Welcome to Podium! Issue 10. Podium publishes exclusive work by students who have participated in an Unterberg Poetry Center workshop or class— from first-time to seasoned. At the end of each semester, instructors select either a novel excerpt, short story, poem or other work by one student from each class to showcase his/her work in Podium.

Explore the full issue here. Below is a poem by Helen Barnard, who also has a poem in the new issue of The New Republic.

In honor of Polish poet Wisława Szymborska, who died on Wednesday, 92nd Street Y’s Unterberg Poetry Center offers this tribute—a discussion of her work by Clare Cavanagh, her award-winning translator, on March 20, 2011 at 92Y. This clip also features a reading of the poem “Identification” in both English and Polish.

“I remember being at a conference in Poland with American and Polish poets,” Cavanagh recalled, “and somebody talked about Szymborska—one of the very well-known American poets (fortunately I don’t remember his name anymore)—as being a straight-speaker, and I just felt like slapping him. She’s the opposite of a straight-speaker. She’s a master of voice, and she listens to so many kinds of voices and creates the illusion of straight-speech while challenging what straight-speech even is.”

Read more about Doug Elkins Choreography, etc.: Mo(or)town Redux.

This year’s 18th Harkness Dance Festival season, entitled STRIPPED/DRESSED, is being curated by choreographer Doug Varone, a former dancer with Lar Lubovitch, who opens the festival on February 17. Varone invited each artist to present a Stripped/Dressed evening. In the first half – “Stripped” – the artists show the skeleton and seeds of the full work, stripped of theatrical devices, as one might see it in a studio rehearsal. Then they present the work “Dressed” with costumes and lights in a more theatrical setting.

In addition to Doug Elkins Choreography, etc.: Mo(or)town Redux and Lar Lubovitch Dance Company, there will be performances by Peggy Baker Dance Project, Monica Bill Barnes & Company and Susan Marshall & Company.

Read more and purchase tickets on 92Y.org/HarknessFestival.

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Musicians are probably smarter than the rest of us. That’s what a recent study suggests.

This should be welcome news for anyone with budding musicians in their home, or anyone who might be considering learning how to play an instrument. And we have more good news: The 92nd Street Y School of Music open house is this Sunday, February 5. Explore the School of Music, meet members of our brilliant faculty and find out more about their instruments and pedagogical methods.

The 92Y School of Music offers programs for musicians and music enthusiasts of all ages and backgrounds through performance, ensembles, private study, courses, lectures and workshops.

RSVP for our Open House classes, here.

Our faculty members are professionally trained, highly experienced and dedicated to nurturing students at every level.

While you’re here, you could even try to fit in Shababa™ the Concert!

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See more of Coco – and Karina Zilberman – at Shababa™ the Concert on February 5 (and still get home in time for the Super Bowl). And you can pick up a copy of the brand new Shababaland CD (which includes the full version of “Coco’s Song”). Coco is a regular at Shababa™, a warm, inclusive and growing Jewish community that gives families lots of different ways to explore and celebrate Jewish life and culture. Just think how Kristin Bell would react if she ever attended!

This Sunday, bring your family to meet ours, at Shababa™ the Concert. See you there!

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Mark Strand’s first appearance at 92nd Street Y’s Unterberg Poetry Center took place back in April of 1965, when he was one of four winners (Robert David Cohen, Jim Harrison and Nancy Sullivan were the others) of that year’s “Discovery” poetry contest, which the Poetry Center continues to oversee to this day. That night, Strand was introduced by Robert Hazel, who praised his poems for “their urgency, released by forms unusually fanciful, unusually skillful. Grace and decorum are valuable qualities here, in their creation of dramatic effects involving a very considerable ironic wit. Best of all, it seems to me, is this poet’s dramatic insight—insinuating and mysterious and with a kind of ardent searching that is very important.”

Mark Strand returns to 92Y Unterberg Poetry Center on January 30, for a reading with Susan Stewart. Stewart is making her Poetry Center debut, but Strand has been appearing here regularly for more than forty years—for readings with Borges, Paz and Brodsky (to name just a few), as well as Tributes to Elizabeth Bishop, Wallace Stevens and Zbigniew Herbert. 

Dawn Paap, producer of the site VideoDanceTV, will join Richard Daniels, Peter Kyle, and James Garver on the panel, with 92nd Street Y’s Edward Henkel. They’ll discuss dance for small screens and how the forging of new collaborative territory can have a significant impact in creating uniquely personal experiences for the viewer.

In addition, Paap selected excerpts from Girl Walk // All Day for screening and discussion. Looking to “expand the boundaries around the idea of the traditional music video”, Girl Walk//All Day is a 71-minute dance music video of epic proportions, set to the tune of Girl Talk’s All Day.

More info, and tickets, available here.

Read more about Girl Walk//All Day, and Anne Marsen, the dancer seen within, on The New York Times.

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Refreshments will be served. Period or formal attire encouraged. See you there.

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