News_and_interest

If you took a trip down to Tisch School of the Arts to watch dance classes, you might be surprised to find a red head teaching Chinese dance to a class of mostly Asians. Aly Rose is a well known dancer and choreographer based in New York who honed her skills in China. Having lived there for over 12 years, is fluent in Mandarin. She is also the first Westerner to graduate from the Beijing Dance Academy, Asia's finest dance institution. 

Her art is called "human architecture" and her most recent piece is called ONE.Thirty harnessed dancers, suspended by pencil thin, moving, computer operated cables, perform in mid-air. Together, the dancers create one immense - and constantly shifting shape in the sky. Yet, as Rose points out, "There's never one person who's moving the same as another. It's a symbol of the relationship between the individual and the collective. Just as we are on this planet, together. Not only are we interdependent, but also our actions and beliefs affect others. As a Baha'i, the concept of oneness is something I wanted to explore."

ONE is scheduled to have its premier this July, at the Shanghai Expo.

The situation for Bahá’ís in Iran is still dire, but you can make a difference. A resolution condemning the Islamic Republic for its treatment of Bahá’ís just passed the House of Representatives, and The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is currently reviewing a related bill. One of our senators, Kirsten Gillibrand, is a member of the this committee.

Please write her a letter, urging her to pass the resolution. A sample letter, recognizable by most word processing programs, is available for download right HERE.

Feel free to alter the text – the more individualized and personal your letter is, the more impact it will have. Just keep in mind it’s always more effective.

Most guests on Oprah Winfrey’s shows leave the questions to their famous host. Not Rainn Wilson, the actor famous for playing the eccentric paper salesman, Dwight Schrute, on NBC’s hit comedy “The Office.” During his recent spot on Winfrey’s Soul Series radio show, Wilson pulled a list of questions from his back pocket and started interviewing his host.

His questions for Oprah included these:

• What does your soul look like?
• If you could ask God one question, what would it be?

They’re the sort of questions – “life’s big questions” – that Wilson, a longtime Baha’i, posts on his new website, Soul Pancake. Anyone who visits the site can post an answer – or questions of their own. Winfrey’s favorite question of Wilson’s was, “What do you miss most about being five years old?”

“I like that,” she said, and promised she’d eventually come up with a response.

When she does, she can post it on Soul Pancake, a place where she – and the rest of us – can share our own answers to life’s big questions with people from all over the world.