Author: Liam Otten

St. Louis fashion lovers packed Holmes Lounge May 1 for Fashion & Flash, the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ 81st Annual Fashion Design Show. The fully choreographed, Paris-style extravaganza featured dozens of models wearing scores of outfits — ranging from coats and cocktail dresses to sportswear, dress groups and ballgowns — by 13 junior and senior fashion majors.

The Washington University Opera will thread together nine famous musical endings for a concert titled Final Moments at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, May 7 and 8. “The idea is to perform a variety of pieces that all have something to do with conclusions and final moments,” says director Jolly Stewart, who is retiring at the end of the semester.

Over the last several years, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum has built an exceptional collection of works by an international array of contemporary artists who both examine and expand the parameters of traditional photography. Beginning Friday, May 7, the museum will showcase this collection in Focus on Photography: Recent Acquisitions. The exhibition will include works by historical figures who helped define early photographic standards as well as by contemporary photographers working within what art historian George Baker has termed “photography’s expanded field.”

Darwin is a magical dinosaur, built from scratch in the workshop of kindly Professor Henslow. But Darwin is also a wild creature who must tame his primitive instincts by learning love and compassion. Welcome to Darwin, an inventive and heart-warming multi-media performance by CORBIAN Visual Arts and Dance, which will bring the show to Edison Theatre May 8 as part of the ovations for young people series. 

How should the United States present itself abroad? A diplomatic question, and a political one, but also a question for 18 students from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts who are living and working in Helsinki, Finland. Recently the students — part of a semester-long study-abroad studio organized by the Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design — posed that question to Bruce J. Oreck, the U.S. ambassador to Finland. 

“A runway show is the highest level at which fashion can perform,” says Robin Verhage-Abrams, associate professor in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. On May 1, 13 students from the Sam Fox School — home to the nation’s oldest four-year fashion design program — will rise to that challenge with the school’s 81st Annual Fashion Design Show. Titled “Fashion & Flash,” the fully choreographed, Paris-style extravaganza will begin at 8 p.m. Saturday, May 1, in the university’s Holmes Lounge.

Seven architecture faculty from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts are among five teams that have advanced to the design phase of the international competition to reinvigorate the area around St. Louis’ iconic Gateway Arch. At 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 28, representatives from all five teams will meet with the public to discuss how they plan to approach the competition’s goals as they begin developing their proposals.

The Washington University Symphony Orchestra and the Washington University Concert Choir will join forces at 3 p.m. Sunday, April 25, for the 2010 Chancellor’s Concert. The annual performance, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences and will highlight the work of French composer Francis Poulenc. 

“The myth is a public dream.” So argues playwright Mary Zimmerman in Metamorphoses, her hypnotic, Tony Award-winning adaptation of myths by the Roman poet Ovid. Beginning Friday, April 23 and for two consecutive weekends, the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences will present Metamorphoses, perhaps the most acclaimed theatrical work of the last decade, as its spring Mainstage production. 

Critic Marjorie Perloff, a Visiting Hurst Professor in the Department of English in Arts & Sciences, will present a lecture titled “Unoriginal Genius: Poetry by Other Means in the New Century” at 8 p.m. Wednesday, April 14. The talk — adapted from the opening chapter of her forthcoming book of the same title — will examine the practices of allusion and quotation in modern poetry.