UPC held it’s Spring Formal on Friday, April 19 at the Brookings Area Multiplex, and there was a small group of students that got all dolled up to have dinner and go dancing.

The event was attended by roughly 200 students this year, which was about what UPC was planning for. “I was expecting more people to be there. Since there are 9,000 people that go to SDSU, I was expecting more,” Alison Finstad said.

UPC uses student fee dollars to pay for the events that it sponsors. Because of this, no money can be used to purchase food. All the money generated in this event went towards catering it.

Although there was no date required for this formal Finstad warns to, “Bring a date next time.” It appeared that the majority of the people there were couples.”

After 23 years as the program, coordinator of the Chamber Music Society Guest Artist Series ,Professor John Colson has retired. He was honored at the final concert of the season by the Chamber Music Society and by one of the counties leading artist managers.

For the past 20 years, Joanne Rile of Joanne Rile Artists Management Inc. has provided artists for the Chambers Music Society. Hundreds of artists have preformed for SDSU and the surrounding communities during this time.

Colson was presented with a wall clock from the Chamber Music society Board of Directors for all of his work with the organization. Rile presented Colson with special gifts. One of these gifts was a CD featuring various artists from her management that have preformed for the Society.

Professor Colson is also retiring from his 37-year faculty position at SDSU. While here, he has served as the orchestra director and high brass and conducting teacher. Dr. John Walker will take over as program coordinator for the Chamber Music Society Guest Artist Series. A national search is underway for Colson’s faculty replacement.

The 2002-2003 Guest Artist Series will feature the Scholars of London (English vocal quartet), the Baltimore Consort (with Chris Norman on wooden flutes), the Osiris Piano Trio (from Amsterdam) and the South Dakota Symphony Chamber Orchestra (with Susan Haig, conducting). Season tickets will be available in September.

The South Dakota Art Museum will be holding a reception for artist and filmmaker Jerry Ross Barrish on Thursday March 21 from 4:30 to 7 p.m. Barrish will speak to the audience at 5:30 p.m. There will be a screening of his 1989 film Shuttlecock at 7 p.m. Friday, March 22 will provide a screening of two more of Barrish’s films Recent Sorrows (1984) and Dan’s Motel (1981) at 7p.m.

According to Barrish, “These films are low budget, independent features, basically R rated.” They deal with subject matter that, in the 1980s, was controversial. Barrish went on to say, “When I was in film school, I was strongly influenced by the French and German New Wave Cinema. My films have a very European aesthetic, but the story content is very American.” His films are “more story driven than energy driven.”

Shuttlecock was Barrish’s third feature. It made its premier at the 1989 Berlin International Film Festival and had wide European exposure. Peter Moore of the Mill valley Film Festival calls Shuttlecock, “An intriguing and affecting adult drama about the complicated relationships that develop between four friends who are better at expressing their art than their love. Well-know Bay Area comedian Will Durst stars as Jack, a successful stand-up comic who is having problems in his relationship with Kristie, an erotic dancer. They move to a pacific beach house next door to Mona, a painter and art teacher, and Lena, a sultry German chanteuse.

Local actress Ann Block is a revelation as Mona, showing vulnerability and passion as she finds herself recovering from a failed affair and falling in love with Jack. The characters like to talk, and the film eavesdrops on them as they reveal themselves in bits and pieces; Mona with her shrink, Kristie to Mona, Jack to Lena and Lena to the cabaret audience as she sings her songs. A painfully honest film filled with humor and hope. The film runs 87 minutes and was written, directed, produced and edited by Barrish.

Recent Sorrows is “a bizarre tale of two men whose respective love affairs have recently ended. A strange encounter between the two in a cafe leads to a mysterious murder.” Barrish got the idea for this film from his mailman, who is also a filmmaker. He said, “I was the first straight person that he told when he came out. After listening to him talk about his personal love life … I realized that he was dealing with the same trials and tribulations that a straight person goes through.”

Barrish’s first feature film was Dan’s Motel. He wrote, shot, directed and edited the entire film himself. The film stated out as a short story, but using the trilogy format, it became a full-length film (80 min.).

The film used three unrelated stories with the motel as the common theme. Barrish says, “Dan’s Motel was quite popular. It had a great run at film festivals around the world and played on European television after it was a surprise hit at the New York New Directors Festival in 1984.”

The Museum of Modern Art, New Directors/New Films Series said that “Dan’s Motel” is a last refuge for integrating lives, and is actually a sympathetic and soothing haven for its lonely guests?eccentrics, would-be suicides and stand-up comics, poets and singers?all who are somewhat revived in Dan’s cheap rooms. Deceptively straightforward, the film is a true and emotionally winning original.”

Tickets for this event are $2 for SDSU students with ID and $3.50 for general admission. While at the museum check out Barrish’s Dames exhibit running through June 24.