Author: Liam Otten

They’ve shaken Shakespeare, humiliated Hollywood and affronted all the great books. Now the Reduced Shakespeare Company—those emperors of editing, those sultans of summary, those bad boys of abbreviation—is back and ready to tackle its most fearsome opponent yet: Santa Claus.

Mary Lou’s Mass is like a prayer on stage: a spirited homily rooted in the southern church, an uplifting sermon on life’s trials and ecstasies. On Nov. 30-Dec. 2, students from the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences will perform excerpts from this groundbreaking collaboration between choreographer Alvin Ailey and jazz pianist Mary Lou Williams as part of Rootedness, Mobility and Migration, the 2012 Washington University Dance Theatre concert.

In the early 20th century, Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso invented Cubism and shook the foundations of Western art. But in the 1930s, as the rise of fascism brought new urgency to questions of aesthetics and politics, Braque’s fractured still lifes and bourgeois interiors remained emphatically inward-looking. Yet Braque’s painting was not as separate from outside events as Braque might have it, argues Georges Braque and the Cubist Still Life, 1928-1945, the first major U.S. museum exhibition dedicated to the artist in 16 years. ​

Angelina toils away for her two preening stepsisters. But when Prince Ramiro visits the household, disguised as a mere valet, it is love at first sight. In La Cenerentola, Gioachino Rossini offers a brisk, witty and emphatically non-supernatural variation on the traditional Cinderella story. On Nov. 15-16, the Washington University Opera Workshop will present excerpts from La Cenerentola and four other works in the 560 Music Center.

In the United States, packaging makes up one third of municipal solid waste. But rather than merely recycling such materials, a recent student-led project — involving the School of Medicine, the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts and the Environmental Health & Saftey area — is working to transform them into art.

In 1827, a young giraffe named Zarafa was shipped from the Sudan to Paris, where her arrival caused an immediate sensation. That true history forms the basis of Zarafa, an animated French film that combines Zarafa’s story with that of Maki, a 10-year-old escaped slave. This weekend, the Center for the Humanities and the Program in Film & Media Studies will screen Zarafa as part of their Ninth Annual Children’s Film Showcase.

Sandra Brennan, longtime assistant to the dean of the Sam Fox School Design & Visual Arts, died at her home in Webster Groves Monday, Oct. 29, following a long illness. She was 73. 

To be a great university, WUSTL needs to be a good neighbor. That’s the policy that guides Rose Windmiller and her colleagues in the Office of Government and Community Relations. “It’s important that we maintain good relationships with our neighbors and those in the St. Louis area,” says Windmiller, assistant vice chancellor. “The long-term health of the area is vitally important to the university. Faculty and staff live here. Our students live here.”

Groundbreakers Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane had a 17-year partnership, interrupted only by Zane’s death in 1988, that was arguably the most productive in contemporary dance. On Nov. 16-17, the company they formed will return to St. Louis with Body Against Body, a retrospective of groundbreaking duets.

It’s not every day you get to play with the greats. On Oct. 20, famed trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra — arguably the nation’s finest jazz big band — joined the St. Louis Symphony for a performance of Marsalis’ Swing Symphony. The day before, Marsalis and Co. visited WUSTL’s 560 Music Center to conduct a clinic with students from the East St. Louis High School Jazz Band.