Arts & Culture

The Washington University Symphony Orchestra and the Washington University Chamber Choir will present the 2005 Chancellor’s Concert at 3 p.m. Sunday, May 1, in Graham Chapel. The program, which includes works by Hector Berlioz, Felix Mendelssohn and Ottorino Respighi, will highlight two recently acquired instruments — a new harp and a new grand piano — as well as Graham Chapel’s newly restored Roland Quest organ.

Eric WoolseyChristena Doggrell in “Six Seconds in Charlack”For St. Louis commuters, the small inner-ring suburb of Charlack, Mo., passes in the blink of an eye, its borders marked by a pair of signs set only a few hundred yards apart along I-170. Yet as Brian Golden’s Six Seconds in Charlack reminds us, sometimes an instant is enough to change a life. The drama — winner of Washington University’s 2004 A.E. Hotchner Playwriting Competition — will be presented by the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences April 28 to May 1.

The Department of Art History and Archaeology in Arts & Sciences will present Exploring the History of Art, a symposium honoring Mark S. Weil, Ph.D., at 2:30 p.m. Friday, April 22, in the Ann W. Olin Women’s Building. Weil, the E. Desmond Lee Professor for Collaboration in the Arts as well as director of the Sam Fox Arts Center and Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, is retiring this June. He has been associated with Washington University for 47 years.

Courtesy photo*Sacred Music, Sacred Dance*Monks from Tibet’s legendary Drepung Loseling monastery will present The Mystical Arts of Tibet: Sacred Music, Sacred Dance at Washington University in St. Louis’ Edison Theatre April 29 and 30. The concert — presented by the Edison Theatre OVATIONS! Series — will offer a rare opportunity to experience temple music and dance from one of the world’s most ancient sacred traditions, as performed by monks for whom these traditions remain a way of life.

Pianist Seth Carlin, professor of music in Arts & Sciences, will dedicate the music department’s new grand piano in Graham Chapel with a concert of works by Robert Schumann (1810-1856) and Clara Schumann (1819-1896).

It will integrate teaching techniques based on the work of modern choreographer Lester Horton with a variety of body-friendly concepts.

WilliamsAcclaimed poet C.K. Williams will read from his work at 4 p.m. Friday, April 22, as part of Washington University’s Writing Program Spring Reading Series. Williams is the author of numerous books of poetry, including The Singing (2003), winner of the National Book Award; Repair (1999), winner of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize; and Flesh and Blood (1987), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Soprano Debra Hillabrand, a master’s candidate in vocal performance in Washington University’s Department of Music in Arts & Sciences, will present a graduate voice recital at 3 p.m. Sunday, April 24. The program includes music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Charles Ives as well as the gypsy songs of Johannes Brahms and Antonín Dvořák.

Joe Angeles/WUSTL Photo ServicesWedding gown by Barbara MoranThe Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis will present The 76th Annual Fashion Design Show at Saint Louis Galleria Sunday, May 1. The fully choreographed, Paris-style extravaganza will feature dozens of professional and volunteer models wearing more than 100 outfits created by 13 seniors and five juniors from the school’s fashion design program.

A sociocultural anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis spent 18 months in a Mexican convent in an attempt to understand young women’s motivations for leaving their homes, friends, school and independence to become a nun. Rebecca J. Lester, Ph.D., assistant professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences, was also interested in understanding “what goes on emotionally, psychologically and spiritually with these women as they try to decide if they should pledge themselves eternally to Christ and the church.” Lester found while doing her fieldwork at the convent from 1994-95 that the more interesting question was “what kept these women there, day after day?” In her new book, “Jesus in Our Wombs: Embodying Modernity in a Mexican Convent,” released April 5, Lester sets out to explain the force of “the call.”