Welcome, and welcome back. For those of you about to complete The Best Week of Your Life, I hope that you managed to get some sleep in the process. You've only just begun a nonstop four-year (give or take a year) adventure that will leave you wondering why you ever protested naptime in kindergarten.
If last month's New Year's celebration is too hazy to recall, don't worry: You can celebrate all over again at this week's Lunar New Year festival. Vibrant choreography and diverse performances almost make up for so-so dancing in Rice's annual Lunar New Year show, which celebrates the Chinese New Year and features performances by all of the East Asian clubs on campus. The show offers a diversity of cultures represented - Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese and Tibetan routines are featured - and acts offered, as the program is composed of both traditional and contemporary dances, martial arts, a cappella singing, a fashion show, a magic show and, of course, lion and dragon dances.The show's opening act is a traditional Chinese fan dance, in which performers use large, beautiful pink and green fans adorned with sequins to emulate the fluttering of butterflies as "Serenity," a contemplative traditional piece, plays. The variety of movements and formations of the four dancers keep the routine interesting, and the performers execute fanned motions with strong arms while showcasing some nice leaps, but awkward turns and obvious blunders in arm and leg placement are impossible to ignore in such a small group of performers.
Nearly two months after the opening of the Barbara and David Gibbs Recreation and Wellness Center, the Rice Dance Theatre has finally received the opportunity to showcase its talent in the facility's state-of-the-art dance studio. After one viewing, it is easy to see that the wait, while tedious, has been worth it.In preparing for "In Habit," the studio needed only minor tweaking to transform the Rec Center's dance studio from practice space to performance space. Come the night of the performance, the room finds itself adorned with black partitions lining the walls and black material covering the wood floor. Four light trees are employed on either side of the performance space; though there is only flexibility in light intensity, not color, the space is well lit and the company uses well-timed light fading to enhance their performances. Dancers emerge from the partitions and perform in the round - chairs surround the performance space on both sides, and there is not a bad seat in the studio.
In an effort to increase talks by notable speakers at the residential colleges, Martel College hosted Ambassador Swashpawan Singh last Thursday. Speaking to an audience of about 30, Singh, the former Indian ambassador to the United Nations, gave a talk entitled "The India Story: More Fact than Fiction," where he discussed his country's current success, in addition to its development and obstacles to becoming a world power.
Over a month into the school year, it is clear the new inhabitants of Duncan College and McMurtry College are not the only ones experiencing challenges. While certain students had to deal with malfunctioning air-conditioning units and nonworking locks, certain members of the custodial staff have had to deal with changes to their workload. Due to Housing and Dining's redistribution of custodial staff from Martel College, Jones College and Brown College to McMurtry and Duncan, H&D is currently in the process of transitioning its staff to a new college dynamic.
While most people's TV time this weekend centered on Sunday's 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, I instead turned my attention to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame induction ceremony on Friday evening. And while nearly everyone's Facebook and Twitter feeds were clogged with cries of outrage as Kanye West stole Taylor Swift's moment, the NBA world was abuzz following Michael Jordan's speech.In contrast to his Hall of Fame classmates - David Robinson, Vivian Stringer, Jerry Sloan and John Stockton - who focused on thanking the people who had helped them rise to this moment, Jordan used his moment to taunt those who had motivated him during his playing days. As Jordan's speech was the finale for the evening, all who watched were left with a bitter taste in their mouths.
To many, science and religion are polar opposites. Dr. Francis Collins, former director of the Human Genome Project and a devout Christian, hoped to dispel this notion of absolute separation by speaking to the Rice and Houston community at the Veritas Forum Wednesday evening in the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management's Shell Auditorium. Over 1,300 people attended the forum, more than half of whom were Rice students and faculty. Five overflow sites were made available for those who were not able to view the event in person.
To some, the thought of "copy" and "coffee" becoming homophones might be a terrifying thought. To linguists, it is one of many interesting observations presented at the 37th annual New Ways of Analyzing Variation conference, which was hosted by the Linguistics Department the weekend of Nov. 8.Linguists from around the globe gathered at NWAV to discuss topics pertinent to the field of sociolinguistics - which looks at the ways in which language variation carries social or cultural meaning. Although the conference, which was co-sponsored by the University of Texas at San Antonio, was held primarily at Hotel ZaZa in the Museum District, several events were held on the Rice campus. These included an eye-tracking workshop in the phonetics lab in the Department of Linguistics, two meetings in Herzstein Hall Amphitheater and a grad student party at Valhalla.
In addition to the outward changes to the Rice Athletic Department after the hiring of Athletic Director Chris Del Conte, most notably improvements to Reckling Park and Autry Court, changes are also occurring from within the Athletic Department, as Suzanne Boué (Wiess '91) has been named Assistant Athletic Director for Student-Athlete Development. This new position will consolidate several tasks aimed toward Rice student-athlete support previously accomplished by various athletic department members. "Pieces of what I'm doing have been done in the Athletic Department before, but all by people who have an awful lot on their plate already," Boué said.
