Stephen Petronio Dance Group
I Drink the Air Before Me

“…an instantly recognizable style…fresh and unpredictable…infused with emotional texture and wit…”
–New York Times on the Stephen Petronio Dance Group

Student Tickets $8
When: Friday & Saturday, September 25 & 26, 8pm
Where: CFA Theater, Wesleyan University

 What: Wesleyan’s Breaking Ground Dance Series opens its 10th Anniversary Season with the Stephen Petronio Dance Group, which is celebrating its 25th Anniversary Season. I Drink the Air Before Me is a sweeping evening-length work inspired by storms, both atmospheric and internal, and the power of extreme weather in all its awesome transience. The production features costumes by Cindy Sherman and Adam Kimmel and a commissioned score by Nico Muhly with cameo appearances by the Middletown High School Chamber Choir. The dancers’ movements are signature Petronio: daring and virtuosic, inspired, in his words, by “the whirling, unpredictable, threatening, and thrilling forces of nature that overwhelm us.”

To see video of the group, visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32E11kJbAZM
For more information & tickets, visit http://www.wesleyan.edu/cfa or call 860-685-3355

Photo by Nick Lacy   9/4/09

Start out with the cold sweetness of ice cream, and then move into the rhythms of incredible drumming and the celebratory dancing of six different water cultures, followed by the human histography of our water footprint, and ending with the magical performance of Prometheus, the fire spinners, TONIGHT at 7:30 p.m., Andrus Field.   AWESOME!

The Water Crisis in the American West – Prof. Peter Patton, E&ES, Shanklin 107

Oceans, Boats, and Human History – Prof. Vijay Pinch, HIST, PAC002

Water, Water Everywhere, Nor Not a Drop to Drink – Prof. Krishna Winston, GRST, and Prof. Brian Steward, PHYS,   Woodhead Lounge in Exley Science Center

On the Waterfront – Prof. Richard Adelstein, ECON, PAC001

FYM Common Reading discussion groups with faculty, staff and peer advisors follow after dinner from 7-8:30 p.m. to deal with the resource challenges.  Be a part of the solution!

• Talk with friends and family members who have recently attended college about their experiences transitioning to campus life — the challenges, the joys, the things they wish they knew starting out. You may be able to glean some words of wisdom!
• Make a plan with your parents/guardians for how frequently you will talk and email. Strive for regular, but not daily, contact. It will help you concentrate on adjusting to Wesleyan while still reducing the likelihood of feeling homesick.
• Once on campus, seek out opportunities to get involved in one or two activities outside the classroom. Focus on quality, not quantity. You have plenty of time over the next four years to try out everything!
• Being a college student does not have to equal being unhealthy. Strive for balanced eating habits, a regular sleep pattern and a manageable workload.
• If you are of age and choose to consume alcohol while on campus, party with a plan!  It will greatly reduce your risk for problems related to your own consumption. Learn more about how to do this with Randy Haveson during New Student Orientation.
• Keep up your exercise routine at Wesleyan’s great athletic facilities, with WesWELL’s non-credit fitness classes, or on your own. Physical activity greatly helps with reducing stress levels and with mental acuity.
• Ask for help if you need it academically or personally; it is a sign of strength, not one of weakness. We want to help you succeed!

 As a class, you get to showcase drumming and dance movements from six different cultures—Korean, Cuban, West African, Japanese, Irish and South Indian—where water is an important component of their cultural traditions.  Assigned to one of the six cultural groups, you will be taught a drumming and movement piece, choreographed by Nicole Stanton, chair of the dance department, and Bill Carbone, a graduate student in the music department.  After spending about 20 minutes with a choreographer and student staff to learn the piece, each group will perform for the entire class. 

The evening will culminate with the Class of 2013 forming a human histogram about its own water footprint.  On Andrus Field, you will embody your responses to a survey that you completed in discussion groups the night before, which was developed from the information in the Water Footprint website in your Common Readings.  It will be a night not soon forgotten!

Check out the Water Footprint website in Blackboard or at http://www.waterfootprint.org/?page=files/home .   Complete the questions to find out how your water footprint measures up with the rest of the world’s!

Questions?  Contact Rommel Guadalupe, rguadalupe@wesleyan.edu or 860-685-2530

The First Year Matters program will offer four faculty seminars during New Student Orientation that will explore this year’s theme of water from the discipline of the faculty presenter.  One seminar features a discussion between two professors, a humanist and a scientist, who will talk about issues connected to water contamination, ground water depletion and rising sea levels in the context of sustaining human and animal life on earth.  Another seminar will focus on the critical nature of fresh water in the western part of the United States, and explore possible responses to long-term problems there that range from the prolonged drought in the southwest to the mega forest fires in California.  The third seminar will explore the historical role that water has played in human development, focusing on the challenges that large bodies of water presented to early humans and how those barriers were eventually exploited for growth and economic expansion.  The fourth seminar will explore water’s role in modern development from a legal and economic perspective, and discuss the consequences of property and ownership rights for the natural environment. 

You get to choose one of these great seminars to attend on the afternoon of Thursday, September 3.  The seminars, along with the summer readings, will inform the discussions that take place later that evening. 

You can see the full descriptions for all four seminars on the FYM website (http://www.wesleyan.edu/deans/firstyearmatters/index.html) and on the Blackboard course page.  There will be a bibliography of supplemental readings also posted on the Blackboard course page, if you choose to explore further.   The readings can be found through the Blackboard course page which you can access from the FYM website.  Make sure to read the common readings before you arrive on campus!

Check out these tools today or any day…both are always linked from the Health Services and WesWELL websites. (Note: While you are required to enter your Wes email username and password to access both these sites, it’s anonymous browsing Your username is in no way connected to the information you enter into or gather from either site.)

If you haven’t already done so, be sure to login to the Residential Life online housing preference form so that you can indicate your level interest in the various housing options that Wesleyan offers to first-year students.  In addition to indicating your preference for living in a single, double, or triple room, the form seeks your input regarding a variety of community-based living opportunities.   Your housing preferences must be entered into the system by 11:59 p.m. on June 7, 2009.  Until the deadline you may login to the system as often as you like and make as many changes as you need to make.  No changes may be made after the deadline, however, so that the Office of Residence Life can begin the process of making actual housing placements.

On July 22, you will be able to find out about your housing placement and roommate assignment by logging in to your e-portfolio.  In the meantime, you are encouraged to check out the suggested packing list of things that you may want to consider bringing to Wes.  It is also important that you consult Physical Plant’s housing guidelines and fines that have been developed to maintain the safety and integrity of Wesleyan residential facilities.  Any questions you may have should be directed to the Office of Residential Life at reslife@wesleyan.edu or 860.685.3550.