Visiting Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and Dance Talise Campbell is the director of this weekend’s Oberlin Dance Company show, Tracing Our Roots: A Look Into the Past As We Move Into the Future. The show, which will also includes work from her two other classes this semester, features the Djapo Cultural Arts Institute, a Cleveland-based organization where Campbell is the artistic director and founder. Djapo is a Wolof word meaning “come together.” Campbell has had an impressive career as...

It’s no secret that many of Oberlin’s most revered traditions are sustained almost entirely through the hard work of students. The Student Dance Showcase, the semesterly performance synthesizing work from a variety of campus organizations and individual students, is a shining example of such an event. The directors, College sophomore Olivia Guerriero and College first-year Jewel Cameron, as well as the lighting designer, Conservatory senior Collin Sterne, have been working since the beginning...

Artist Kat Burdine uses objects and prints to negotiate ideas about physicality and the body. A graduate of the Cranbrook Academy of Art and currently based in Cleveland, she is the founder of Wondershop Studio and teaches at both the Cleveland Institute of Art and Cuyahoga Community College. She has collaborated with many artists on a variety of projects, including Talking Dolls in Detroit. Her recent lecture at Oberlin, “A Matter of Hapticstance — One Queer’s Feeling on Feeling(s),” di...

The Dionysus Disco — or as it is best known, the ’Sco — is one of the most notorious and beloved spaces on Oberlin’s campus. Dionysus was the Greek god of the grape harvest, fertility, theater, wine, ritual chaos, and religious ecstasy. I don’t know about harvesting grapes or fertility, but anyone who has turned out for a Wednesday night Splitchers has participated in a kind of ritual chaos and can attest to the religious ecstasy of this hallowed ground.  It follows, then, that the energy behind the ...