GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. —Simon's Rock will host their annual Pride Week in the last week of March, featuring two events open to the public. 

 

Simon's Rock observes Pride Week every year in March to honor International Transgender Day of Visibility and to allow students time to celebrate during the academic year. 

 

Alum Anne Thalheimer '91 will deliver the annual Pride Week Lecture. 

 

Anne Thalheimer has a B.A. from Simon's Rock in Literary Studies. She holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in English from the University of Delaware. Based in Western Massachusetts, she is an educator, artist, and activist, whose work in visual culture, autobio comix, and independent publishing spans three decades. Her work (both academic and graphic) has appeared in numerous collections, including the MLA's Teaching The Graphic Novel. She is a long-term reviewer for Xerography Debt and a former contributor to both Fleen and PopMatters. 

 

The Pride Week Lecture will be held at 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, March 28, in the McConnell Theater at the Daniel Arts Center on the Bard College at Simon's Rock campus. The event is free and open to the public. 

 

A live stream is also available at: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87103312935 

 

Simon's Rock will also host the dance performance FACES, presented by Ian Spencer Bell. This event features an interpretation of Isadora Duncan's The Many Faces of Love, Merce Cunningham's solo from Roaratorio, and Ian Spencer Bell's Rosing, with live performance by pianist Lauren Aloia. 

 

FACES presented by Ian Spencer Bell will occur at 3 p.m. on Saturday, April 1, in the McConnell Theater at the Daniel Arts Center. This event is free and will include a talkback with Ian Spencer Bell after the show.

 

Ian Spencer Bell is a dancer and a poet. His first performances were awarded a grant from the Virginia Commission for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has danced his work at the 92nd Street Y, Boston Center for the Arts, Jacob's Pillow, National Arts Club, Poetry Foundation, and Queens Museum. His writing has been published by Ballet Review, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Dance Magazine, Movement Research, and The Yale Review.

 

For a decade throughout the United States, Bell led education and training programs for American Ballet Theatre. His work with children for ABT was danced at the Los Angeles Music Center and the Metropolitan Opera. Bell has been a visiting artist at Bard College at Simon's Rock and Vassar College. He is on faculty at Nightingale-Bamford School.

 

Bell was born in Washington, DC, and grew up in Fauquier County, Virginia. He trained at North Carolina School of the Arts, Pacific Northwest Ballet School, and School of American Ballet and was educated at Sarah Lawrence College and New York University.