Beginning on a reflective but also festive note with the Memorial Day holiday, this week in New Haven carries that duality forward with buttoned-up brain-engagers and let-loose moments.
Monday, May 30 – Memorial Day
Red Skye, which offers humans equine-assisted therapy and more traditional cognitive behavioral therapy, hosts its annual “Hug a Horse” event today from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., rain or shine. In addition to pony rides from noon to 1, organizers promise food trucks (Fryborg fries and Popcentric gourmet popsicles), lawn games, face painting and the presence of mascots from double-A ball team the Hartford Yard Goats. Free to attend. 110 Hatfield Hill Road, Bethany. (203) 891-6787.
With its main itinerary now only 11 days away, the 2016 International Festival of Arts & Ideas is putting on a rain-or-shine event of its own: “Celebrate Our Fair Haven,” a neighborhood-centric “pop-up festival,” from 2 to 7 p.m. Hosted by Christopher Columbus Family Academy (255 Blatchley Ave, New Haven), wide-ranging attractions from “international food tastings” to flamenco dancing to “bilingual story time” foreshadow the crazy breadth of engagements to come. The same is true of “Celebrate Our Dixwell,” happening Saturday from noon to 5 in Scantlebury Park (139 Ashmun St, New Haven), where African drumming and dancing, boxing demonstrations and human chess comprise a small fraction of the goings-on.
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Tuesday, May 31
Hosted by the Institute Library (847 Chapel St, New Haven; 203-562-4045) and sponsored by Atticus Bookstore, author Sam Chauncey is discussing his book May Day at Yale, 1970: Recollections: The Trial of Bobby Seale and the Black Panthers tonight at 6:30. Chauncey, who had a front-row seat to public and private events as a special assistant to Yale’s then-president Kingman Brewster—and who’d helped manage Yale undergrad’s transition to a coeducational student body in ’69—“will give a talk about the book and the relevance of those times to current events,” with a Q&A to follow and refreshments to be served. Free.
Wednesday, June 1
Pinging exhibit Everything is Dada, which has a little more than a month left to go, Yale University Art Gallery museum assistant Gabriella Svenningsen discusses “Dada’s Happenstance: The Rayograph and Other Playful Accidents.” Focusing on multidisciplinary artist Man Ray’s “rayographs—photographs made without a camera, in which he experimented with light, filters and everyday objects” (pictured above) and posing them “in relation to other surprising and humorous works by Dada artists,” the free talk starts at 12:30 this afternoon. 1111 Chapel Street, New Haven. (203) 432-0600.
Thursday, June 2
Tonight at 7:30, in a tribute to the man who composed it, the New Haven Symphony Orchestra performs some of the most iconic American music of the past 40 years. The show, called “The Music of John Williams,” includes selections from “Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Harry Potter, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Superman, Jaws, Indiana Jones and Saving Private Ryan,” and the NHSO is so into the spirit of the thing that it’s encouraging attendees to wear costumes. Regular tickets start at $15 and climb to $74, depending on the position of your seat inside the Shubert Theater, wth discounts for kids and college students. 247 College Street, New Haven. Box office: (800) 745-3000.
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Friday, June 3
With a home base in the Whitney Humanities Center (53 Wall St, New Haven), a heavy focus on local and regional cinema and free admission at every turn, the third annual, 11-day New Haven Documentary Film Festival opened last night with a 7 p.m. screening of Midsummer in Newtown, about a group of Newtown kids dealing with the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting. The fest continues tonight with a 7 p.m. screening of Be a Man, which follows Dad-less comedian Ray Harrington as he and his friends examine the contours of masculinity in present-day America.
Then it’s time for “NHdocs After Dark,” which, in tonight’s case, both is and isn’t as salacious as it sounds. The first after-dark film, the “award-winning and lively” VHS Massacre, “explores the rise and fall of physical media and its effect on Independent and cult films” at 9:15. The second, Skin in the Game: The Raven Riley Story, about the “highs and hazards” of being a young new-wave porn star, gets its world premiere at 11 and has been rated NC-17 by the festival, meaning no one under 18 will be admitted.
Saturday, June 4
Between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m., organizers for the Branford Arts & Cultural Alliance’s second annual plein air event expect “between 15 and 25 (or more)” painters to gather at the Branford town green, where they’ll choose a spot to set up their easels and paint whatever scene they’re pointed at. Non-painters can go along for the very calm-sounding ride as onlookers, watching the artists as they work on paintings that’ll come together again in July for a joint exhibit. Free to attend.
Sunday, June 5
Elm City Dance Collective’s People in Motion project—for which a “community of non-dancers and dancers alike” worked to “compose a dance in the moment”—is making a move. At 2 p.m. inside Trinity Lutheran Church (292 Orange St, New Haven; 203-787-6521), the collective presents “People in Motion, an Afternoon Showing of Dance, performed by ECDC and Friends.” Including the composition already mentioned, the free show includes ECDC performing If You Knew You Then, an in-process work, and Chloe Carlson performing borderland.
Written and photographed by Dan Mims. Readers are encouraged to verify times, locations and prices before attending events.
