Absurdist humor marks world premiere of Taylor's dance

SUJIN LIM / The Dartmouth Choreographer Paul Taylor, widely considered the master of modern dance, premiered his 130th work, "Now Playing," in the Moore Theater at the Hopkins Center last Tuesday.

BOOKED SOLID: Romantic self-help book offers fairy tale lessons

Courtesy of Simon & Schuster At my lovely editor's behest, I read something I probably wouldn't have chosen on my own this week.

Indie group Aa to headline FNR

Zantop play reopens a closed case

Courtesy of Jim Lowe, The Times Argus BURLINGTON, Vt.

Heiner Goebbels works to depict classic texts on stage

DOUG GONZALEZ / The Dartmouth You will never see me sing a cappella or DJ your next basement party, but two hours of composer and director Heiner Goebbels' musical staging of classic texts, performed at the Hopkins Center for the Arts this weekend, was simply unbearable for even the most musical among us. Goebbels' "I went to the house but did not enter" promised to be an engaging concert staged in a three-part literary tableaux, featuring the works of T.S.

Paul Taylor's ensemble premieres new dance at Hop

BOOKED SOLID: Art and evolution

Courtesy of theartinstinct.com After the blissful mind rot of spring break, I jolted my brain back into shape with a great, informative read this week that will please both the art snobs and bio nerds among us: "The Art Instinct" (Bloomsbury 2009) provides ample cocktail party conversation fodder for the right-brained and left-brained alike. In his new book, Denis Dutton, co-founder and editor of the go-to humanities web site Arts & Letters Daily, takes an innovative approach to aesthetics, demonstrating that the human desire for beauty is an innate trait that has evolved in us over thousands of generations. Laying the groundwork for his theory in terms of Darwinian principles and basic aesthetic philosophy from Hume and Kant, Dutton forges on to explain that "the art instinct" is a by-product of adaptations that are crucial for human survival. In doing so, Dutton undertakes the seemingly impossible task of proving that artistic taste -- that set of convictions, which seems to many of us to be the very definition of subjectivity -- is as pre-programmed as any other element of our genetic code. Dutton's book abounds with examples from other researchers who have studied the arts around the world.

AS SEEN ON: 'E.R.' has its swan song Thursday night

Courtesy of guardian.co.uk Blood.

New indie releases meet acclaim

Decemberists, Yeah Yeah Yeahs challenge listeners

IMDb creator foresees a revolution

The Dartmouth Last week at "South by Southwest," a hipster-chic arts festival in Austin, Texas, a man with the incongruously unassertive name of Col Needham stood before an audience and cheerfully prophesized the end of movie-watching as we know it.

Spheris Gallery exhibit uses mixed media to explore time

ANDREW FOUST / The Dartmouth Staff In her current exhibition at Hanover's Spheris Gallery, Shuli Sade uses mixed media -- including video, sound and photography -- to create pieces that delve into the unstoppable force of time and its undeniable role in our lives. "My main theme is kind of investigating time," Sade said.

Dance ensemble will perform Bokaer piece

Courtesy of newyorksocialdiary.com Two years after he was hired as the youngest professional dancer to work in the Merce Cunningham Dance Company at merely 18 years of age, Jonah Bokaer helped launch an initiative to provide affordable studio space for artists in New York City.

'Little Shop' delivers with minimal set design, energetic cast

Zeke Turner / The Dartmouth Senior Staff The back of the program for the Dartmouth theater department's latest musical, "Little Shop of Horrors," includes a special thank you "to ... an amazing cast for making it worth it to take a road trip to Virginia for a man-eating plant." Indeed, the musical would not have had the same overpowering intensity without the voracious plant puppet or the energetic cast, both of which commanded the attention of audiences this past weekend in the Hopkins Center's Bentley Theater. "Little Shop," based on the 1960 film of the same name, was originally composed by Alan Menken and written by the late Howard Ashman, who collaborated on Disney classics like "The Little Mermaid" (1989) and "Beauty and the Beast" (1991). The Dartmouth production was directed and choreographed by Chiara Klein '10, who chose to take on "Little Shop" because of its clever script and sharp comedic timing. "I could envision the musical being put on in Bentley," Klein said.