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Kunqu, China's oldest known operatic form, enjoyed its peak of popularity in the 18th century, when the best performers were adored by hundreds of thousands of fans. But by the 1940s there were virtually no dedicated Kunqu theaters left. With its archaic lyrics, sluggish melodies and tedious narratives, the 600-year-old genre - a precursor to the better known Peking opera - was all but dead and understandably so. The Peony Pavilion, one of the most famous Kunqu works, consists of 55 scenes, and a performance can last more than 20 hours. Witnesses to such a grandiose relic should worry...
...year-old Zhang Jun is changing all that. The newly promoted deputy director of the Shanghai Kunqu Opera Theatre, Zhang believes the art form can be salvaged to appeal to audiences in the era of roaming broadband and speed punk. During the past two years, he and his team have compressed epic Kunqu scripts until they play about as long as the average movie, and introduced other innovations. The changes are finally starting to draw respectable audiences of curious Shanghainese. At last summer's three-week run of Palace of Eternal Youth, a Tang dynasty love tragedy, two thirds...
...Gain with No Pain? Yoga in its original form is a multifaceted, millenniums-old discipline that spans physical, ethical, psychological and spiritual dimensions [Oct. 15]. In our mass-market Western world, those aspects of yoga have largely been jettisoned, and the physical is marketed as a hot new form of calisthenics. Used skillfully, the physical elements offer benefits such as enhanced flexibility, agility and body awareness. Used unskillfully, they can - not surprisingly - damage muscles and ligaments. Wise practitioners will proceed gently and carefully under a good teacher and eventually look beyond the physical to yoga's deeper potentials. Roger Walsh...
...community. Art defines a person and a society as a whole.”In spite of setbacks, the orchestra has managed to take on formidable musical challenges through the years.Yannatos has remained a champion of contemporary music, and believes in Classical music as a living art form, despite resistance from both more traditionally-minded orchestra members and audiences irritated with challenging contemporary music.Last year alone there were two world premieres, a work by Hsueh-Yung Shen ’73 and a cello concerto by Yannatos himself. This year, contemporary music is represented by the “Overture...
...those funds will be distributed. Harvard has already begun repairing sidewalks along North Harvard Street and Western Avenue and has promised to open an education center to provide free math and science tutoring by the spring. “We really need help from people and we need to form a working relationship with people who are part of that Harvard community,” said Harry Mattison who is a member of both the Harvard-Allston Task Force and the neighborhood assembly. Andrew D. Fine ’09, one of the event’s organizers, reiterated Mattison?...