Why music is good for you By Philip Ball

A survey of the cognitive benefits of music makes a valid case for its educational importance. But that's not the best reason to teach all children music, says Philip Ball. Remember the Mozart effect? Thanks to a suggestion in 1993 that listening to Mozart makes you cleverer, there has been a flood of compilation CDs filled with classical tunes that will allegedly boost your baby's brain power. Yet there's no evidence for this claim, and indeed the original "Mozart effect" paper did not make it. It reported a slight, short-term performance enhancement in some spatial tasks when preceded by listening to Mozart as opposed to sitting in silence. Some follow-up studies replicated the effect, others did not. None found it specific to Mozart; one study showed that pop music could have the same effect on schoolchildren. It seems this curious but marginal effect stems from the cognitive benefits of any enjoyable auditory stimulus, which need not even be musical. The original claim doubtless had such inordinate impact because it plays to a long-standing suspicion that music makes you smarter. And as neuroscientists Nina Kraus and Bharath Chandrasekaran of Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., point out in a review published July 20 in Nature Reviews Neuroscience, there is good evidence that music training reshapes the brain in ways that convey broader cognitive benefits. It can, they say, lead to "changes throughout the auditory system that prime musicians for listening challenges beyond music processing." This is no surprise. Many sorts of mental training and learning alter the brain, just as physical training alters the body, and learning-related structural differences between the brains of musicians and non-musicians are well established. Moreover, both neurological and psychological tests show that music processing draws on cognitive resources that are not music-specific, such as pitch processing, memory and pattern recognition--so cultivating these mental functions through music would naturally be expected to have a wider pay-off. The interactions are two-way: the pitch sensitivity imbued by tonal languages such as Mandarin Chinese, for example, enhances the ability to name a musical note just from hearing it (called absolute pitch). We can hardly be surprised, meanwhile, that music lessons improve children's IQ, given that they will nourish general faculties such as memory, coordination and attentiveness. Kraus and Chandrasekaran now point out that, thanks to the brain's plasticity (the ability to "rewire" itself), musical training sharpens our sensitivity to pitch, timing and timbre, and as a result our capacity to discern emotional intonation in speech, to learn our native and foreign languages, and to identify statistical regularities in abstract sound stimuli. Philip Ball's latest book is The Music Instinct (Bodley Head). Scientific American Photo 

East-West Story: The Parallel Lives of Two World-Class Dancers By Samiha Shafy

Joy Womack is from California, Sergei Polunin from a poor city in Ukraine. One went East to pursue a career in ballet, the other West. For both, talent has proven to be a double-edged sword.

 

When she appears, the other dancers strike a quiet pose. She takes off, jumps and does a split mid-air in a swirl of white tulle. Her movements seem effortless, as if she requires no momentum at all -- not even a chance to catch her breath. She imperiously raises an arm, liberating the others from their paralysis. They fall into line behind her and follow her steps, for she is Myrtha, their leader, the Queen of the Ghost Girls in the ballet "Giselle." En pointe, with her head held high, the queen receives a round of applause. Then she glides away. Backstage, she lets herself fall on a yoga mat, panting and sweating. After a short pause, she's back to being Joy Womack, a 21-year-old from Santa Monica, California. In her company, the Kremlin Ballet Theater, she is one of the select few who dances solo. She is the first American to perform here, behind the walls of the Kremlin.
Dreams of Ballet Stardom
She lives for these moments. Womack is in Moscow because she wants to be one of the world's best dancers. She moved a lot closer to achieving her dream when, six years ago, she left the United States for the first time and traveled to Russia on her own. Today she is a prima ballerina in the ballet capital of the world. But she's still a bit shy of reaching her goal. Being here is a fight for survival. She is, as CNN reported in April, "the American dancing in the Kremlin for $8 a day." "Well," says Sergei Polunin, "I assume she agreed to these conditions herself." He has never met Womack. They come from different worlds. He hails from the East, while she is from the West. Yet theirs are similar stories of talent, the quest for perfection and childhoods that never were. Their lives are filled with agony and intoxication, triumph and defeat. Polunin, 25, is probably the most talented dancer of his generation. Critics compare him to Rudolf Nureyev, the dancer of the century. He was 19 when London's Royal Ballet conscripted him as the youngest First Soloist in its history. Today, Polunin gets to pick which world stage he wants to dance on. In the same week, he'll also be performing in Moscow at another staging of "Giselle" -- at the Bolshoi Theater, whose dance troupe is considered the most famous in the world. Polunin has achieved everything that Womack dreams of. And for him, that is cause for despair. A year ago, he was on the verge of giving it all up, Polunin explains, his voice soft and shy. He hated it, the drudgery and the pain -- and what for? Dancers torture their bodies and ruin their health, but even the best of them don't come close to earning as much as an opera singer or football player. The majority are exploited, Polunin says. "A ticket for a performance at the Bolshoi often costs more than a dancer earns in a month." At the high point of his existential crisis, Polunin met David LaChapelle. A British-American film team that had been following Polunin around arranged the meeting. The documentary film would be called "Dancer," but the protagonist already had bigger dreams of a Hollywood career now. Spiegel Online International Sergei Polunin

Natalia Osipova and Sergei Polunin to Unite at Sadler’s Wells By Roslyn Sulcas

LONDON — Natalia Osipova and Sergei Polunin, two of ballet’s biggest stars, will perform together in a program of new work by Russell Maliphant, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Arthur Pita at Sadler’s Wells next year. The theater announced the new partnership at a news conference on Thursday. It was the news about Ms. Osipova and Mr. Polunin that generated most excitement, however, particularly when they confirmed — after an intrepid question at the news conference — that they are a couple offstage. The Ukranian-born Mr. Polunin, who trained at the Royal Ballet School from the age of 13 and became the youngest-ever principal dancer at the Royal Ballet at 19, made headlines in 2012 when he abruptly quit the company, a year before Ms. Osipova joined it as a principal. Since then, Mr. Polunin has danced mostly with the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Music Theater and the Novosibirsk State Academic Opera and Ballet Theater, and has been little seen in Britain. His solo performance in a video by David LaChapelle has had over 13 million hits to date. The program of new pieces, which is to be performed from June 29 to July 2 next year, will feature a duet by Mr. Maliphant for the pair, as well as “a dance prequel” to Tennessee Williams’s “A Streetcar Named Desire,” by Mr. Pita. It is not Ms. Osipova’s first foray into contemporary work; last year she performed all over the world with Ivan Vasiliev in “Solo for Two,” which included new works by both Mr. Cherkaoui and Mr. Pita. With Mr. Polunin as her translator, Ms. Osipova, who has not danced because of injury for the last few months, said that she felt it was important to tackle new styles of dance while she was still young. As well as holding a principal dancer contract with the Royal Ballet, Ms. Osipova is a regular guest artist with American Ballet Theater and at La Scala. On Tuesday, the Bolshoi Ballet announced that she will be a regular guest star over the next season. International New York Times

Government dismisses Moody's report, calls it opinion of junior analyst

NEW DELHI: Government today dismissed a recent report quoted to Moody's Analytics, saying it was the personal opinion of a junior analyst which was passed off as a commentary on India by a rating agency "by the media to buttress the narrative it wants to portray." "It is with regret the Government of India notes the irresponsible and distorted reporting by certain sections of the Indian media on what was the personal opinion of a Junior Associate Economist employed with Moody's Analytics," an official release said. The Economic Times Photo

Peter Gabriel

Secret World Live "In Your Eyes" Photo

Desireless

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Behind the scenes of Cirque du Soleil By Gurveen Kaur

It is 1pm on a Friday and just days before Cirque du Soleil's production of Totem opens here. In one corner of the troupe's tent - the training and preparation area for the 46 cast members - three women are sewing sequins onto dazzling costumes and adjusting the mane on a mask. Farther inside, a young man bounces 5m into the air on a pole held by two burly men, while another spins and jumps through hoops. Elsewhere, a massage therapist is kneading the back of a cast member, while the sound of weights clinking and powerful roars can be heard at the other end. The artistic tent - which includes a fully equipped training area, gym, dressing rooms, wardrobe area and physiotherapy room - stands alongside the trademark big top where the show takes place, the kitchen, entrance tent and offices housed in large steel containers. Welcome to Cirque du Soleil's mobile village, located next to Marina Bay Sands in Bayfront Avenue. Says Eric Hernandez, 25, a hoop dancer who is in two of 11 acrobatic acts: "Besides rehearsals, we pretty much decide when we want to train and practise. Many of us have been in the Totem production for so long that we know what to do." Since its premiere in 2010, Totem has been performed more than 1,600 times in 32 cities in seven countries including the United States, the Netherlands and New Zealand. Company manager Genevieve Deslandes says: "Our artists are professionals; they have competed in gymnastics or performed in circuses around the world. We can advise them on training routines, but most of them know exactly what their bodies need." Rehearsals for each act follow a specific schedule each week. On average, the cast performs eight to 10 shows a week in each city. They travel from one place to another for most of the year with a support team of 72 technicians and other staff. Each cast member is responsible for decorating his own face too. Between cities, they get a break of one to two weeks, says Ms Deslandes. They also head home once or twice a year for two to three weeks. The troupe is made up of performers from 17 countries including Belarus, China and Australia. A performer might be on stage for less than 10 minutes during the 2-1/2-hour show but he spends hours training every day. Canadian Sarah Tessier, 24, who is one half of the fixed trapeze duo, says: "Our act is only about seven minutes but warming up, practising and putting on make-up can take up to four hours before each show." Cast members are disciplined in the maintenance of their bodies and perfecting their routines. Tessier says it can be a challenge to do the same act over and over again. She has performed her routine more than 1,000 times. She adds: "The repetition and staying alert can be tough, but knowing that it is the audience's first time seeing the act makes us give 100 per cent each time." For the duo, it was a dream come true to join the world-renowned troupe. They both trained at the National Circus School in Montreal, Canada, and were selected for Cirque du Soleil in 2012. While most of the performers have to go through auditions, Russian acrobat Nikita Moiseev was born into the troupe. "We are one big happy family who support one another and have formed deep connections," he says. The Straits Times Photo