Friday, July 24

Fowler Museum to celebrate Chicano culture with La Santa Cecilia and Patssi Valdez

Singer Marisol Hernandez, guitarist Gloria Estrada and percussionist Miguel Ramirez met during a jam session at a party in the summer of 2007. Little did they know they would later form a group, La Santa Cecilia, that has since exposed them to bigger audiences and has even garnered them a recent Latin Grammy nomination. Read more...

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On Saturday, Grammy-nominated band La Santa Cecilia will perform at the Fowler Museum as part of “A Musical Conversation with La Santa Cecilia and Paper Fashion with Patssi Valdez.”

Courtesy of Rene Miranda




UCLA dance team Nashaa heads to Bollywood Berkeley this weekend

They begin preparing for their season in the summer. In the weeks before a major competition, they might practice up to seven hours in a day. Read more...

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Members of UCLA Nashaa, the university’s official Hindi Film Dance team, specialize in dance moves similiar to those seen in Bollywood movies.

Credit: UCLA Nashaa


A Stroke of the Surreal

The black walls of the tiny antechamber fold neatly around the spectator. The desolate notes of an invisible cello "“ the slashing of bow against strings "“ echo the whimsical words dancing in a sinister cursive up the right wall: "In Wonderland." Read more...

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“In Wonderland,” an exhibition currently shown at the LACMA features many female surrealist artists working in Mexico and the United States, such as Frida Kahlo, Leonora Carrington, Louise Bourgeois and Remedios Varo, among others. The above painting titled “The Chess Queens” is by Muriel Streeter.


Designer Amisha Gadani derives inspiration for her defensive dresses from studying animals

Humans aren't equipped with many natural defenses. They don't blend into a wall or emit a cloud of smoke. They don't grow in size or produce spikes when frightened. Humans are incapable of these feats; that is, when they aren't wearing one of Amisha Gadani's many defensive dresses. Read more...

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Amisha Gadani shows off a porcupine dress, one of her designs. Gadani gets inspiration for dresses as she studies animals and their physiology in UCLA’s Alfaro Lab.