Looking for tips on what to do at ARTS FIRST APRIL 27-30? Sasha Barish '20 has you covered.
Editor's note: Each year, we ask students to tell us what they are particularly looking forward to in the 100-event lineup of ARTS FIRST, our annual festival of student and faculty creativity taking place APRIL 27-30 in and around Harvard Yard. Below are the picks of first-year student Sasha Barish '20. Check it out, and then check out the ARTS FIRST GUIDE to get ready for a weekend celebration of the performing, literary and visual arts. Join us for this open-to-the-public community event with many free and kid-friendly offerings.
Here's what's on Sasha's ARTS FIRST calendar:
1. The Performing Musical Difference: Rhythms of Unity concert, 11 a.m. Saturday, April 29 on The 
Plaza, will be a collaboration between members of the Silk Road Ensemble and the students of the Harvard seminar Performing Musical Difference. The course and the Silk Road Ensemble explore music that exists at cultural boundaries, often forced migrations, and they play pieces that draw on disparate artistic traditions such as South Asian classical music and African drumming. I'm especially excited about this performance since I recently talked to Kay Shelemay, the ethnomusicologist who teaches Performing Musical Difference, about the upcoming concert. I really appreciated her insights about the study of music and culture, and the performance sounds like it will be wonderful.
2. I want to stop by the Make Art Stations, 1-5 p.m. Saturday April 29 on The Plaza, especially the Wheel Throwing. I took a ceramics class as a kid and loved it (you get to play around with squishy clay, make things with your hands, and easily make a rotationally symmetrical vessel of whatever kind you want!), but it's been a long time since I've tried out anything with clay and I honestly think it would be so fun.
3. Ammunition: The Musical, which runs April 27-30 at Agassiz Theatre, is this year's freshman musical 
(jokingly dubbed the "froshical"), which has been entirely written, composed, directed, designed, managed and performed by first-year students over the past two semesters. I personally wasn't involved with this show, but as a freshman (and a member of the arts community at Harvard) I have many, many friends and acquaintances who have been working hard to make it happen.
4. I'm very curious about what IGP -- Harvard's improv troupe -- means by Improvised Dinner Party, which is taking place 7 p.m. Saturday, April 29 in the SOCH Penthouse at the Radcliffe Quad. Will they do improv while we eat dinner? While they eat dinner? Will there be an improvised scene set at a dinner party? For a free ticket, email: igpharvard@gmail.com.