Arts & Culture

Charlie Robin, director of Edison Theatre, recommends the dancer-athletes of Diavolo. Diavolo is performing at the Touhill Center this Friday, Feb. 28, and Saturday, March 1.

A great party is no easy feat. In “Chacun à son goût (To each his own),” the decadent young charmer Prince Orlofsky reveals the secrets to choreographing a successful evening. On Feb. 28, soprano Kelly Pappageorge and the Washington University Symphony orchestra will perform Strauss’ famous aria, along with music of Bernstein and Dvořák.

Arny Nader creates large sculptural installations that feel fantastic and whimsical yet grounded in utilitarian purpose. Last fall, Nadler won a $20,000 artist fellowship from the Regional Arts Commission of Greater St. Louis. We sat down to discuss growing up in Chicago, restructuring the undergraduate majors and the malleability of steel.

Finland is renowned for its architecture and design culture. Peter MacKeith has spent much of his career engaging that culture — living in Finland, teaching there, working in design practice and writing about the work of contemporary practitioners. On Feb. 14, MacKeith was presented with the insignia of Knight, First Class, of the Order of the Lion of Finland.

With his round glasses, amused diction and stiff, patrician carriage, Harold Ramis (AB ’66), was the coolest nerd in the room, a deadpan bomb-thrower, an ironist for the ages. You were never sure if he was joking. That was half the joke.

What happens in your brain when you look at this Klimt painting? A lot more than you might ever guess, according to Nobel laureate neuroscientist Eric Kandel, who will explore the connection between art and the mind/brain in his talk, “The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind and Brain from Vienna 1900 to the Present” for the Assembly Series at 5 p.m. Monday, March 3, in Graham Chapel.

Acclaimed poet C.D. Wright, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry, will read from her work Thursday, Feb. 20. Wright is author of 12 collections, most recently “One With Others” (2010), which combines poetry and documentary evidence to portray her native Arkansas during the Civil Rights era.

Shinohara Kazua remains something of a cult figure. Although his work has inspired generations of architects, it has seldom been seen outside Japan. But this spring, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum presents “On the Thresholds of Space-Making,” the first U.S. museum show dedicated to the influential mathematician-turned-architect.

The Vanderhof home is filled with individualists, eccentric more than rugged, chasing assorted muses. Rooms run riot with dance rehearsals, printing presses, wild animals and small explosives. But then Alice falls in love with the son of a Wall Street executive. Can these two families — the free spirits and the moneyed snobs—ever reconcile?

Some WUSTL faculty members have received awards from the Fulbright Program for academic pursuits in areas ranging from architecture to education to medicine.