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SXSW Comes Home

by SocialStudiesDC

SocialStudiesDC.com Twitter.com/SocialStudiesDC The only thing keeping us from making it to the SXSW Festival each year is that it's very south and very southwest from DC. But that didn't stop us from getting behind-the-scenes access to some of this year's most exciting acts. SSDC partnered up with Listen Local First's co-founder, Chris Naoum, to send a team of intrepid producers in a van from DC to Austin for eight days to shoot area musicians as they plucked, picked, and sang their way through a series of impromptu shows. The result: Some seriously up-close-and-personal footage that we cut together and the start of a beautiful partnership between SSDC and the rolling Main Mobile Music Venue.

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Basil Twist's Symphonie Fantastique

by SocialStudiesDC

www.SocialStudiesDC.com www.twitter.com/SocialStudiesDC When most people think of puppets, their minds veer toward Kermit and the gang. But when Basil Twist first debuted Symphonie Fantastique, he established an entirely different magical medium within a medium that already begs the audience to suspend belief: Talking, human-like figures are washed away, and in their place, a bubbling barrage of threads and sheets float, swim, and dance through a 1,000-gallon aquarium with mirrors, lazers, and ink. Set to Hector Berlioz's five-movement piece of the same name, the show features Twist and his team of master puppeteers choreographing objects made of colored fabric, feathers, and Mylar strips—among other materials—to a piano arrangement performed by Christopher O'Riley.

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KaleidoBlossom

by SocialStudiesDC

www.SocialStudiesDC.com twitter.com/SocialStudiesDC It wouldn’t be springtime in Washington without marveling at the cherry blossoms. But while you’ve probably seen the trees’ veritable kaleidoscope of pink and white blossoms dozens of times over the years, we bet you’ve never seen them through an actual kaleidoscope. We went down to the Tidal Basin to capture this year’s centennial celebration in a whole new dimension.

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Bloomaging with Cherry Blossoms

by SocialStudiesDC

www.SocialStudiesDC.com www.twitter.com/SocialStudiesDC Well, folks, “The Nation’s Greatest Springtime Celebration” is finally here in all her pink, white, and Japanese glory: the National Cherry Blossom Festival. While organizers and tourists have spent weeks worrying about how Mother Nature’s freakish heat wave would effect the five-week festival, we wanted to see how the cherry blossom trees themselves were coping with all the pressure surrounding this year’s centennial celebration. So we asked a cherry blossom tree.