Word: socialism
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...that produced it. When it opened, in 1957, Broadway musicals were almost all comedies, set in sentimental fantasylands, whether exotic (The King and I), nostalgic (The Music Man) or contemporary but cartoonish (Guys and Dolls). Here, instead, was an effort to use the musical form to explore serious contemporary social issues: urban slums, race prejudice, the scourge (ah, the '50s!) of "juvenile delinquency." It was also a groundbreaking marriage of pop entertainment and "high culture": choreography that featured classical ballet moves, a score with elements of modernist art music, and a story whose tragic arc was as close to grand...
...this West Side Story revival worth seeing? Sure it is. The show's daring, its social message, its innovative use of dance, are still impressive - for both a West Side Story veteran and a virgin. But unlike some other recent Broadway comebacks (the revival of Hair, for example), I didn't come away feeling that a great show had had its place in Broadway history triumphantly renewed. I left the theater with the gnawing sense that a revered Broadway classic may have seen better days...
...tour operator has found a way around the problem, by bringing visitors straight into the living rooms of some of the city's best jazz musicians. Part township tour, part music- and social-history crash course, and part intimate jam session, the four-hour Cape Town Jazz Safari, developed by a local outfit called Coffeebeans Routes, aims to overcome the city's notorious social fragmentation by making its rich cultural diversity more accessible. (See 10 things to do in Chicago...
...Bequelin and others say the Communist Party's profound fear of the impact of the world economic crisis on China's already fragile social stability has strengthened party hardliners. They argue that the lack of international response to Beijing's suppression of political dissent before and during the Olympic Games - the jailing and intimidation of dissidents like Hu Jia, for example - makes even more stringent repression now the government's best option. Sinologists say a series of sensitive anniversaries that fall this year - including the 20th anniversary of the crushing of demonstrations in Tiananmen Square and the 60th anniversary...
...while social unrest itself is unlikely to threaten the Communist Party's dominance, with the Hu administration so heavily invested in social harmony, it could become vulnerable to infighting if grassroots unrest gets significantly worse. Scholar Min Xinpei of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington D.C. argues that the real danger for China is likely to come from discord among the top leadership rather than street demonstrations. As Pei writes in a recent Foreign Policy article, internal Party turmoil could render authorities "less capable of containing social instability and thus creating a vicious cycle of events that could...