Author: Liam Otten

In 1958, Alvin Ailey and a small group of dancers staged a performance at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. The concert helped revolutionize perceptions of African-American dancers, and led to the founding of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre. Next week, Sylvia Waters, a former principal dancer with the company, will be on campus as part of the Alvin Ailey Legacy Residency, hosted by the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences.

In drama as in life, there is what we say, and then there is what other people hear. On Sept. 28 and 29, three young playwrights will put their words to the test as part of “The Hotch,” WUSTL’s annual A.E. Hotchner Playwriting Festival.

In Modern Life, her third book of poems, Matthea Harvey offers a whirling, riffing, buoyantly ironic take on post-9/11 America. At 8 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 27, Harvey, the Visiting Hurst Professor of Creative Writing at Washington University in St. Louis, will read from her work for The Writing Program in Arts & Sciences.

What is the state of the humanities? How are they taught, what do they teach us, and how do they serve the public good? Earlier this month, cultural leaders from across the state gathered at the Missouri History Museum to discuss “The Importance of the Humanities and Social Sciences for Public Life.” Convened by WUSTL’s Gerald Early, the meeting was the third in a series of regional forums presented by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The employees are getting restless. Trapped in a nameless, New York company, they are buffeted by Orwellian management-speak, inter-office sabotage and inappropriate contact. And then the Firings begin. Welcome to Personal Days, the acclaimed corporate satire by fiction writer Ed Park, who will read from his work Thursday, Sept. 20, for the Writing Program in Arts & Sciences.

Pianist and conductor William Schatzkamer, professor of music in Arts & Sciences, died Wednesday, Sept. 12, of congestive heart failure at his home in Olivette. He was 96.

No Child Left Behind was the signature education bill of the Bush administration. No Child… is an award-winning one-woman play by Nilaja Sun, who spent eight years teaching in the New York City public schools. From Sept. 21-30, The Black Rep will revive its acclaimed production of this Obie Award-winning play in WUSTL’s Edison Theatre.

F=Gm1m2/d2. Well. Of course it does. Newton’s Universal Law of Gravity is a pillar of physics, a monument of mathematics, a timeless, unchanging tribute to scientific reasoning. Tell it all to Leo, when his world goes suddenly, inexplicably topsy-turvy. On Oct. 5 and 6, Edison will present Leo, the newest creation from Berlin’s Circle of Eleven, as part of its fall Ovations Series.

Tenor Kyle Erdos-Knapp, whose recent performance as Tobias in Opera Theatre of St. Louis’ production of Sweeney Todd “nearly stole the evening” (KMOX), will return to St. Louis to present Franz Schubert’s beloved song cycle Die schöne Müllerin. The performance, which begins at 3 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 16, is the annual Liederabend sponsored by WUSTL’s departments of Music and Germanic Languages and Literatures, both in Arts & Sciences.

Public art is a tricky beast. Sometimes you get the Gateway Arch or Citygarden or Laumeier Sculpture Park. Sometimes you don’t. The key is integration, says Leslie Markle, who recently joined the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum as its inaugural curator for public art.