Tim Lee is opening LIW 2011; biology Phd who now does hysterical Powerpoints for laypeople. Can’t wait till winter.

What a wonderful weekend it was.

Innovative Juggler Greg Kennedy presented a panoply of juggling techniques, then with the help of amazing aerialists, inventively engineered juggling contraptions and dazzling special effects. For a lecture demonstration Kennedy showed how each performance was done based on the principles of motion, light, energy, and gravity.

Part physics presentation, part dance performance, Redshift Productions’ Dance of Scales took the Light in Winter audience to the nano, micro-, and millimeter scales before bringing it all back to the human dimension. An experience in physics and dance like never before featuring a physicist, a company of dancers and a live doumbek hand drummer.

Cal Tech physicist Ken Libbrecht illustrated his unique process for capturing and photographing complex snowflakes in nature, then showed how those complex structures can be grown in the lab, even showing the growing in process!  The results are stunning images, themselves works of art.

Do we approach wild animals with fear or understanding?  Ron and Andrea Riddle shared their experiences of saving a timber wolf, Chance, from being euthanized by creating an “interspecies pack” with the animal.  Jody Enck from Cornell’s Department of Natural Resources shared results of his research in human reactions to the idea of restoring wolves to the Adirondacks, and how the Riddle’s reaction to Chance provides another understanding of our relationships to wild animals.  The audience even got the opportunity to meet the majestic Chance in person!

Cornell enology professor Gavin Sacks took the Light in Winter audience through an experience of tasting the history of how chocolate became the bittersweet sensation that we know and love today while Tammy Travis, chef and chocolatier at Sarah’s Patisserie, demonstrated how chocolate is tempered and made into the delicious delectables, that were then handed out to audience members.

And The Klezmatics brought the house down at the State Theater Saturday night, with a hora line snaking around the auditorium.

Can’t wait to start confirming next year’s performances!

http://ithaca-blog.blogspot.com/2009/01/kudos-for-light-in-winter-festival.html

Thanks for the lovely note

To everyone who made the weekend such a glittering success; performers, sponsors, attendees from Ithaca and beyond, staff and board. Stay tuned for updates on this past weekend- we hope to get some of the lectures and performances digitized and on our website.

Standing room only- Gavin Sachs good humored and interetsing, Tammy Travis confident and authoritative; background of chocolate production, tempering and the final product. A lot of tasting, happy people.

Klezmatics brought the house down, lines of lora dancing snaking through the State Theater, yiddish music the great unifier for people of all backgrounds. Fabulous musicianship and ensemble playing, generous encores-can’t remember a more exciting concert.

What a humane and wonderful player/teacher! Fred Chiu delivered essentially a master class in the mind, body, heart connection, demonstrating through some difficult etudes by Chopin and a Liszt transcription of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. What made it special is his demonstration of his techniques for memorizing and psychological preparation. He cited the truism about a bumblebee not being able to fly because of its body mass; but flying anyway. Pianists should not be able to remember all the things that go into performing, but they do anyway. What a treat.

Starfish grows crystals on its back that act as a way to measure light intensity; each one in a specific shape that all add up to visible bumps. This is exactly what Martin Kemp was describing in the previous lecture, in terms of how organic shapes build on one another. I just LOVE when you hear a new factoid in one place and it emerges elsewhere; helps build understanding. Watching these dancers act out the concept of viscosity is just and added bonus.

What is Brownian motion? Illustrated by dancers pushing each other from one to another not knowing where they would land. Had audience of 275 stand up and wave their arms around simulating movement on the nanoscale. When they move closer to one another they start moving in sync; more tightly packed.

If physicist Itai Cohen did this dance display in his class he would pack the biggest lecture halls.

“If a picture is worth a thousand words animation is worth a million”. Fantastic animations of some of Leonardo’s drawings that explain the complicated geometry in a clear way, produced for a major Leonardo show in London last year.

Shapes we use in technology, building and design are all found on both the molecular and visible levels in nature-domes, soccer balls.