Hikaru Asao ’16 performs with the Bates Jazz Combo during the 2013 Arts Crawl. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College.

In its third year in 2013, the Arts Crawl at Bates has become a signature event, a campus tour that showcases student expressive work across disciplines.

So if you were at Bates for the 2013 Crawl, late in the day on Jan. 25, you might have heard classic jazz or original poetry. You might have seen artists in their studios or dancers on a Memorial Commons stage. You might have lingered around the “All Things Chocolate” station in Olin Arts Center and admired the luminarias that lined campus walkways.

Some things are common across cultures: Here’s the bachelor party segment from Asia Night’s “Great South Asian Wedding.” Photograph by Michael Brady/Bates College.

This year, though, the Arts Crawl seemed to take on a new role, as the anchor for a weekend in the arts at Bates. As always, Friday night’s Crawl was followed that night and on Saturday by performances of the funny, electric variety show known as Asia Night, sponsored by the student organization Sangai Asia.

But this time there was still another treat in store: Saturday night’s opening of an exhibition by acclaimed textile-installation artist Fransje Killaars.

Receptions at both the Bates College Museum of Art and downtown Lewiston’s Museum L-A, which are collaborating on Killaars’ exhibition Color at the Center, provided a sense of critical mass that really made the weekend something special for folks invested in the arts.

Read more about:

• The 2013 Arts Crawl at Bates
• Asia Night 2013
• The opening of Fransje Killaars: Color at the Center

The Deansmen perform during the 2011 Arts Crawl at Bates.

A kaleidoscope of student creativity in the visual, literary and performing arts, Bates’ third annual Arts Crawl begins at 4:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 25.

Simultaneous sessions take place at four campus venues (listed below), with new presentations beginning at the top and bottom of each hour. The event is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please call 207-786-8212.

Asia Night, a popular variety show representing many of Bates’ diverse cultures, follows the Arts Crawl at 7:30 p.m. in Schaeffer Theatre, 305 College St. The Bates student organization Sangai Asia presents a second performance of Asia Night at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 26. For more information, please contact ebou@bates.edu or hsiegel@bates.edu.

Read a preview of Asia Night by Liza Dorison ’13.

The Bates Arts Collaborative sponsors the Arts Crawl to celebrate the imagination and talent that Bates students invest in myriad creative disciplines. All around the campus, snow sculpture, strolling performers and tasty comestibles from Bates Dining Services will heighten the festive feel.

“Our hope is that people will come to one venue, stay a while and then make their way to the others,” says Carol Dilley, associate professor of dance and coordinator of the event. “It’ll be fun, warm and colorful. What better way to spend a Friday night in January?”

Here are the venues and what’s happening:

Chase Hall, 56 Campus Ave., houses a range of simultaneous activities. On tap in Memorial Commons, a former dining space newly repurposed for public events, are the Robinson Players (drama and musical theater); the Strange Bedfellows (improv comedy); Bates dancers; and bands from the Bates Musicians Union. There will also be an art station for children with face painting and art-making opportunities.

The Bobcat Den, downstairs from the commons, is the venue for literary readings.

Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St.: As in Chase, an exciting mix of happenings with an emphasis on visual art and culture. Student artists will show work and open their studios to visitors, and on display in the Bates College Museum of Art are three new exhibitions: “Robert S. Neuman’s ‘Ship to Paradise,’ ” “Intermezzi Portfolio” by Max Klinger and “Fransje Killaars: Color at the Center.” (A reception for “Color at the Center” takes place at 5 p.m. Jan. 26.)

Diverse musical performances are slated for the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall: the Bates Steel Pan Orchestra, the college Jazz Combo, North Indian and Middle Eastern sounds, and a battle of the MCs.

New Commons Fireplace Lounge, 136 Central Ave. Musicians including a cappella singers, pianists and the Bates folk band Chase the Fiddlers perform in this cozy gathering spot.

Imaging and Computing Center, Coram Library, 42 Campus Ave., will be the site of the popular Giant Photo Booth for candid portraits.

It wasn’t quite as easy as thumping your Bean Boot heels together and repeating, “I want to get the hell out of this miserable slop.”

Still, escape from the cold and rain-soaked evening of Jan. 27 was possible: There really were a few hours when you could have found yourself saying, “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Maine anymore.”

The escape came courtesy of the second-annual Bates Arts Crawl, a showcase of student creativity that culminated in the variety show called Asia Night — a kaleidoscope of dance, song and laughs that made the Maine winter seem far away indeed.

For four and a half hours, the campus was a constellation of creativity from south to north, as students danced, sang, acted, showed films and paintings and sculpture. And the ever-popular Asia Night filled Schaeffer Theatre for the first night of its two-night stand.

Especially well-attended were dramatic excerpts from the upcoming Robinson Players production of The Laramie Project and student-created dance works, all in Chase Hall — with “Amber Wears Polos,” a dynamic dance-and-poetry piece by Katie Ailes ’14, a highlight.

Ramya Ghantasala ’15 performs the Bharatha Natyam dance “Thillana.”

“I was incredibly pleased with the success of this year’s Crawl,” said Emma Timbers ’14, a member of the Bates Arts Collaborative, which produces the event. “It reflects the vibrancy of the arts at Bates that there were so many events going on.”

“I was happy to see people braving the dreary night to support friends and classmates,” Timbers said.

Kicking off the Crawl, if you will, were community art works presented, to the thump of drums, in front of New Commons. Helicase Biology Club members Conor Smith ’14 and Daniel Jordan ’14 won the snow sculpture contest with their beached sperm whale. “The beached whale triumphs, as it always does,” Kit Sheridan ’12 announced through a bullhorn.

It was a victory by default, as their anticipated rivals (and last year’s winners) from the chemistry department failed to show, but that took away nothing from the excellence of the whale. Also part of the opening ceremony was the creation, in the snow with spray bottles of dye, of a Sol LeWitt “automatic drawing,” under the direction of philosophy professor William Seeley.

Sheridan turned up again in the Olin Arts Center, where her complex abstract paintings hung on the wall of the studio she shares with other studio art majors. Her visitors included Bates president-elect Clayton Spencer, who, Sheridan recounted, wanted to know why she had chosen Bates.

“I went to an all-girl school for 10 years and I wanted to change things up,” Sheridan joked, but added, more seriously, that she appreciated the literal and figurative creative space provided to students in the arts — such as the program for studio art majors. “It’s nice to have a full year to work toward the Senior Exhibition,” she said.

In the Olin lobby, visitors hovered around a nothing-but-chocolate-and-plenty-of-it table while, at the foot of a staircase, the Crosstones belted out the Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams Are Made of This.” (Talk about art imitating life.) Student artworks on display included an intriguing diorama composed of stuffed animals, colored lights and mirrors in a low box.

In Coram Library, the Imaging Center featured student-made short films, a row of iPads programmed to give passers-by the effect of funhouse mirrors, and an image of Andy Warhol’s Brillo Soap Pads Box whose perspective changed as viewers moved from side to side.

During the second annual Bates Arts Crawl, a student examines a piece by Xioaze Xie in the Museum of Art.

Spoken-word and poetry performances took place in the newly renovated Roger Williams Hall, while Perry Atrium afforded a more reflective mood with an assortment of acoustic music, from the ukulele-powered original songs of Grace Glasson to the hypnotic Gamelan Orchestra.

Concluding this escape from the cold and rain was a warm and lively destination: Asia Night, sponsored by the student organization Sangai Asia. In contrast to the day that preceded it, a day of gray skies and cautious shuffling over wet ice, this show was nothing but dazzling colors, silly humor and captivating motion.

In fact, dance drove Asia Night, and driving much of the dance were two seniors who, making their final Asia Night appearances this time around, have played decisive roles in Bates dance: Shachi Phene, a woman of Indian descent from Lexington, Mass., and Shlesma Chhetri of Kathmandu, Nepal.

In ornate traditional costume, Chhetri and Sanya Thapa ’12, also of Kathmandu, brilliantly performed a Nepali folk dance in which two girls share stories of being in love. Phene joined forces with singer Amna Ilyas of Faisalabad, Pakistan, for “Mere Dholna Sun (Ami Je Tomar).” While singer Ilyas, an Asia Night co-host, navigated the stratospheric range and tonal intricacies of this love song, Phene easily moved through steps combining classical Indian dance and Bollywood choreography.

In a more purely classical Indian vein, Ramya Ghantasala ’15 delivered the dance “Thillana” with enough expertise, not to mention sheer charm, to inspire optimism about the future of South Asian dance at Bates post-Phene and Chhetri. Japan and Vietnam were also represented by traditional dances.

Music included a song by the Bates Gamelan Orchestra, in its third performance of the evening, and a piece — something in between music and dance — by a group of drummers in Japan’s thundering taiko tradition.

See a Lewiston Sun Journal video report on the Arts Crawl.

Two men sang songs that gave pensive counterpoint to the lively dances. Hieu Nguyen ’13 of Hanoi, Vietnam, brought a powerful vocal talent to “Nostalgia,” a folk-influenced expression of longing for a bygone rural life. And, even as political repression in Myanmar seems to be easing, Swe Htet Naing ’12 of Mandalay sang a moving ballad commemorating the victims of 50 years of repression in the former Burma.

Reading their lines from iPads, Ilyas and her co-host Umur Khan ’13 of Rawalpindi, Pakistan, had Hollywood award-show banter down cold, whether in introducing the next act or the students who modeled Asian apparel in between performances. (Umur: “Amna, you’re so gorgeous, intelligent, sexy — you’re getting more and more like me everyday.”)

An iPad in the Imaging Center reveals the true face of a visitor’s soul during the 2012 Arts Crawl.

And the grand finale, a mind-bending collision of umpteen dance and musical styles carried off by more than 40 students, was framed as a reality-talent TV show, with different groups of dancers competing for world domination.

But while the talent-show conceit got lost in the commotion, it didn’t even matter: In dance styles from Bollywood to Latin to hip hop to Broadway, with bright shiny costumes to match, the finale was a Schaeffer-shaking celebration not just of Asian culture or of Bates, but of the sheer ecstatic power of music and dance.

– with additional reporting by Jay Burns

The event is open to the public at no cost.

Revealing the breadth and excellence of the visual, literary and performing arts at Bates, the Arts Crawl begins with outdoor activities across campus at 4:30 p.m. For more information, please call 207-786-6417.

See a full-screen view of the Arts Crawl map.

Asia Night, reflecting the diversity of Asian cultures, ends the Crawl at 7:30 p.m. in Schaeffer Theatre, 305 College St. On the program are pop dances including Bollywood numbers, performance art and gamelan music.

Asia Night 2011, photographed by Judson Peck '11.

Sangai Asia, the student organization producing Asia Night, offers a second performance the following night, also at 7:30. For more information, please email scheung@bates.edu.

Produced by the Bates Arts Collaborative, a group of faculty, staff and students working to raise the profile of the arts on campus and in the community, the Arts Crawl features more than 100 students sharing their creative voices through film, dance, music, spoken word and theater.

The Bates College Museum of Art, at 75 Russell St., stays open past its usual 5 p.m. closing time for the occasion. Showing are Xiaoze Xie: Amplified Moments (1993–2008), a major survey of work by an important Chinese American artist known for his explorations of time, memory, history and the media; and James Ensor: Scènes de la vie du Christ and other works, featuring lithographs and etchings inspired by late-medieval combinations of religious and carnival imagery.

Arts Crawl events will take place simultaneously across campus. The outdoor events include a cappella singing, as well as snow painting and ice sculpture contests open to public participation.

The Deansmen perform during the 2011 Arts Crawl at Bates.

Myriad indoor activities begin at 5 p.m., including:

• displays of student artwork in media including drawing, painting, photography, ceramics and printmaking, as well as open studios hosted by senior studio art majors showing their thesis work in progress, all in the Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St.
• acoustic music and dance improvisation in the art museum;
• Sangai Asia performances, original choreography, rock bands and theatrical monologues in Chase Hall, 56 Campus Ave.;
• world and acoustic music, including the Bates Gamelan Orchestra, in Pettengill Hall’s Perry Atrium, 4 Andrews Road (Alumni Walk);
• student film shorts in Coram Library, 42 Campus Ave.;
• and performances of spoken-word pieces and poetry from 6 to 6:30 p.m. in Roger Williams Hall, 9 Andrews Road.

Sweet and savory treats such as popcorn, hot chocolate and hot apple crisp will be served around campus, including “all things chocolate” station in Olin Arts Center, 75 Campus Ave., and international foods in Perry Atrium.