“With depressingly few exceptions, performances are dull and lack vitality…
After years of trying to convince myself otherwise, I now feel sure that ballet is dying.”
-----Jennifer Homans, Apollo’s Angels
Is ballet dead? Has the art form evolved to depression? Jennifer Homans’s conclusion to her fascinating history of ballet, Apollo’s Angels, is worrying.
It appears that ballet’s pulse continues to beat strongly, however, especially with a Tchaikovsky defibrillator attached. So why are some dance commentators arguing that ballet is dying? And do they have a point?
“Ballet is dead”----“Ballet is dying” ---all ring tones of Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophical claim: “God is dead.” Headline grabbling, certainly. Yet can ballet be defined in such black and white terms? Surely it is more abstract, filled with shades of popular grey. ①
To start with, how do you define ballet? What is ballet today? Consider popular modern classics like Twyla Tharp’s In the Upper Room, where dancers wear pointy shoes and sneakers, combining contemporary and classical vocabulary together. Or closer to home, there is Graeme Murphy’s Swan Lake, which layers elements of Petipa’s choreography(编舞) with a contemporary theme and aesthetic. Many contemporary choreographers all embrace classical form and principles, then manipulate(操纵) the rules. ② .
The line between contemporary dance and ballet is vague. In an interview with The Telegraph (2015), British choreographer Mattew Bourne acknowledges that this “cross-fertilisation” between contemporary dance and ballet continues to grow, as evidenced by the rise in new commissions from contemporary choreographers at the Royal Ballet and English National Ballet. Referring to Homans’s book, Bourne believes what has changed is that “the dance forms are coming closer together”. Not dying, but merging. Reinventing. This has been the case amongst Australasian ballet companies for many years now. ③ .
Homans writes that ballet’s decline began after the passing of Ashton and Balanchine. Something ahs changed, certainly. A stylisic transition----from neo-classical to contemporary ballet----has occurred. ④
Our art form’s evolution has always been with extinction. Prominent dance critic with The New York Times, Alastair Macaulay, says: “ballet has died again and again over the centuries,” and yet, “phoenix-like, rose again from its ashes”. History shows there were periods where ballet hibernated and lacked popularity. This coincided with the art form’s changing forums.
So here is the irony: what sells best, still, are reproductions of Petipa’s classics. A season without a Tchaikovsky score is a financial risk. And without Nutcracker(《胡桃夹子》), half the ballet companies in North America would not exist. Admittedly, as a dancer, my favourite roles---Albrecht, Prince Siegfried and Romeo----were from the classical canon; I am a traditionalist at heart (who loves to be challenged by good contemporary ballets). A part of the charm behind classical repertoire, for me, was in reproducing the glories of past greats. Classical ballet’s framework supports the modern process of bench-marking.
Perhaps Jennifer Homans’s thoughts are not completely unfounded. Perhaps ballet is dying for some. Ballet’s evolution has been delayed by its audiences. And as Homans suggests in her epilogue, perhaps also by its creatives.
Now here is a bold prediction. In line with the Royal Ballet’s programming in Brisbane this year----of Christopher Wheeldon’s The Winter’s Tale, and Wayne MacGregor’s Woolf Works----over the next 20 years, ballet’s reliance on Petipa will decrease. Contemporary ballets and merge-styled ballets will produce their box-office influence ever more.
Why?
It is simple: our audiences will be ready for ballet to change again.
1.Why does the writer cite Jennifer Homans’s words at the beginning of the passage?
A. To support the writer’s viewpoint. B. To introduce the topic of the passage.
C. To highlight the theme of the passage D. To provide the background knowledge.
2.The sentence ‘Is this not ballet?” should be put in ______.
A. ① B. ②
C. ③ D. ④
3.Which of the following statements is a fact about ballet?
A. “Surely it is more abstract, filled with shades of popular grey.” (Para.3)
B. “The line between contemporary dance and ballet is vague.” (Para.5)
C. “Our art form’s evolution has always been with extinction.” (Para.7)
D. “What sells best, still, are reproductions of Petipa’s classics.” (Para.8).
4.According to Matthew Bourne, _____.
A. the dance forms remain unchanged
B. contemporary dance has reinvented classic ballet
C. ballet is experiencing growth and will continue to develop
D. a new form of ballet is widely accepted among Australians
5.The writer takes himself as an example in Paragraph 8 in order to show _____.
A. classics should be promoted
B. classics are still of great significance
C. classical ballet’s framework is out of date
D. contemporary ballets attract more audiences
6.What may be the audiences’ attitude to the change of ballet?
A. Supportive. B. Arbitrary.
C. Critical. D. Concerned
Listen carefully to the footsteps in the family home, especially if it has wooden floors, and you can probably work out who it is that is walking about. The features most commonly used to identify people are faces, voices, finger prints and retinal scans. But their “behavioural biometrics”, such as the way they walk, are also giveaways.
Researchers have, for several years, used video cameras and computers to analyse people’s gaits, and are now quite good at it. But translating such knowledge into a practical identification system can be tricky----especially if that system is supposed to be hidden. Cameras are often visible, are hard to set up, requi5re good lighting and may have their view blocked by other people. So a team led by Krikor Ozanyan of the University of Manchester, in England and Patricia Scully of the National University of Ireland, in Galway have been looking for a better way to recognize gait. Their answer: pressure-sensitive mats.
In themselves, such mats are nothing new. They have been part of security systems for donkeys’ years. But Dr. Ozanyan And Dr. Scully use a complex version that can record the amount of pressure applied in different places as someone walks across it. These measurements form a pattern unique to the walker. Dr. Ozanyan and Dr. Scully therefore turned, as is now common for anything to do with pattern recognition, to an Artificial Intelligence system that uses machine learning to recognize such patterns.
It seems to work. In a study published earlier this year the two researchers tested their system on a database of footsteps trodden by 127 different people. They found that its error rate in identifying who was who was a mere 0.7%. And Dr. Scully says that even without a database of footsteps to work with the system can determine someone’s sex---women and men, with wide and narrow pelvises(骨盆) respectively, walk in different ways,---- and guess, with reasonable accuracy, a subject’s age.
A mat-based gait-recognition system has the advantage that it would work in any lighting conditions----even pitch-darkness. And though it might fail to identify someone if, say, she was wearing stilettos and had been entered into the database while wearing trainers, it would be very hard to fool it by imitating the gait of an individual who was allowed admission to a particular place.
The latest phase of Dr. Ozanyan’s and Dr. Scully’s project is a redesign of the mat. The old mats contained individual pressure sensors. The new ones contain optical fibres(光纤). Light-emitting diodes(二极管) distributed along two neighbouring edges of a mat transmit light into the fibres. Sensors on the opposite edges( and thus the opposite ends of the optical fibres) measure how much of that light is received. Any pressure applied to part of the mat causes a distortion(变形) in the fibres and a consequent change in the amount of light transmitted. Both the location and amount of change can be plotted and analyzed by the machine-learning system.
Dr. Ozanyan says that the team have built a demonstration fibre-optic mat, two meters long and a metre wide, using materials that cost ￡100($130). They are now talking to companies about commercializing it. One application might be in health care, particularly for the elderly. A fibre-optic mat installed in a nursing home or an old person’s own residence could monitor changes in an individual’s gait that warn certain illnesses. That would provide early warning of someone being at greater risk of falling over, say, or of their cognition becoming damaged.
Gait analysis might also be used ass a security measure in the workplace, monitoring access to restricted areas, such as parts of military bases, server farms or laboratories dealing with harmful materials. In these cases, employees would need to agree to their gaits being scanned, just as they would agree to the scanning of their faces or retinas for optical security systems.
Perhaps the most fascinating use of gait-recognition mats, though, would be in public places, such as airports. For that to work, the footsteps of those to be recognized would need to have been stored in a database, which would be harder to arrange than the collection of mugshots and fingerprints that existing airport security systems rely on. Some people, however, might volunteer for it. Many aircrew or pre-registered frequent flyers would welcome anything that speeded up one of the most tiresome parts of modern travel.
1.Camera-based gait recognition fails to come into wide use, because _____.
a. it’s not easy to find the cameras
b. finger print recognition is still popular
c. sometimes the cameras can be covered
d. it’s a waste of money to fix the equipment
e. good lighting conditions can’t be guaranteed
f. it’s difficult to set up the system.
A. acf B. bde
C. cdf D. cef
2.Which of the following statements is TRUE according to Paragraph 6-8?
A. The new mats function greatly with individual pressure sensors built in.
B. The new mats will be likely to work better with enough pressure.
C. The elderly are cured of their diseases with the monitor of the fibre-optic.
D. Restricted areas are accessible to those with their gaits scanned beforehand.
3.What does “it” refer to in Paragraph 5?
A. The mat-based gait-recognition system B. The gait stored in the database
C. The advantage of working in any light condition. D. The admission to a particular place.
4.What’s the best title of the passage?
A. Listen to your footsteps B. Applaud pattern recognition
C. Love the way you walk D. Better the mats you step on
That competition keeps prices down is well known. But it is hard to measure by just how much, because prices vary for all sorts of reasons, from differences in labour costs and rents to taxes. Rising to the challenge is a new paper in The Economic Journal by Giacomo Calzolari, Andrea Ichino, Francesco Manaresi and Viki Nellas, economists at the European University Institute, Bologna University and the Italian central bank. They looked at pharmacies(药房) and specifically at customers who may be particularly easy to rip off: new parents.
Using data for 2007 to 2010 covering about a fifth of pharmacies in Italy, the researchers measured the way in which prices of hygiene products for babies changed as the number of babies varied. They took advantage of a peculiar law from the 1960s, according to which regions with at most 7,500 people are allowed just one pharmacy (supposedly to keep the quality of services high). They compared prices in places with populations just below this threshold, and just above.
The products studied included some 3,000 varieties of shampoos, bath foams, baby wipes, creams and so on. Many are also used by adults on themselves. Some people, for example, prefer sun-cream labeled “for children” because of its high level of protection. When raising prices for these products, even a pharmacist with a monopoly(垄断) must consider the risk that adult users will switch to products that are not aimed at children. But a rise in the number of babies, and hence buyers who are parents, could tip the scales towards price increases. By contrast, the pharmacist should already be charging as much as parents are willing to pay for products without adult users, such as nappies.
The scholars found that pharmacists raised prices when there were more new parents----but only in regions with a single pharmacy, and not for nappies. In monopoly areas a doubling of the number of babies from one month to the next (not unusual in a small population) coincided with a 5% increase in the price of the basket of baby-hygiene products.
The study is timely. Italy’s government has started to loosen some of the many restrictions that stop competition in the pharmacy sector (though not yet the one that the researchers relied on). But such regulations are plentiful in many other lines of business, and not just in Italy. The consumers who pay the price are often those who find it hardest to travel to shop around----for example, people with crying babies on their hands.
1.What’s the purpose of the study?
A. To review the function of the special law for pharmacies.
B. To make clear the relation between competition and prices.
C. To collect the information on pharmacy business in Italy.
D. To gather the data on hygiene products for babies in Italy.
2.“tip the scales” in Paragraph 3 means “_____”.
A. Push the move B. Keep the level
C. Control the rise D. Break the balance
3.The government’s new measures will greatly benefit _____.
A. pharmacy owners B. local merchants
C. new parents D. adult users
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I don’t talk with passengers on airplanes. My flight time is ______ for turning the pages of a good book. That changed, ______, on a flight from Tampa to Newark when I sat next to her ---the lady in Seat 26B.
After ______ my seat, I opened my book.
Then she ______me. “And where are you traveling to? Home or on vacation?”
“Heading home,” I closed my book. “You?”
“Oh, home, too,” she began, “I come from a(n) ______ family. Nine kids! I’m the oldest ______ alive---eighty-nine!” And then she laughed, joyfully. I wouldn’t have ______ she was nearly ninety, though.
“Good book?” she asked, pointing to my paperback.
“Yes. Do you read?”
“Oh, I don’t have ______ to read,” she replied.
I’m sixty years younger than 26B, yet she’s the one who’s too busy to read? What on earth could she be doing with her ______?
“Well,” she began, “I work at Costco. There are ______ nice people. There are also the ______ ones, but I enjoy them, too!” She laughed again, and I ______ her ability to not let negative energies affect her ______. I wondered how I could ______ that, too.
“What’s your secret,” I asked, “to sounding so ______ and healthy?”
“My husband died ten years ago,” she said, ______. “I thought to myself, I’m not going to just ______! That’s when I got my Costco job. I believe in being active.”
“Life is so good,” she ______, “I’m just excited every day to live it!”
I wanted that plane ride to reroute to California so I would have more time to learn about her energy for life. I became more ______ with each mile we flew.
I told myself, if someone who is eighty-nine years old can choose to live her life with such ______ and passion, I can, too. If you have the drive!
1.A. reserved B. adjusted C. squeezed D. limited
2.A. thus B. instead C. though D. rather
3.A. slipping into B. searching for C. clearing up D. settling into
4.A. came to B. bent to C. turned to D. pointed to
5.A. complex B. nuclear C. wealthy D. extended
6.A. yet B. even C. still D. ever
7.A. predicted B. admitted C. guessed D. doubted
8.A. time B. patience C. abilities D. chances
9.A. days B. talent C. books D. interest
10.A. really B. actually C. seemingly D. probably
11.A. learned B. weird C. ambitious D. innocent
12.A. weighed B. admired C. realized D. identified
13.A. aim B. fate C. taste D. mood
14.A. obtain B. manage C. control D. imagine
15.A. academic B. realistic C. positive D. creative
16.A. sadly B. coldly C. seriously D. peacefully
17.A. hang out B. sit around C. step back D. get away
18.A. responded B. continued C. recalled D. declared
19.A. astonished B. satisfied C. delighted D. inspired
20.A. desire B. wisdom C. courage D. confidence
---There are probably aliens living here on earth.
---_____! I can’t believe you said that.
A. Come on B. Forget it
C. Go ahead D. Allow me
