Arts & Culture

St. Louis’ Arianna String Quartet, widely hailed as among the nation’s finest chamber ensembles, will be joined by renowned pianist Seth Carlin, professor of music in Arts & Sciences, for a concert of music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Erno Dohnanyi and Robert Schumann.

Stanford classics professor Richard Martin discusses Homeric poetry as a performance art in Ancient Greece, comparing it to modern rap, in the annual Assembly Series Biggs lecture at 4 p.m. on Thursday, April 9 in Steinberg Hall.

Three prominent writers will examine “African American Literature Today” at 4 p.m. Wednesday, April 15, in Hurst Lounge. The discussion — sponsored by the African & African-American Studies Program and by the Center for the Humanities, both in Arts & Sciences — will focus on a pair of new anthologies, Best African American Essays 2009 and Best African American Fiction 2009, both published by Bantam Books.

Poet David Lehman, editor of The Best American Poetry series, will read from his work at 8 p.m. Thursday, April 2, for the Writing Program in Arts & Sciences. Lehman is the author of several collections of poems, including Poetry Forum: A Play Poem: A Pl’em (with Judith Hall, 2007), Jim and Dave Defeat the Masked Man (with James Cummins, 2006), When a Woman Loves a Man (2005), The Evening Sun (2002), The Daily Mirror: A Journal in Poetry (2000), Valentine Place (1996), Operation Memory (1990) and An Alternative to Speech (1986).

Fashion is fun, challenging, inspiring and everywhere. It is also hard work. Next week 11 seniors and seven juniors from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, home to the nation’s oldest four-year fashion design program, will present the fruit of their labors in the school’s 80th Annual Fashion Design Show at Lumière Place Casino & Hotels.

Tracy Davis, the Barber Professor of Performing Arts at Northwestern University and president of the American Society for Theatre Research, will present Washington University’s 2009 Helen Clanton Morrin Lecture at 4 p.m. Wednesday, April 1. Titled “The Witness Protection Program: Making Theatre, Everyday,” the talk is free and open to the public and sponsored by the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences.

Stalin’s death in 1953 marked the beginning of a cultural and political thaw that gave way to greater economic, educational and artistic freedoms in Soviet society. In Leningrad, a seminal performance in 1961 by two towering figures of the day—composer Andrey Volkonsky (1933-2008) and pianist Maria Yudina (1899-1970)— and an attendant program of music previously censored by Soviet rule, characterized the resulting new forms of musical expression. That concert will be replicated Monday, March 30, by the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences and the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra’s Community Partnership Program.

Doors that dance, chairs that twirl, a cage that doubles as a gymnast’s apparatus. Welcome to the world of Diavolo, the high-flying Los Angeles company known for examining the funny, frightening and unexpected ways individuals interact with their environments. Next week Diavolo will return to St. Louis and perform two shows for the Edison Theatre OVATIONS Series, as well as a special matinee for the ovations for young people series.

Haba na Haba (Swahili for “step by step”) is an internationally renowned Kenyan performance group that first formed in the slums of Nairobi, using acrobatics, music, dance and drama to raise awareness and educate their communities on topics such as HIV/AIDS, drug abuse, reproductive health, women’s issues and violence. They are visiting St. Louis through March 23.

Fourteen students from the Dance Program in the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences took part in the Central Region American College Dance Conference, held March 11 to 14 at Hendrix College in Conway, AZ. Adjudicators chose two works — Stuck in the Waiting by junior Eliotte Henderson and Falling Petals by lecturer Ting-Ting Chang, the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Dance — to be performed as part of the concluding Gala Concert.