The Carolyn Dorfman Dance Company (CDDC) will perform as part of An Evening of Remembrance Through the Arts, launching the 20th Annual College of Saint Elizabeth (CSE) Week of Holocaust Remembrance on Monday, November 8, beginning at 7:30 p.m. in Dolan Performance Hall, Annunciation Center, 2 Convent Road, Morristown, N.J. The evening, which also includes art and music, commemorates the anniversary of Kristallnacht. It is free and open to the public. Reservations are suggested, but not required. For more information, call 973-290-4378 or email events@cse.edu.
Performance Commemorates the Anniversary of Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht, or Night of Broken Glass, took place in Germany and Austria November 9-10, 1938, when Jews were attacked and their homes, businesses, and synagogues were destroyed. The activities of that night signaled the beginning of the Holocaust. The CSE Holocaust Education and Resource Center (HERC) is co-sponsoring this event with the Holocaust Council of MetroWest, the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education, the CSE Lectures and Concerts Committee, and Yolanda, Mazza Kunz (CSE, ’68) and Raymond Kunz.
CDDC will perform two selections, Excerpts of The Klezmer Sketch, from the full evening work Mayne Mentshn (My People) and Cat’s Cradle, works choreographed by Carolyn Dorfman.
The selections are part of the Legacy Project, a body of work that reflects her experiences as a child of Holocaust survivors as well as acknowledges her Eastern European Jewish heritage and Jewish history. In the Klezmer Sketch, Dorfman shares the exuberant, joyful, yet soulful quality of explores Jewish gesture, expression, ritual, character and values. In essence, it is the LIFE that was interrupted. Cat’s Cradle, which incorporates music and lyrics by Theresienstadt inmate Ilse Weber, was inspired by Dorfman’s mother and aunts who knitted as they told their stories. “The yarn is both a metaphor for the extraordinary stories of my family and the reality of my mother and her two sisters who knitted while telling their tales and thus knitted the family together across generations,” explains Dorfman. “It is, in the end, a piece about connection and memory … past, present, and future.”
Between dance performances, Dorfman will speak to the audience about her experiences growing up a child of Holocaust survivors.
Pamela Stein, soprano, and Nancy Vanderslice, clarinetist, both members of the CSE music faculty, will perform I Never Saw Another Butterfly, a song cycle based on poetry written by the children of Theresienstadt (Terezin) concentration camp, most of whom did not survive. Lori Laitman, who composed the music, remarks, “One cannot help but be touched by the hope and innocence that these children put into their poetry, despite their terrible surroundings.”
Stein, a graduate of the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University, has performed contemporary music and traditional repertoire nationally and internationally. She has premiered works by composers Tristan Perich, Lesley Flanigan, Jacob Cooper, Daniel Felsenfeld, Jenny Beck, Eun-Jung Kim, Kevin Clark, Malina Rauschenfels, Paul Swartzel, Lauren Buchter, and many others. A composer herself, Stein is the recipient of The Ruth and Raymond Young Award for new music and has had several of her compositions premiered by musicians and chamber ensembles throughout New Jersey.
Vanderslice began her professional training on oboe at the N.C. School of the Arts and has performed with the Madison Symphony, Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, and the Dubuque Symphony, New Jersey Concert Opera, Garden State Opera Company, and The Garden State Concert Band. For the past two years, she has been principal oboe with the Baroque Orchestra of North Jersey. She is also an adjunct professor of oboe at the College of Saint Elizabeth, the County College of Morris, and Rutgers University - Newark.
Art Exhibition Open Through November 23, 2010
Shards: Documenting Genocide, an art exhibition, which runs from October 21 through November 23, 2010, will be open before and after the Kristallnacht program. The exhibition, which is free and open to the public, is located in the Therese A. Maloney Art Gallery, Annunciation Center on campus. The hours are Tuesday through Thursday, from 1 to 7 p.m., and Friday, Saturday, and Monday from 1 to 5 p.m, closed Sunday, major holidays, and college vacations. For more information about the gallery and its exhibitions, call 973-290-4314 or click on http://maloneyartgallery.cse.edu/.
The exhibition features the work of 7 Grani, Italy; Aliza Augustine, West New York, N.J.; Gordon Baldwin, Brooklyn, N.Y.; Ula Einstein, New York; Harold A. Kuskin, Bernardsville, N.J.; Stephen Mead, Albany, N.Y.; Leonard Merlo, South Plainfield, N.J.; Neal Korn, Union, N.J.; Jeremy Newman, Mt. Laurel, N.J.; Carol Rosen, Califon, N.J.; Eva Schuster, South Lee, Mass.; Katherine D. Singh, New York; Ariela Steif, Ann Arbor, Mass.; Ani K. Volkan, Johnson City, Tenn.; and Florence Weisz, South Orange, N.J.
Week Includes These Additional Programs
On Wednesday, November 10, from 7:30 to 9 p.m., HERC will present The Holocaust in a Catholic Educational Setting: Post-Vatican II Church Teachings and Implementation. Sister Kathleen Flanagan, SC, co-director of HERC and CSE professor of theology, and Sister Joseph Spring, SCC, president of Assumption College of Sisters, will lead the discussion in Dolan Performance Hall. Sister Spring is also the former assistant superintendent of the Paterson diocesan schools.
Throughout the week, various members of the CSE faculty will tailor their in-class lessons to topics relevant to the themes of the week and to their disciplines. These sessions will include survivor testimony, films, and discussions. The public is invited to attend these classes and information about the topics is available by emailing holocaustcenter@cse.edu or visiting www.cse.edu/holocaustcenter.
Sponsored by the Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth, Convent Station, New Jersey, the College of Saint Elizabeth enrolls approximately 2,000 full and part-time students in 27 undergraduate programs, nine graduate degree programs, and one doctoral program. For information on other activities or programs, visit the College of Saint Elizabeth web site at www.cse.edu.
