In Dakar, the capital of Senegal, a man introduced himself to
Giavanni Washington, asking her whether she was married or had
children. Washington, a world arts and cultures graduate student,
was not in Africa to find her mate, however; she was there for
WAC’s first summer program to Senegal.

Once upon the year 2001, in the land of Burbank, a man emerged
from secret halls where imagination turns into reality.
Never before this time had this man, nor any other, journeyed
through the pass called Sepulveda to a special training ground in
order to equip talented new acolytes in the secret arts of those
secret halls.

For Mahyar Nili, being unknown and misunderstood came with the
territory of being a UCLA art student.
“Most people I’ve spoken to (who aren’t art or
Design | Media Arts students) didn’t even know that we were
not on campus,” said Nili, a fifth-year art student.

The UCLA Department of Theater is walking on the wild side this
coming season.
The theater department will be putting on performances that
cover topics from sexual escapades to alcohol that mainstream
theater often rejects.

“The God of Hell” Geffen Playhouse THROUGH
JULY 30
Playwright Sam Shepard has written more than 45 plays, won 11
Obie awards and is a Pulitzer-prize winning author, so one wonders
why his latest play, “The God of Hell,” induces pulling
of hair and gnashing of teeth.

Jeremy Hyman didn’t know what to expect in terms of
academics when he entered college as a freshman. Like so many
others before and after him, he worried about whether he would take
the right classes, how the professors would be, and whether he
would get good grades.

Nicole Smith, a world arts and cultures student, handed out
tickets for her one-woman performance last summer to attendees of
the Jacob’s Pillow dance festival as they sat on the lawn.

The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books is not the first place
most UCLA professors go to find material for their research or the
classes they teach.

When trying to characterize her dance style, Maria Gillespie,
choreographer and artistic director for the Oni Dance company and
dance instructor in the world arts and culture department, said,
“I couldn’t say it in one word.”
To an outsider, modern and postmodern dancers may seem to use an
incomprehensible language.

For some, art museums can be valuable venues of cultural,
historical and artistic achievement to be cherished for many
generations. To others, art museums are forbidding enclaves of
hoarded, ancient relics accessible only to a select group of
fanatics in stuffy rooms behind thick, uninviting walls.