Arts & Culture

The Washington University Opera will present Lee Hoiby’s A Month in the Country — based on the play by Ivan Turgenev — at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, March 18 and 19. The piece is something of a lost gem in the world of opera: first adapted in 1964 for the New York City Opera, under the title Natalia Petrovna, it was revised in 1980 but had gone years without a performance until last December, when the Manhattan School of Music launched a well-received production.

HackerAward-winning poet Marilyn Hacker will read from her work at 7 p.m. Friday, March 18, at Washington University’s Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. The author of 11 books of poetry and essays, Hacker is a cancer survivor and prominent lesbian activist as well as an influential literary editor and a gifted translator. Much of her work details her own struggles with breast cancer and the loss of friends to AIDS. The talk sponsored by The Center for the Humanities and The Writing Program, both in Arts & Sciences, in conjunction with the Kemper Art Museum’s Inside Out Loud: Women’s Health in Contemporary Art.

Sherman Alexie, a writer known for his poetry, novels, short fiction and screenplays, will deliver the Buder Center for American Indian Studies Lecture for the Washington University Assembly Series at 11 a.m. Wednesday, March 16. His talk, “Without Reservations: An Urban Indian’s Comic, Poetic and Highly Irreverent Look at the World,” will be held in Graham Chapel, located just north of Mallinckrodt Student Center (6445 Forsyth Blvd.) on the Washington University Hilltop Campus. The talk is free and open to the public.

CarlinWashington University’s Eliot Trio will highlight late piano trios by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Johannes Brahms at 8 p.m. Tuesday, March 15, in the auditorium of Uncas A. Whitaker Hall for Biomedical Engineering. The Eliot Trio consists of Seth Carlin, professor of music and director of the piano program in Washington University’s Department of Music in Arts & Sciences; David Halen, concertmaster for the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra; and guest cellist Michael Haber, professor of music at the University of Akron.

File PhotoHundreds of college dancers from across the Midwest will visit Washington University March 3-6 as part of the American College Dance Festival Association’s (ACDFA) 2005 Central Region Festival. One of 10 regional ACDFA events, the Central Region Festival brings together approximately 300 student and 50 faculty dancers representing 20 colleges and universities from nine states, along with nationally renowned choreographers David Dorfman, Donald McKayle and Trinette Singleton, who will serve as adjudicators.

Thirteen junior and senior fashion design students will off show their latest couture creations at the Feb. 24 event.

Photo by Shawn G. HenryPowellPoet D.A. Powell, a finalist for this year’s National Book Critics’ Circle Award in poetry, will read from his work at 8 p.m. Thursday, March 3, as part of Washington University’s Writing Program Spring Reading Series.

The City as Subject: Urban Books, on view in Olin Library Special Collections through Feb. 21, features 56 artists books whose subject is the city. Sixteen of the books were created by students as part of the interdisciplinary course “Urban Books: Imag(in)ing St. Louis,” which Lima and Harper co-taught last fall thanks to a grant from the Sam Fox Arts Center.

WUSTL Photo ServicesSchool of Art 2004 Fashion ShowJunior and senior fashion design students from the Washington University School of Art will show their latest couture creations at “Gowns in the Gallery” Thursday, Feb. 24.

Benjamin Allen, a music major in Arts & Sciences, will present a senior honors recital at 8 p.m. Friday, Feb. 25, at Grace United Methodist Church. The concert, which is free and open to the public, reflects three distinct areas that Allen has pursued at Washington University: composition, conducting and trombone.