Art
Two of the Yard’s residencies culminate this weekend, both performances consisting entirely of new work.
On Saturday, the New England Choreographers Project presents Disappearing Woman, an informal showing by Nell Breyer, Alissa Cardone, and Lorraine Chapman. This work addresses the anxieties of three women in an increasingly dispersed, high-speed, distributed culture. The artists use the metaphor of digital media as an enveloping, inescapable extension of the body itself. There is a free family matinee (donations accepted) at 4 p.m.
The Big Bang
Tonight marks the unofficial grand finale of Vineyard summer: the Oak Bluffs fireworks, a dazzling display of light and noise that fills Ocean Park to capacity every summer.
The first-ever Martha’s Vineyard dog parade will be held at 6:30 p.m. on Sunday, August 23 in Ocean Park, to welcome the four-legged member of the First Family, Bo, the Portuguese water dog.
The parade marshal will be the handsome yellow labrador Chappy Homlish, whose family won the honor at the Possible Dreams Auction.
Operation Solomon, when more than 14,000 Ethiopian Jews were transported to Israel over an intense 36-hour period in May 1991, was one of the most dramatic rescues of modern times. On August 27 at 7 p.m., the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center will host a panel discussion featuring two women with firsthand knowledge of that fraught, but ultimately successful effort to fulfill the longing of Ethiopian Jews to “return to Jerusalem” after thousands of years of separation from mainstream Judaism.
As a prize-winning sociologist and Harvard professor of education, Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot possesses the curriculum vitae of one of the most successful women alive — in that achievement-oriented way that we worship in the ambitious classes of America. And yet she radiates the serenity and contemplative qualities of a genuine holy woman.
The Island plein air artists in Dragonfly Gallery’s Summer Visions show raised $400 for Martha’s Vineyard Habitat for Humanity. Sixteen artists each paid an entry fee of $25 as a contribution to Habitat: Monte Becker, William Buckley, Traeger di Pietro, Mary Emerson, Valentine Estabrook, Nancy Furino, Susan Johnson, Magi Leland, Ellen Liman, Kanta Lipsky, Thaw Malin, Marjorie Mason, Don McKillop, June Schoppe, Elizabeth Taft and Linda Thompson. A portion of the sales from the show will be donated to Island Affordable Housing Trust.