January 24, 1957

              Skidmore News

Volume Thirty-two	    SKIDMORE COLLEGE, SARATOGA SPRINGS, N. Y.,     JANUARY 24, 1957	  Number Eleven



Patricia Wityk Performs
Dance Quartet Appears Tonight
    
As the next program of the Concert series, the Dance Quartet, a new company of professional dancers will appear here on Thursday evening, January 24. This group is composed of men and women who, as college teachers, felt the need for a company small enough to fit the most modest budget and large enough to meet the particular requirements of the college and professional school.
 
A master class for those who were qualified and interested, led by the members of the new company and sponsored by the Dance Club took place the afternoon of January 23.
  
Dance Quartet brings a new approach especially designed for the college and high school audience, dance group or class. The members of this young but experienced company, three of whom are now active teachers, combine more than twenty-one years of college and high school teaching. They have composed dances in four distinct styles to make up a well-balanced and interesting concert.

The Dance Quartet in action. Left to right: Meriam Rosen, Patricia Wityk, William Hug and Virginia Freeman. [photograph]




Famous Children's Choir Performs for Skidmore After Memorable Tour
  
Wednesday, February 13, at 7:30 p. m., 36 girls and boys, shiningfaced and fresh-voiced, will give a concert in College Hall. These youngsters make up the Obernkirchen Children’s Choir who literally took the country by storm last season on their first tour.
  
Although they were virtually unknown when they arrived in the United States in September, 1954, less than two months later they returned to Germany with a well-established reputation.
 
The story began only a few years ago when a social worker by the name of Edith Moeller was seeking to raise funds for an orphanage in her small town of Obernkirchen. Miss Moeller organized a children’s choir, hoping to earn money toward the building of the orphanage by giving local concerts. From this very modest start, guided by the fine musicianship of Miss Moeller, a choir was formed.

Wins Festival Award
  
Just a few years later, in the summer of 1950, the choir, unknown and barely considered in the professional class, entered the International Eisteddfod in Llangollen, Wales. Challenging the 25 larger, more experienced singing groups from all over Europe, the Obernkirchen children walked off with the first prize. At the Wales festival, where the late poet Dylan Thomas dubbed them “Angels in Pigtails,” they sang “The Happy Wanderer,” a song that had been written expressly for them by Freidrich Wilhelm Moeller, Miss Moeller’s brother. “The Happy Wanderer” thus became their passport to world citizenry.

Successful Concert Tours
  
In September, 1954 they arrived in New York City to begin a six week concert tour. The first concert was in Washington. After ten days of promotion, with no concert series support, no benefit committees, on a date three weeks ahead of the opening of the Washington musical season, they sang to a full house at Constitution Hall.
  
Following this success, they returned to New York. After their first Town Hall recital, which was a sell-out, Miles Kastendieck of the New York Journal-American wrote, “They combined the age of innocence with the beauty of unpremeditated art.” The tender melodies of Schubert and Schumann and Mozart “came from these young throats like sunshine,” said Louis Biancolli of the New York World-Telegram and Sun.
  
That first New York recital was followed by four more Town Hall appearances on popular demand. “They sing,” wrote Roger Deltmer of the Chicago American, “with piping clarity, with admirable control, and superb enunciation, but most of all with radiant simplicity.”







Sophs Plan Galaxy of Activities; Fire And Ice Set Winter Theme

By Joyce Burstein and Sue Swire
 
Five exams and several papers from now, minus black coffee and strained nerves, the only academic theory you’ll care to remember will be that opposites attract. (Namely, you and your Winter Carnival date.) The class of ’59 has prepared a unique program for this year’s Fire and Ice weekend.

Friendly, Rustic Atmosphere
  
After rescuing your date from the influx of crewcuts and tweed,., don your bermudas or ski pants for an informal Friday night gathering at the Hitching Post. Here, j i ix'ont, of a roaring fire, you 11 dance to the band, drink beer, roast marshmallows, and listen to the music of the Soneteers—a memorable prelude to the exciting weekend which will follow.
  
Events begin bright and early Saturday morning with the judging of the snow sculptures. (An opportunity for you and your date to display both brain and brawn.) Immediately following the contest, the Carnival Queen will be chosen in College Hall from the three nominees of each class.
  
Hurry back from lunch for the Ice Show at two o’clock. Be sure to bring your skates along—the ice is yours after the performance. However, if you’d prefer to ski, buses will be leaving for Alpine Meadows.

Glamor Takes Over
  
Cocktails and dinner are the perfect enticement to change the outdoor enthusiast to a glamorous sophisticate. Later in the evening, from 9:30-1:00 at the Casino you will feel like a debutante dancing to the music of Ralph Stuart’s celebrated society orchestra. In place of a regularly scheduled intermission, the orchestra will hold a unique jam session.
  
Set your alarm clocks in time for a 10:30-11:30 brunch on Sunday morning, followed by the last big event of the weekend, the Jazz Concert. The concert will feature Phinney’s Favorite Five from Williams, able successors of the Spring Street Stompers. The time and place: from 2-5 in the afternoon at the Rip Van Dam.
   
Ellen Stewart, ’59, practices for the Winter Carnival Ice Show [photograph]









Bemis Successful; Wins Cash Prize
  
Alice Bemis, ’57 was one of the winners in the $41,000 contest conducted last fall by The Reader’s Digest. Brief descriptions of the articles in the October issue of The Reader’s Digest were printed in the Skidmore News. College students and professors throughout the country arranged six articles in the order they thought most readers would prefer. Entry selections were judged by comparison with a national survey, previously completed, which showed the actual preference of readers. Amounts equalling the cash prizes also went to the scholarship funds of the top winners’ colleges.
  
Dr. Philip G. Horton, professor at Henderson State Teachers College, Arkadelphia, Arkansas, won the first prize of $5,000 in cash and $5,000 for his college’s scholarship fund.
  
All the winners received $10 in book credits to be used at their college book stores.









MSA Team Surveys; Re-evaluates College
  
From Sunday evening, February 10 through Wednesday, February 13, a visiting team from the Middle States Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools will visit Skidmore to make a periodic re-evaluation for reaffirmation of accreditation.
  
Dean Emeritus Margaret T. Corwin, of Douglass College of Rutgers University is chairman of the visiting team. President William W. Edel of Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania will survey our organization and administration. Skidmore finances and plant will be inspected by Frank Q. Lane, Business Manager, Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, New Jersey.
  
Skidmore’s program will be evaluated by Mina S. Rees, Dean of Faculty, Hunter College, New York; Sister Mildred Dolores of Holy Cross, Washington, D. C.; and Richard B. Beaman, Associate Professor of Painting and Design, College of Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The National League for Nursing, an additional agency participating in the evaluation will be represented by Helen Pettit, Associate Professor in Nursing at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, New York, and Alice Brackett, Associate Professor of Public Health Nursing at the University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing.
  
Our library will be evaluated by Miss Ermine Stone, Librarian, Sarah Lawrence College, Bronx-ville, New York. Elbert K. Fret-well, Junior Assistant Commissioner of Education represents the State Education Department.









E. Xenakis Wins Award
  
Elaine Xenakis, ’57 and Barbara Boyd, ’56 are two of the winners in the 1956 Atlantic Monthly Essay Contest. Their papers, “A Way of Life,” and “Thoughts on a Theme” were among those chosen from 184 entries from 87 classes in 81 colleges.
  
The judges chose one winner and divided the top papers into two groups of 20 each. Elaine’s essay placed fourth and Barbara’s was seventh in the Merit group.
 
The papers were submitted through the magazine writing class taught by Miss Dorothy Upton. Each year The Atlantic Monthly sponsors an essay, short story, and poetry contest, all divisions of which are open to undergraduates enrolled in a college writing course. One student is awarded a scholarship for a summer’s study at the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College.









Poetry Bookshop Momentos On View In Library Exhibit
                       
By Roberta Blum 

Publications, manuscripts, and letters are now being exhibited in the library in connection with Harold Monro and the Poetry Bookshop. The items pertaining to, as F. S. Flint called him, “the wild Celt were loaned by Miss Miriam Benkovitz, Miss Julia Hysham, and Miss Gladys Brownell.
  
Harold Monro developed an interest in poetry while studying at Caius College, Cambridge, and managed to become well read on this subject despite his other passion, horseracing. After trying his hand at numerous unpleasant occupations, one of which was raising chickens, Monro decided to make literature his profession.

Not Considered a Major Poet
  
Although he is not considered to be a major poet, Monro handled his particular type of verse with imagination and aplomb. He established a mystical affinity for his surroundings which, in such poems as “Everything,” became animated. In his own mysterious world, cupboard doors, pencils, and clocks assumed the guise of familiar friends and had the power of independent action. Not all Monro’s poetry is of the eerie and supernatural type however. Few can surpass his animal portraits in which a hungry cat is “transformed to a creeping lust for milk” and man’s best friend perceives through “the four-legged brain of a walk-ecstatic dog.”
   
The distinguishing feature of Harold Monro is not his own verse, however, but his association with and influence upon the young poets who were to become the trail-blazers of Twentieth Century poetry. Few of the future literary giants escaped the discerning eye of Monro, and many such as Robert Frost and Edith Sitwell are indebted to him for the first publication of their poems.
  
When the Poetry Bookshop was founded in 1912, it became the meeting place of progressive intellectuals throughout the world. Those poets who were visiting London were provided with inexpensive lodgings in the same building that housed the Bookshop and thus had the opportunity of discussing recent developments in the field of poetry with the regular members of the group. Every Thursday evening, the public was invited to attend readings of contemporary poetry and hear lectures on contemporary technique and the art interpretation. It was here that the battle against “all kinds of false traditionalism” was fought and that many of the forms of verse so prevalent today were evolved.

Unified the Poetry World
   
In addition to serving as a center for the literati, the Poetry Bookshop offered for sale publications which were in any way concerned with poetry or drama and which were virtually impossible to procure elsewhere. If the Bookshop did not thrive financially, Monro at least had the satisfaction of knowing that he unified the poetry-reading world and revitalized modern poetry by keeping contemporary writers before the public.
  
As a corollary to his Bookshop and partly as a means of advertising, Monro published a series of periodicals. The first of these publications, Poetry Review, was founded to deal with “poetry in its relation to life.” Poetry and Drama soon replaced the Review and established Monro as one of the leading figures of the literary world. After the interruption caused by World War I, the Bookshop was reopened and a new magazine, The Chapbook was launched. Similar in spirit, these two periodicals published the new works of such poets as T. S. Eliot, Vachel Lindsay, and Richard Aldington, and served as a source of 

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