In 2015, the American Library Association (ALA) president Sari Feldman said, “Today libraries are less about what we have than what we can do with and for our patrons.”

Public libraries have added computers, wifi, access to printing services, and digital literacy programs to the core of their services. Unsurprisingly, with such additions to the library, visitors continue to stream in and the data is there to back it up. In 2012, the American Library Association found that there was a 54.4% increase in visitors to public libraries over the past ten years.

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The Hot Pot Impresario

Long Xiang could barely cook — until he opened his own restaurant

By Yuqi Zha

One year ago, Long Xiang, 22, was a junior Business Engineering major at Drexel University, and was a really bad cook.

Today, he is the owner of About Hotpot, the most popular Chinese hotpot restaurant in Philadelphia at 125 Sansom Walkway, and spends hours in the restaurant’s kitchen.

Hotpot is a traditional Chinese dish that uses a stove to keep a soup base boiling in the pot, which is where the name “hotpot” comes from. Raw meat and vegetable are placed into the pot and cooked at the table. The key element that determines the success of a hotpot is the soup base, which often takes hours and several complicated steps to make.

“Believe it or not, I couldn’t even make tomato fried egg,” said Xiang while preparing the secret weapon that makes About Hotpot so irresistible, the beef-tallow hotpot soup base, made from beef fat and various kinds of spices.

Tomato fried egg is a traditional Chinese dish that almost every Chinese learns to cook as teenagers.

Xiang stood in front of a huge pot of boiling beef-tallow with a large silver soup ladle, wearing a pair of long cooking gloves that go all the way to his shoulders. The brown scorch marks on the blue gloves tell the difficulty of this process.

“It’s hot,” said Xiang. “By ‘hot’ I mean 170 °C (338 °F) to 200 °C (392 °F).”

He constantly paid careful attention to the heat while talking, added more than 10 different spices in the designated  order and kept stirring with the soup ladle.

“This is a really painstaking process,” said Xiang. “…Sometimes I stopped stirring for only 15 seconds to answer a phone call. When I come back, the spices were charred. Boom! Everything is over.”

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Bringing Them Back Home

A Philadelphia planner is trying to bring people into the city.

By Joseph Staruski

Decades ago, America saw a great decline in urban populations as many people in the middle class moved to the suburbs. Gregory Krykewycz is hoping that that trend will change and that people might move back to urban spaces. In fact, he’s planning on it.

A mild-mannered academic urban planner, Krykewycz loves to talk about city planning. Bicycles, pedestrians, trains: these are the types of things that Krykewycz thinks about on a daily basis as an instructor at Drexel University, a volunteer at the Media Borough Environmental Advisory Council, and the Associate Director of Transportation for the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission.

Greg Krykewycz

Why does he want to see people move back to the city? Well, mostly because it is good for the environment.

When he was younger, Krykewycz saw himself being an environmental planner. His hope was to buy up land outside of the city and prevent people from developing there. He wanted to directly fight back against the progress of suburban development and save the natural environment around the city.

“But I really quickly learned, once I got into school, that it’s really expensive,” said Krykewycz. So, he took a different approach. His plan now is to make the city so great that people simply do not want to move away. “It is better to make the developed places more attractive so that the development pressure outward is reduced and you get organic preservation of land as opposed to just buying everything up” he said.

Krykewycz likes what he does so much that he volunteers his time with the Media Borough Environmental Advisory Council. He has lived in Media, a borough west of Philadelphia near Swarthmore College, for four years and has volunteered there for most of that time.

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