A modern dance company with a long tradition and an inclination for the theatrical comes to the small space at the top of the Kennedy Center. The evening begins with Jiří Kyliàn's sweet and knowing Evening Songs (1987). Next is the world premiere of Jonathan Riedel's The Ubiquitous Elephant, an amusing comic piece inspired by the phantasmagorical works of Edward Gorey. A offbeat visitor injects some mirth and death into a brocaded household.

A suite from A Choreographic Offering (1964/2005), choreographed by José Limón and staged by Carla Maxwell, presents variations on movements from ten of Doris Humphrey's works from the first half of the twentieth century. Kathryn Alter turns in a sprightly jig for a solo and Brenna Monroe-Cook performs a stately turn. A rethink of the men's raspberry-colored costumes is in order, unfortunately: they show sweat too easily, letting us know how hard the guys are working.

After intermission the company presents a dance by Lar Lubovitch, Recordare (Remember) (2005), a celebration of the Mexican Day of the Dead. This entertaining burlesque of death and remembrance, set to a rousing score by Elliot Goldenthal (from his Juan Darien: A Carnival Mass), features Francisco Ruvalcaba as the Harlequin-like dancing skeleton who presides over the festivities.

posted: 11:40:52 PM  

The first new symbol of the International Phonetic Alphabet in 12 years has been approved: "a right hook v" to represent the labiodental flap, used in 70 languages of central and southeastern Africa. The symbol looks like a lower-case V thumbing a ride.

(Thanks to Languagehat.)

posted: 11:08:41 PM  

Series of big tables comparing syntaxes in various programming languages. This would have been useful to have back in the 90s when I was designing XPL, which was a proprietary language for reporting and general business programming in a client-server environment. We called it a 4GL in those days. The company (Fairfax Software Corp., then Magna Software Corp.) is long gone, and has left behind barely a shred of online documentation of its existence.

(Thanks to robot wisdom.)

posted: 3:04:00 PM