Show and Tell: Arts Students Present Their Semester’s Labors

$Studio Art: Tang Wenxin ’23 and Li Yihao NYUAD ’22 were fascinated by the intangibility of time and the small mechanism called —the ‘escapement.’ - that triggers the timekeeping element in every mechanical clock. The classmates incorporated laser cut technology, sculpture, digital design, choreography, video art and experimental theatre to present a vision of time and timekeeping technology as fractured, contradictory, and open to interpretation. Theirs and other experimental projects from the Intro to Studio Art and Projects in Studio Art classes in partnership with dance students, taught by Arts Professors Barbara Edelsteiacivn, Zhang Jianjun and Sun Wenting were displayed in Gallery 1250 December 10 - 15.$

Studio Art: Tang Wenxin ’23 and Li Yihao NYUAD ’22 were fascinated by the intangibility of time and the small mechanism called —the ‘escapement.’ - that triggers the timekeeping element in every mechanical clock. The classmates incorporated laser cut technology, sculpture, digital design, choreography, video art and experimental theatre to present a vision of time and timekeeping technology as fractured, contradictory, and open to interpretation. Theirs and other experimental projects from the Intro to Studio Art and Projects in Studio Art classes in partnership with dance students, taught by Arts Professors Barbara Edelsteiacivn, Zhang Jianjun and Sun Wenting were displayed in Gallery 1250 December 10 - 15.

A recital with a twist: This year, Professor Chen Meiling’s piano students didn’t just perform live solos, they connected their performances with concepts from other classes they were taking. Yang Chuanyue NYU ’23, likened his performance piece -- S. Rachmaninoff’s “Liebesleid” (Love’s Sorrow) -- to the often melancholic endings of old love stories he read in the literature course, Shanghai Stories. “The piece jumps between A-minor and A-major as if we are on a journey to see the ups and downs of a romance,” he said. “Beauty is elevated on the basis of sadness.”

Interactive Media Arts: Interaction Lab student Yang Jiani ’22 created “Interfering Liquid Earphone,” a sound-activated machine demonstrating how waves propagate, oscillate, and interfere through water.

Interactive Media Arts: A laser-cut, hashtag-shaped sculpture made of wood board, sticks, and a motor circuit, casts a shadow that reads ‘Female Empowerment’ in Chinese. “When a word with complicated meaning and deep thought behind it gets repeated and ‘hashtagged’ too many times, the meaning of it fades away,” explained IMA major Steve Dehong Sun ’22, who created a series of sculptures to speak to this social media phenomenon.

The Interactive Media Arts team created a special Zoom robot for the IMA End of Semester Show, which wheeled around and visited all of the exhibitions so that students could join remotely and be part of the action no matter where they were.

After three semesters studying the Chinese guqin, Interactive Media and Business (IMB) student Katerina Valachova ’22 from the Czech Republic performed “拉纤歌” at the Salon Chinois, a show featuring performances from students of Chinese traditional instruments. The instrument also inspired Valachova’s Interaction Lab project: When passersby interact and play with the guqin, the sounds elicit movement of a still image of nature projected on a wall.

On December 14, the NYU Shanghai Orchestra, the Choir, Jazz Ensemble, and faculty joined forces for an end of semester concert. Here Affiliated Associate Professor Alex Ruthmann plays “Intermezzo from L’Arlesienne Suite No. 2” by Georges Bizet on the french horn.

“The best thing about every rehearsal session leading up to the performance was how everyone in the class made a lot of effort and practiced on their own,” says Steve Dehong Sun ’22, pictured here singing “Seize the Day” with his Show Choir classmates. “Regardless of how many people filled the audience or whether or not we had to wear a mask on stage, it was still an experience I really enjoyed.”

NYU Shanghai ballet students smile through plastic face shields as they leap to Tchaikovsky’s “Serenade for Strings” choreographed by George Balanchine, at the end-of-semester dance performance. “Because of the pandemic, we weren’t supposed to have physical contact during the whole semester, which meant we had to re-choreograph some movements accordingly,” says Assistant Arts Professor Tao Siye. “We wanted to call it Serenade In the Background of COVID-19.”

“Birds from far away / Fly over the mountains and fly back / We build white yurts / Waiting for the arrival of Spring.” These lyrics from the Mongolian folk song “Spring” inspired choreography for this year’s performance by the Minority & Folk Dance (Northern China) class.