If the Perseid meteor shower reignited your interest in space and its visual pleasures, you might try heading to Greenwich’s Bruce Museum
The museum will serve as the site of Rohini Devasher’s first solo exhibit in the United States. The immersive cosmic experience, “Rohini Devasher: Solar Poetics,” will be on view Aug. 22 through Nov. 29 at the Bruce.
The exhibit will be anchored by the artist’s “One Hundred Thousand Suns,” a four-channel video installation that is new to the museum’s collection, according to a news release. “The film transports visitors beyond Earth’s atmosphere with imagery tracing a century of solar observation, from drawings and photographic techniques to first-person accounts from eclipse chasers, who travel the globe to witness them.”
To those astonishing images, Devasher weaves contemporary footage and her own decade of astronomical research, “creating a meditation on how we observe and record phenomena that exceed human perception,” according to the release.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a selection of Devasher’s “Shadow Portraits and Sol Drawings” – intimate works on copper created with fumage, a technique of drawing with smoke, according to the release. Devasher uses her kitchen stove and candle smoke to create patterns that range from solar flares and sunspots “to plumage-like growths, their surfaces shifting between blue-purple hues and golden copper,” according to the release. “These works reveal her patient, handmade process alongside the monumental film installation.”
Who was the first Connecticut-born person to fly into space?
The Billy Joel Legacy
The producers of “The Simon and Garfunkel Story” and “The Life and Music of George Michael” are bringing “The Billy Joel Legacy: A Tribute Experience” to Torrington’s Warner Theatre Sept. 25 at 7:30 p.m.
“This concert experience takes you on a journey through Billy’s legendary career, from his humble beginnings to becoming one of the greatest songwriters and performers of all time,” according to a release. “Through faithful recreation of the original music, stunning visuals, and compelling storytelling, you’ll discover how his music has shaped generations and why his legacy endures.”
Billy Joel has had 33 Top 40 hits and 23 Grammy nominations since signing his first solo recording contract in 1972, according to his website. He received a Grammy Legend Award in 1990, was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1999 and has received the Recording Industry Association of America Diamond Award, presented for albums that have sold over 10 million copies, according to the site.
Dreaming of sugar plums
Just because it’s August doesn’t mean you’re not making plans for the holidays.
If those plans include a performance of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s 1892 Christmas ballet, “The Nutcracker,” Connecticut Ballethas announced the dates for its annual production at The Palace Theatre in Stamford on Dec. 12 and 13 and The Bushnell in Hartford on Dec. 19 and 20, according to a news release. This production of the Tchaikovsky classic is the longest-running and largest professional Nutcracker in the state, having been performed for 42 years, according to the release.
“As in years past, nationally-renowned guest artists from such companies as New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theatre will dance Raphael’s original choreography as the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Cavalier in both cities,” according to the release. The Hartford Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of assistant conductor Adam Kerry Boyles, will return to The Bushnell’s Belding Theatre to provide live musical accompaniment with a 57-piece ensemble, according to the release. The Stamford engagement will be danced to a recording performed by the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra.
“The Nutcracker” was the third and last of ballet scores by Tchaikovsky, preceded by the those for “Swan Lake” first performed in 1877, and “The Sleeping Beauty,” first performed in 1890, according to the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
All performances of “The Nutcracker” will be followed by meet-and-greets with the guest artists and other members of the company in the lobby, according to the release.
Although he grew up in Rhode Island, Sherwood C.
“Woody” Spring born in Hartford in 1944, served as a mission specialist on STS-61B which flew in 1985, according to theKennedy Space Center.
This article originally published at CT Culture Corner: A century of the sun comes to life in immersive CT museum exhibit.
